Winston Churchill Points to National Socialism as a US Problem

....................................... ..............Churchill notes that socialism grafts itself onto nationalism and the particular features of the nations it has infected. In Germany, the Weimar regime was destroyed and Hitler was propelled to power through national patriotism, tradition, and pride combined with discontent about inequalities of wealth. In Russia, the program of Communism was buttressed by national sentiment and imperialist aspirations. The next country Churchill mentions, in a shift that must be shocking to those who wish to read the article as simply a pro-New Deal argument, is the United States, which he says has experienced developments similar to those inspired by socialism in the dictatorships:

In the United States, also, economic crisis has led to an extension of the activities of the executive and to the pillorying, by irresponsible agitators, of certain groups and sections of the population as enemies of the rest. There have been efforts to exalt the power of the central government and to limit the rights of individuals. The combinations at work in the United States, however, are different. Passions and economic jealousies have been unleashed, but they have formed combinations not with imperial ambition or twisted racial pride, but with a sense of public duty and the desire for national prosperity. However, the result, Churchill warns, can be just as dangerous:

"It is when passions and cupidities are thus unleashed and, at the same time, the sense of public duty rides high in the hearts of all men and women of good will that the handcuffs can be slipped upon the citizens and they can be brought into entire subjugation to the executive government."

After describing trends in Germany, Russia, Italy, and the United States, Churchill writes, "I take the opposite view." He had always rejected any policy or propaganda that would use crisis to extend the power of the state as subverting individual liberty and perverting the purpose of government:

I hold that governments are meant to be, and must remain, the servants of the citizens; that states and federations only come into existence and can only be justified by preserving the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the homes and families of individuals. The true right and power rest in the individual. He gives of his right and power to the State, expecting and requiring thereby in return to receive certain advantages and guarantees.

When one has once defined government in terms of its purpose, a test has been introduced by which to judge the goodness and legitimacy of the government. Churchill gives the tests by which he judges the civilization of any community: What is the degree of freedom possessed by the citizen or subject? Can he think, speak and act freely under well-established, well-known laws? Can he criticize the executive government? Can he sue the State if it has infringed his rights? Are there also great processes for changing the law to meet new conditions?

Churchill judges Great Britain and the United States to be in the forefront of civilized communities according to these standards. This status is due only in part, Churchill writes, to "the good sense and watchfulness of our citizens." A vital support for freedom also lies in the independence of the courts:

In both our countries the character of the judiciary is a vital factor in the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the individual citizen. Our judges extend impartially to all men protection, not only against wrongs committed by private persons, but also against the arbitrary acts of public authority. The independence of the courts is, to all of us, the guarantee of freedom and the equal rule of law.

In other words, the safeguard is to be found in a structural feature of both the American and British constitutional arrangements. The independence of the judiciary, while at times productive of frustration and inconvenience to those trying to implement legislative programs or governmental action, must nonetheless be maintained: "It must, therefore, be the first concern of the citizens of a free country to preserve and maintain the independence of the courts of justice, however inconvenient that independence may be, on occasion, to the government of the day."

These remarks hardly appear sympathetic to FDR's frustration with the Supreme Court's repeated striking down of New Deal programs as unconstitutional and his active search for ways to limit the powers of the Court. Later in the article, Churchill refers to the various means that were being considered to accomplish this, including a proposal to introduce a retirement age of 70 for justices. This proposal was not ultimately successful, but Churchill presciently notes that the real challenge may be yet to come. A year after Churchill wrote this piece, FDR famously tried to "pack" the Court with justices more subservient to his political will.

When considering the political situation in America and Britain, Churchill argued, "The question we are discussing is whether a fixed constitution is a bulwark or a fetter." Churchill is not hesitant to proclaim his own opinion on the matter: "From what I have written it is plain that I incline to the side of those who would regard it as a bulwark, and that I rank the citizen higher than the State, and regard the State as useful only in so far as it preserves his inherent rights."

