April 7, 2015

Finest Hour 133, Winter 2006-07

Page 46

By Richard M. Langworth

“I confess myself to be a great admirer of tradition…. The wider the span, the longer the continuity, the greater is the sense of duty in individual men and women, each contributing their brief life’s work to the preservation and progress of the land in which they live, the society of which they are members, and the world of which they are the servants.”
—Winston Churchill, Royal College of Physicians, 1944

“To conquer a nation, destroy the values of its people.”
—Bill O’Reilly, Culture Warrior, 2006*

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The Cardinals’ bus from their Manhattan hotel was delayed by more than an hour as it made its way to Shea Stadium. A combination of bad weather, typical New York traffic and the plane crash all led to major issues for the bus.”

Major issues for the bust

It is subtle, and it creeps into our discourse innocently. But the campaign to eradicate the traditional values and mores of Western Civilization is ceaseless.

An example is the substitution of secular-humanist words for traditional words in everyday language. My pet gripe is the word “issues” as substituted for the word “problems.” The idea is that we must not be “judgmental” (another popular favorite) about our troubles, because our troubles may be right. This extends even to inanimate objects. Not only people but now even buses have “issues.”

No. “Issues” are subjects on which there is: disagreement. What the bus had were problems. It’s catching, because we all want to use hip forms of speech. If editors don’t watch out, we fall for it too. I recently had to stop myself from saying that I have “issues” with fanatics trying to kill us. What I have, of course, are violent objections.

One might expect a publication dedicated to the life and times of Winston Churchill to tilt traditional. We don’t care what you think about the war in Iraq, economic policy, immigration, religion, global warming, or Messrs. Bush, Blair, Harper or Howard. All those are legitimate, er, “issues,” over which reasonable people may disagree.

An “issue” (in the legitimate sense of the word) came up at a Churchill Centre scholarly panel when it was argued that the “spheres of influence” (Tolstoy) agreement between Churchill and Stalin at Moscow in October 1944 proved that Churchill and Britain were no different from Stalin and Russia—that both sides had identical objectives, i.e., their own national interests. This is a common argument of secular humanists who would have us believe that the Western democracies are no better than Nazis, Soviets, or Islamofascists.

Leave aside that Churchill saw the Moscow agreement as a temporary expedient which might end up saving Greece from communization (which it did). Did his behavior prove that “we” were the same as “they”?

No. The “national interests” of Britain in Greece included objectives like getting the ouzo concession for Harrods and Greek support (optional) of British policies after the war; whereas the “national interests” of Russia in, say, Poland, were simply everything that Poland had, produced, and aspired to be. To my knowledge, nothing Greece did after the war was seriously done at the behest of London, while everything Poland did was directed by Moscow. That’s the difference between “us” and “them.” Small wonder that Western democracies today find their most enthusiastic friends among the former Warsaw Pact.

When Churchill in his war speeches referred to “Christian civilisation” (a phrase I’ve actually seen edited out of some transcripts) he did not mean to exclude Jews or Buddhists or Muslims. He meant those words in the much broader sense of universal ethics: the Ten Commandments (a “judgmental” set of rules now expunged from certain public places), the Sermon on the Mount, charity, forgiveness, courage, the Golden Rule. All those…traditions.

So let me reiterate the assumptions we believe our readers expect. We hold that the traditional democracies which fought and won World War II and the Cold War— Britain, Canada, America, Australia—have produced the most prosperity and liberated the largest number of people in the history of the world. Their efforts allowed unprecedented masses to say what they think without fear of being stuck up against a wall by thugs carrying pistols. I include the Russians among the allies who won the war, but exclude them from the aforementioned group, because they enslaved at least as many people before and after the war as they helped liberate during it.

Finest Hour will try as hard to avoid substituting “issues” for “problems” as we do to avoid split infinitives. We will not attach PC filters to descriptions of Churchillian thoughts and deeds, however antique they may sound today. We do not believe that when democracies fight, however ineptly, it’s equivalent to what the fanatics did to us in New York or Washington or London or Madrid. We do not believe that “we” are the same as “they.” We do not believe that Churchill’s failures and faults, however notable, begin to compare with the level of his successes and qualities. No “issues” on that one!

Just wanted to get that off my chest.