Tag: Winston Churchill

Barack Churchill, 1939

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“Certainly we do not need a disproportionate response to Herr Hitler that initiates a cycle of violence on both sides. We need to tamp down the rhetoric.” 

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Photo via PJ Media
Photo via PJ Media

I have nothing to offer you, except blood, sweat, and arugula.

Winston Churchill, well before he became prime minister in May 1940, was busy all through 1939 prompting the British government to prepare for war — and then, as first lord of the Admiralty, helping to direct it once it broke out. But what if Churchill had been Barack Obama? What would Britain’s foremost opponent of appeasement have been like?

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The Last Lion Remembered

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Winston Churchill never once flinched in the face of the Third Reich.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Churchill in November, 1942 (Reg Speller/Getty)
Churchill in November, 1942 (Reg Speller/Getty)

Fifty years ago this Saturday, former British prime minister Winston Churchill died at age 90.

Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist, Nobel laureate historian, and combat veteran. He began his career serving the British military as a Victorian-era mounted lancer and ended it as custodian of Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

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Obama’s Munich

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by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

The interim agreement negotiated by the Security Council and Germany with Iran is a serious advance toward what Winston Churchill called the Munich agreement: “a total and unmitigated defeat” and a “disaster of the first magnitude.” Nothing in the agreement guarantees that Iran will fulfill its promises, or that inspectors will be allowed access to all of Iran’s enrichment facilities, let alone its secret sites, or that serious consequences will follow violations of the terms of the agreement. Continue reading “Obama’s Munich” →

Why Should We Study War?

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Military history tells the story of human nature at its great heights and terrible lows.

by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas 

In the latter years of World War I, Winston Churchill met with the novelist and poet Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was a winner of the Military Cross––he single-handedly routed 60 Germans and captured a trench on the Hindenburg Line––and a fierce pacifist. Sassoon’s reminiscences of that meeting reveal how odd my title question would have struck most people before our time. He recalled that during their conversation, Churchill “gave me an emphatic vindication of militarism as an instrument of policy and stimulator of glorious individual achievements.” Continue reading “Why Should We Study War?” →

Margaret Thatcher and the Death of Feminism

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by Bruce S. Thornton

FrontPage 

The death of Margaret Thatcher will no doubt generate much deserved recognition and discussion of her historical significance. Continue reading “Margaret Thatcher and the Death of Feminism” →

Appeasement Bode War Not Peace

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by Terry Scambray

New Oxford Review

A review of The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America by Bruce S. Thornton. (Encounter Books, 2011 pp. 283) Continue reading “Appeasement Bode War Not Peace” →

Obama’s Assault on America’s Prestige

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by Bruce S. Thornton

FrontPage Magazine

In 1868, a British army led by Sir Robert Napier sailed from India to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to rescue several English and European hostages from the mentally unstable, sadistic King Theodore. Continue reading “Obama’s Assault on America’s Prestige” →

Ancient Virtues and Modern Sins

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by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

Candor

Aside from courage — the essential trait without which, as the ancients insisted, all other virtues are impossible — candor is now the most appreciated. Continue reading “Ancient Virtues and Modern Sins” →