The article now becomes exclusively a comparison between Great Britain and the United States: "And here is the point at which we may consider and contrast the constitutions of our respective countries." It is very difficult, he writes, for those in England to comprehend the kind of governmental deadlock that has been reached in the United States. That major bills affecting the whole life of the people could be passed through Parliament only to be struck down and nullified by a court of law would be beyond imagination. The British parliamentary system does not have a court empowered with judicial review of legislative acts. If Crown and Parliament unite, the law of the land has been given with final authority. The unwritten British Constitution thus has a potential for great flexibility: "There is no limit to the powers of Crown and Parliament. Even the gravest changes in our Constitution can in theory be carried out by simple majority votes in both Houses and the consequential assent of the Crown."

The situation in the United States is much different. Limitations on the power of government to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands were central to the American Founding; hence the separation of powers and the carefully crafted interaction of the branches of government. The judiciary was to be independent, but whether the Supreme Court would have a veto over legislation passed by Congress was a matter of debate among the Framers. While the actual language of the Constitution gives no specific grant of such a power, the idea was advanced and became entrenched as an implied power very early in the life of the Republic.14 The power of judicial review gives the Court an authoritative voice and, in theory if not always in practice, binds the other branches of government to the Constitution.

This system provides the opportunity for a conflict between the American branches of government that is quite remarkable from Churchill's point of view: But we now watch the workings of a written Constitution enforced by a Supreme Court according to the letter of the law, under which anyone may bring a test case challenging not merely the interpretation of a law, but the law itself, and if the Court decides for the appellant, be he only an owner of a few chickens,15 the whole action of the Legislature and the Executive becomes to that extent null and void.

"American citizens or jurists, in their turn," Churchill writes, "gaze with wonder at our great British democracy expressing itself with plenary powers through a Government and a Parliament controlled only by the fluctuating currents of public opinion." He then goes on to describe the features of parliamentary government that differ from the American system: that there is no separation between the Executive and the Legislature, the Government depends for its continuance on the approval of the House of Commons, the ministers of the Government are chosen from the majority party in the legislative body, and Parliament can extend or contract its own duration apart from the statutory limit. The Framers of the American Constitution were, of course, distrustful of these arrangements as being inadequate to restrain the government within its proper bounds.

Churchill recognizes and understands the American hesitancy to approve such arrangements and so asserts that British people are satisfied that governmental power will not be abused: "Yet all classes and all parties have a deep, underlying conviction that these vast, flexible powers will not be abused, that the spirit of our unwritten Constitution will be respected at every stage." To explain how this conviction is justified, Churchill describes the particular features of British history, politics, and society that make the arrangement workable, citing the beginnings of party politics in Britain, respect for law and constitutional usage, the stability of a permanent civil service, and the attachment of popular opinion to the unwritten constitution.

Up to this point, the reader may take it that Churchill simply believes that the British system is better and that the United States would be better off to adopt it in order to avoid clashes between the branches. But this is not the case. Churchill recognizes that the situation in the U.S. is different from that of Britain. The size and complexity of the United States makes the flexibility of the British constitutional arrangement impractical and unwise: "the participants of so vast a federation have the right to effectual guarantees upon the fundamental laws, and that these should not be easily changed to suit a particular emergency or fraction of the country." This principle, Churchill recognizes, is at the heart of the American Union:

The founders of the Union, although its corpus was then so much smaller, realized this with profound conviction. They did not think it possible to entrust legislation for so diverse a community and enormous an area to a simple majority. They were as well acquainted with the follies and intolerance of parliaments as with the oppression of princes. "To control the powers and conduct of the legislature," said a leading member of the Convention of 1787, "by an overruling constitution was an improvement in the science and practice of government reserved to the American States."16

Churchill does not think that the organizational principle of federalism safeguarded by a fixed constitution has reached the end of its usefulness: "All the great names of American history can be invoked behind this principle. Why should it be considered obsolete?" In fact, whatever may be thought of the principle by the New Dealers, federalism was at the heart of the success of the American regime: "It may well be that this very quality of rigidity, which is today thought to be so galling, has been a prime factor in founding the greatness of the United States." Churchill has praised the British system, but he admits that if it were expanded beyond the bounds of Britain for the governance of the Empire with all of its diversity, that system would fail. It is only the principle of federalism that has allowed the Empire to continue:

In this small island of Britain we make laws for ourselves. But if we had again attempted to apply this flexibility and freedom to the British Empire, and to frame an Imperial Constitution to make laws for the whole body, it would have been broken to pieces. Although we have a free, flexible Constitution at the centre and for the centre of the Empire, nothing is more rigid than the established practice--namely, that we claim no powers to interfere with the affairs of its self-governing component parts. No Supreme Court is needed to enforce this rule. We have learned the lessons of the past too well.

Churchill's position is that the United States, a political union with a complexity analogous to the Empire, requires both federalism in order to function properly and the Supreme Court to enforce the principle, especially in time of crisis.

A perusal of Roosevelt's speeches will readily show that he was impatient with those like Churchill who would oppose an evolving interpretation of the Constitution that would permit the federal government to take an increasingly active role in the life of the states. In his Annual Message to the Congress in 1937, for example, Roosevelt called for an "enlightened view" of the Constitution: "Difficulties have grown out of its interpretation but rightly considered, it can be used as an instrument of progress, and not as a device for the prevention of action."17

The language of constitutional flexibility was the common parlance of the New Deal from the beginning, but Churchill gives a negative interpretation of such language:

And here we must note a dangerous misuse of terminology. "Taking the rigidity out of the American Constitution" means, and is intended to mean, new gigantic accessions of power to the dominating centre of government and giving it the means to make new fundamental laws enforceable upon all American citizens. Churchill defends the "rigidity" of the American Constitution as a safeguard of freedom rather than seeing it as an obstacle to the political programs of the New Deal.

We are now in a position to put into context the portion of the article that Schlesinger quotes:

But that rigidity ought not to be interpreted by pedants. In England we continually give new interpretation to the archaic language of our fundamental institutions, and this is no new thing in the United States. The judiciary have obligations which go beyond expounding the mere matter of the law. The Constitution must be made to work. A true interpretation, however, of the British or the American Constitution is certainly not a chop-logic or pedantic interpretation. So august a body as the Supreme Court in dealing with law must also deal with the life of the United States, and words, however solemn, are only true when they preserve their vital relationship to facts. It would certainly be a great disaster, not only to the American Republic but to the whole world, if a violent collision should take place between the large majority of the American people and the great instrument of government which has so long presided over their expanding fortunes.18

These remarks appear to express Churchill's sympathy with Roosevelt's desire to ensure that the changing circumstances of modern life do not cut any citizens off from the means of prosperity and happiness, but they do not retract anything that Churchill wrote in the bulk of this same article or the warnings conveyed therein. Moreover, they occur at the end of his arguments in a section which Churchill sets off from the preceding: "Now, at the end of these reflections, I must strike a minor and different note." Schlesinger does not provide the larger context of these remarks and so gives the reader a mistaken impression that Churchill was in complete agreement with FDR's approach to the issues of federalism and the role of the Supreme Court.

Churchill's 1937 essay "This Age of Government by Great Dictators" is a meditation on political change. It is an essay of sweeping historical breadth, telling a tale that begins with early European history, where kings were granted a power sufficient to remedy the defects of an earlier, chaotic age and were elevated to an almost godlike status. While this was an improvement on anarchy, the accidents of individual birth and character were unstable foundations on which to risk the fortunes of nations: "At one period Pericles or Augustus, at another Draco or Caligula!"

Once society was set on a firm footing, various kinds of constitutions were invented to restrain the excesses of kings. This idea took special hold in Britain:

[T]his doctrine of averaging risks by means of constitutions, and of keeping kings without returning to anarchy, became deeply ingrained in the people of a small island amid the northern mists who seemed to have a genius for common sense. Out of it arose by many painful processes the famous English Parliamentary system and constitutional monarchy.

Pomp and power were separated, and power underwent division and subdivision, ensuring the rule of law rather than whim. These ideas spread across the globe to the great benefit of mankind; the political forms and institutions to which they gave rise varied, but the fundamental conceptions remained the root from which civilization flourished and spread:

The English conception, wrought by the island nobility from the Magna Charta to the age of Anne, spread over wide portions of the globe. The forms were often varied, but the idea was the same. Sometimes, as in the United States, through historical incidents, an elected functionary replaced the hereditary king, but the idea of the separation of powers between the executive, the assemblies and the courts of law widely spread throughout the world in what we must regard as the great days of the nineteenth century.19

The point of "This Age of Government by Great Dictators" is to convey a warning. The story Churchill tells does not end with the "great days of the nineteenth century" in which the continued progress of the world seemed assured. It was just when the progressive faith was at its greatest, when the illusion of mastery over the fortunes of man had taken on its most vibrant hues, that hopes failed: "Then came terrible wars shattering great empires, laying nations low, sweeping away old institutions and ideas with a scourge of molten steel."

The 20th century did not live up to the promise of progress. The world now learned (or re-learned what had been forgotten) that political change does not necessarily follow any consistent direction. The 19th century thinkers had pinned their hopes on the spread of democratic institutions and principles, believing that, once built, their temples would stand forever; but their mistake was soon to be revealed. Churchill points out that democratic regimes are as subject to degradation as any other because they, like other political forms, carry their own dangers with them:

Democracy has been defined as "the association of us all in the leadership of the best." In practice it does not always work this way. Vast masses of people were invested with the decisive right to vote, while at the same time they had very little leisure to study the questions upon which they must pronounce; and an enormous apparatus for feeding them with propaganda, catchwords and slogans came simultaneously into existence.

Democratic regimes, because they demand the participation of their citizens, demand responsibility from their citizens. When responsibilities are shirked, either because conditions are not favorable to duty or through laziness, the control of the people will become an illusion and, eventually, not even the illusion will remain. Flatterers will sway the people. Demagogues will convince them to surrender their power for safety or comfort. Propagandists will play on their fears. Tyrants will be born ( Obama IS a tyrant):

Alike in fear of anarchy and in vague hopes of future comforts a very large proportion of Europe have yielded themselves to dictatorship. Nations which had either driven out or confined within constitutional limits the old careful kingships of the past, made haste to rally in the parades and processions of a set of violent, wrathful, resourceful, domineering figures cast up by the bloody surge of war and its cruel lacerating recoil. We have entered the age of the dictators.20

Thus, the 20th century witnessed a regression in political terms. Nations were again subject to lords, but their new masters wielded power many times greater than the ancient kings. The reader recognizes the spirit of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, but Churchill's warning is for those who have not yet fallen under the yoke of such men, for those countries which imagine themselves immune from such a transformation, including Britain. He warns that whatever political victories may have been won, the danger of tyranny is never finally removed.

The common political heritage shared by America and Great Britain was the basis for Churchill's appeal for aid from the United States in the early years of the Second World War. The initial success of that appeal had much to do with a personal relationship. Churchill worked very hard at strengthening the bonds with the leader of Britain's greatest ally, and the working friendship between Churchill and President Roosevelt has rightly received a great deal of scholarly attention. But have Churchill's criticisms of FDR been lost or ignored in the shadow of their wartime partnership? The two had their disagreements, even over the conduct of the war, and they certainly did not see eye to eye on dealing with the Soviets with regard to post-war arrangements.

Less well-known and almost completely ignored are Churchill's comments on the political, economic, and social policies Roosevelt pursued in the New Deal. Churchill's critique of the New Deal reflects a concern that even regimes built on the principles of freedom can become corrupted and lose their way. Writing in a period in which dictatorships were thriving, he pointed out that the United States was not immune to the political degradation that was affecting much of the rest of the world. He warned America, in a lesson equally apt today, that the moment of social and economic crisis is also the moment of political danger.

In "Roosevelt from Afar,"21 Churchill expresses sympathy with and admiration for Roosevelt's desire to deliver his people from the economic problems that had plagued America since the Great Depression, but the essay has another purpose as well, as he wrote to the editor of Collier's: to warn against the possible ill-effects that New Deal programs might bring about. "I have tried to strike a note of warning while at the same time expressing my sincere sympathy with the great effort the President is making," Churchill writes.

This article was a difficult undertaking. For a statesman to remark on the domestic policies and personalities of another country without exciting resentment or even wrath requires diplomatic skill. We can therefore believe that Churchill was very careful in his writing. We know that he went so far as to leave final judgment to the American editor: "if there are any phrases which you think would cause offence...you are quite at liberty to soften or excise them without reference to me."22 Yet despite his caution, "Roosevelt from Afar" does manage to convey serious warnings about America's Depression-era economic and social policies.

Churchill begins by describing the severe economic crisis affecting America and the world, and he expresses admiration for Roosevelt's willingness to take up the challenge:

Although the policies of President Roosevelt are conceived in many respects from a narrow view of American self-interest, the courage, the power and the scale of his effort must enlist the ardent sympathy of every country, and his success could not fail to lift the whole world forward into the sunlight of an easier and more genial age.

Churchill describes Roosevelt's challenges as he arrived at America's highest office at the moment of crisis: "He arrived at the summit of the greatest economic community in the world at the moment of its extreme embarrassment. Everybody had lost faith in everything." The United States was gripped by desperation. It was a moment of both opportunity and danger. Great or terrible things might be done: "We must never forget that this was the basis from which he started. Supreme power in the Ruler, and a clutching anxiety of scores of millions who demanded and awaited orders." Roosevelt chose to seize direction of the whole scene, and "[s]ince then there has been no lack of orders," writes Churchill. (That is certainly true, given that Roosevelt issued an extraordinary number of executive orders--more than all of his successors through Bill Clinton combined.)

Using a word that must be shocking to Roosevelt apologists, Churchill notes that the President aspired to a very high degree of control: "Although the Dictatorship is veiled by constitutional forms, it is none the less effective. Great things have been done, and greater attempted."23 But Churchill is very careful to attribute any of Roosevelt's possible excesses to misguided followers rather than to Roosevelt himself. "[T]he President has need to be on his guard," he writes; "[t]o a foreign eye it seems that forces are gathering under his shield which at a certain stage may thrust him into the background and take the lead themselves. If that misfortune were to occur, we should see the not-unfamiliar spectacle of a leader running after his followers to pull them back."24

These, however, are the forces that Roosevelt deliberately set loose and encouraged. While Churchill describes them as dangers to "President Roosevelt's valiant and heroic experiments," it is clear from the essay, as well as from the history of the New Deal, that these are in fact dangers arising from those very experiments.

The first great danger Churchill addresses is the rise of trade unionism. Once again, he begins by praising Roosevelt for his attempt to reduce unemployment by shortening working hours and thus to spread employment more evenly through the working class:

Thus the Roosevelt adventure claims sympathy and admiration from all of those in England, and in foreign countries, who are convinced that the fixing of a universal measure of value based not upon the rarity or plenty of any single commodity, but conforming to the advancing powers of mankind, is the supreme achievement which at this time lies before the intellect of Man. But this remark is immediately followed by a warning: "[V]ery considerable misgivings must necessarily arise when a campaign to attack the monetary problem becomes intermingled with, and hampered by, the elaborate processes of social reform and the struggles of class warfare."25

Great Britain had much experience with trade unionism, as had Churchill himself. As President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill had been involved in shaping government policy toward labor disputes and strikes. The General Strike of 1925-1926, and its political implications in particular, had given Churchill strong negative views on the subject: [Labor unionism] has introduced a narrowing element into our public life. It has been a keenly-felt impediment to our productive and competitive power. It has become the main foundation of the socialist party, which has ruled the State greatly to its disadvantage, and will assuredly do so again. It reached a climax in a general strike, which if it had been successful would have subverted the Parliamentary constitution of our island. On the other hand, Churchill was willing to admit that the trade unions in Britain had become a stable force in the industrial development of Britain and were, in any case, much better for society than "communist-agitated and totally unorganized labour discontent."26

Churchill's warning for Roosevelt and America consists in the observation that the development of trade unionism in Britain occurred over a period of some 50 years, allowing time for economic adjustments and the abatement of immediate passions. The New Deal aimed at greatly accelerating this process, which he said posed real dangers: "But when one sees an attempt made within the space of a few months to lift American trade unionism by great heaves and bounds to the position so slowly built up--and even then with much pain and loss--in Great Britain, we cannot help feeling grave doubts."27 The conflicts involved in such a transformation, he warns, could "result in a general crippling of that enterprise and flexibility upon which not only the wealth, but the happiness of modern communities depends."

Nor was this transformation occurring through a careful balancing of the interests of employers, labor, and society as a whole; rather, it was occurring through accelerated government intervention:

Our trade unions have grown to manhood and power amid an enormous network of counter-checks and consequential corrections; and to raise American trade unionism from its previous condition to industrial sovereignty by a few sweeping decrees may easily confront both the trade unions and the United States with problems which for the time being will be at once paralyzing and insoluble.28 Yet such sweeping decrees are exactly what characterized the New Deal under Roosevelt, as illustrated by the compulsory unionism of the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and the National Labor Relations Act (1935).

The second great danger involved in Roosevelt's experiments is "the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts." Churchill notes that this is "a very attractive sport" and one common to societies plagued with economic woes. But economic redistribution through penalties on the wealthy does not benefit a society in the long run because it drains the wellsprings of economic development:

The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency from all quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.

Moreover, the rich man is elusive prey. It will take time and determined effort to finally bring him to bay and wrench his wealth from him. Until then, it will be squirreled away for protection and so will not be spurring enterprise. The chase may be exciting, but the returns are poor, Churchill argues:

But meanwhile great constructions have crumbled to the ground. Confidence is shaken and enterprise chilled, and the unemployed queue up at the soup-kitchens or march out to the public works with ever growing expense to the taxpayer and nothing more appetizing to take home to their families than the leg or the wing of what was once a millionaire.... It is indispensable to the wealth of nations and to the wage and life standards of labour, that capital and credit should be honoured and cherished partners in the economic system. Churchill notes that there is some justification for the anger of the American people against their great leaders of finance but cautions against indulging anger at the cost of destructive economic policy. Given that some abuses exist, the question becomes how to resolve them: "The important question is whether American democracy can clear up scandals and punish improprieties without losing its head, and without injuring the vital impulses of economic enterprise and organization."29

Churchill places this American dilemma in a broader context by pointing out that the U.S. is not the first country to deal with the question of whether "it is better to have equality at the price of poverty, or well-being at the price of inequality." Churchill lamented the drift toward socialist policies in his own country in the 1920s (and, as pointed out earlier, again in the 1940s), pointing out that these schemes produced little but economic disaster.30 He did favor government action to ease the pains of the poor in modern industrial society, however. Indeed, his political career is marked by a great concern for social justice, a concern which is echoed in his cautious admiration of FDR.

Ultimately, however, Churchill held that free markets should be allowed to operate without centralized, bureaucratic controls destroying the principle of competition that is the mainspring of economic health.31 The capitalist system can create concentrations of wealth, since free competition results in inequalities of property, but the removal of reward for investment and risk will stultify economic development and ultimately harm society as a whole.

Throughout his discussion of the economic choices America faces, Churchill refers to "the Russian alternative"--the nationalization of production, distribution, credit, and exchange to cure the abuses and inequities of the capitalist system. While this is not a choice Churchill recommends, other countries have made it, and it was an option. "It is, however, irrational," he argues, to take a middle ground between the two systems and "to tear down or cripple the capitalist system without having the fortitude of spirit and ruthlessness of action to create a new communist system."

Furthermore, Churchill believed that the American people would never willingly accept the "dull brutish servitude of Russia," though he also believed that a nation can slide into doctrines it would not accept wholesale with open eyes. Choices can sometimes be clearer to outside observers, and Churchill warns that America should not weight the scales against capitalism: There it seems to foreign observers, lies the big choice of the United States at the present time. If the capitalist system is to continue, with its rights of private property, with its pillars of rent, interest and profit, and the sanctity of contracts recognized and enforced by the State, then it must be given a fair chance. This means that government should not make it impossible for private business to thrive by suppressing free-market competition: "There are elements of contrivance, of housekeeping, and of taking risks which are essential to all profitable activity. If these are destroyed the capitalist system fails, and some other system must be substituted."

Given the regulatory activities of the National Recovery Administration, increases in taxes on successful businesses, frequent anti-trust lawsuits, and FDR's anti-business rhetoric, Churchill's words can only be read as a rebuke to the New Deal approach to reining in "the vital impulses of economic enterprise and organization."32

Churchill's critique of the New Deal does not, of course, nullify his admiration for FDR, especially as it developed through what is known as the special relationship in the Second World War. While they had their disagreements, Churchill's gratitude toward Roosevelt was immense. Speaking in the House of Commons a few days after Roosevelt's death, he expressed that gratitude not only for himself, but for Britain and for Europe as a whole: "For us, it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old."33

The critique does, however, have importance. Written in the context of worldwide collectivist trends which were destructive of freedom, it reveals his opposition to the philosophy of the New Deal as equally dangerous to political and economic liberty. Churchill thought seriously about not only the unity of spirit between Great Britain and the United States, but the ways in which both countries were subject to the dangers of abandoning the supports of law and liberty in times of crisis. Britain and the United States were bound together in the defense of freedom, and Churchill knew that freedom must be guarded internally as well as externally.

Justin D. Lyons is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Political Science and an Adjunct Fellow in the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University. He began his study of Churchill with his dissertation, "Building the Temple of Peace: The Statesmanship of Winston Churchill," and is working on a book-length study of Churchill as a political thinker.

[1]Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. I, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), p. 210. [2]"A Long and Hard War," December 26, 1941, in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963 (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), Vol. VI, p. 6536. Cited hereafter as Complete Speeches. [3]"The Declaration was in the main a restatement of the principles which had animated the Whig struggle against the later Stuarts and the English Revolution of 1688, and it now became the symbol and rallying centre of the Patriot cause." Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Vol. 3, The Age of Revolution (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993), p. 189. [4]"The Third Great Title-Deed of Anglo-American Liberties," July 4, 1918, in Complete Speeches, Vol. III, p. 2614. [5]See, for example, "A New Magna Charta" (Lend-Lease), March 12, 1941, in Complete Speeches, Vol. VI, p. 6360, and "The Task Ahead," June 27, 1942, in Ibid., p. 6644: "The day will come when the British and American armies will march into countries, not as invaders, but as liberators, helping the people who have been held under the cruel barbarian yoke.... Also, it will open the world to larger freedom and to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as the grand words of your Declaration of Independence put it." [6]"Liberty and the Law," July 31, 1957, in Complete Speeches, Vol. VIII, pp. 8682-8683. [7]"The Sinews of Peace," March 5, 1946, in Complete Speeches, Vol. VII, p. 7289. [8] Ibid., p. 7288. [9] Ibid. [10] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. 3, The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960), p. 495, quoting from Winston S. Churchill, "What Good's a Constitution?" Collier's, August 22, 1936. [11] Ibid. [12] "Party Politics Again," June 4, 1945, in Complete Speeches, Vol. VII, pp. 7171-7172. [13] To give one example: "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." Franklin D. Roosevelt, "First Inaugural Address," Washington, D.C., March 4, 1933. [14] Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). [15] A reference to A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), in which the National Industrial Recovery Act was overturned by the Supreme Court. [16] Churchill is quoting James Wilson. [17] Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Annual Message to the Congress," January 6, 1937. [18] "What Good's a Constitution?" Quoted in Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, pp. 495-496. [19] Winston S. Churchill, "This Age of Government by Great Dictators," in Michael Wolff, ed., The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol. IV, Churchill at Large (Bristol: Library of Imperial History, 1976), p. 394. [20] Ibid., pp. 394-395. [21] Written for Collier's in 1934 and included in some editions of Great Contemporaries. See Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (University of Chicago Press, 1973). Cited hereafter as Great Contemporaries. [22] Letter of September 13, 1934, in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume 5, Part 2, The Wilderness Years 1929-1935 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), pp. 870-871. [23] Great Contemporaries, pp. 373-374. [24] Great Contemporaries, p. 381. [25] Great Contemporaries, pp. 374-375. [26] Great Contemporaries, p. 375. [27] He was to echo this concern in "Roosevelt and the Future of the New Deal," The Daily Mail, April 24, 1935; see Wolff, The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol. II, p. 372. [28] Great Contemporaries, p. 376. [29] Great Contemporaries, pp. 376-379. [30] "Socialism," February 12, 1929, in Complete Speeches, Vol. V, pp. 4551-4552: "Show me the parts of the country which at the present time are in the deepest depression, show me the industries which are most laggard, and at the same time you will be showing me the parts where these withering doctrines have won their greatest measure of acceptance." [31] See, for example, Liberalism and the Social Problem (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1973; reprint of 1909 ed.), pp. 82-83. [32] Great Contemporaries, pp. 379-380. [33] "President Roosevelt," April 17, 1945, in Complete Speeches, Vol. VII, p. 7141.

Thank you!

American citizens should take note of the wisdom of Churchill as they examine the ideas before them. The liberty of future generations depends on our actions today!

For too long in America, we have called Democrats "liberals," when, in fact, they are and have stood for ideas which are the antithesis of "classical liberalism."

Now, and for the past several decades they have morphed into and now identify themselves as "progressives," a term which, in itself is misleading. The so-called "progressive" philosophy is, in fact, most regressive, for it advocates failed ideas which lead to tyranny and oppression, not to freedom, opportunity, productivity, and plenty. "Progressive" ideas are more aptly described by the word "socialist."

In the following quotations from Churchill, we can see thoughts of his on the subject dating from 1908 to the 1950's. Much of what is happening in America today is described within these words:

"When I see the present Socialist Government denouncing capitalism in all its forms, mocking with derision and contempt the tremendous free enterprise capitalist system on which the mighty production of the United States is founded, I cannot help feeling that as a nation we are not acting honorably or even honestly." - Winston Churchill, Woodford Green, July 10, 1948.

"We shall not allow the advance of society and economic well-being of the nation to be regulated and curtailed by the pace of the weakest bretheren among us. Proper incentives must be offered and full freedom given to the strong to use their strength in the commonweal. Initiative, enterprise, thrift, domestic foresight, contrivance, good housekeeping and natural ability must reap their just reward. On any other plan the population of this island will sink by disastrous and agonizing stages to a far lower standard of life and two-thirds of its present numbers." - Winston Churchill, speech, Blenheim Palace, August 4, 1947.

"The difference between what is seen and what is not seen was often noticed by the old economists. What is not seen is the infinite variety of individual transactions and decisions which, in a civilized society, within the framework of just and well-known laws, insure the advantage not only of the individual concerned, but of the community, and provide that general body of well-being constituting the wealth of nations. All this is blotted out by an over-riding State control, however imposing some of its manifestations may be. It is the vital creative impulse that that I deeply fear the doctrines and policy of the socialist Government have destroyed, or are rapidly destroying, in our national life. Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the mainspring, and until we get a new one the watch will not go." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, October 28, 1947.

"It is in the interest of the wage-earner to have many other alternatives open to him than service under one all-powerful employer called the State. He will be in a better position to bargain collectively and production will be more abundant; there will be more for all and more freedom for all when the wage earner is able, in the large majority of cases, to choose and change his work, and deal with a private employer who, like himself, is subject to the ordinary pressures of life and, like himself, is dependent upon his personal thrift, ingenuity and good-housekeeping." - Winston Churchill, speech, Blackpool, October 5, 1946

"Liberalism (classical liberalism) has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly." - Winston Churchill, Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, May 14, 1908.

"The British nation now has to make one of the most momentous choices in its history. That choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination: between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of a property-owning democracy; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity: between a policy of levelling down and a policy of finding opportunities for all to rise upwards from a basic standard." - Winston Churchill, speech in Woodford, England, January 28, 1950.

"It is curious that, while in the days of my youth I was much reproached with inconsistency and being changeable, I am now scolded for adhering to the same views I had early in life and even of repeating passages from speeches which I made long before most of you were born. Of course the world moves on and we dwell in a constantly changing climate of opinion. But the broad principles and truths of wise and sane political actions do not necessarily alter with the changing moods of a democratic electorate. Not everything changes. Two and two still make four, and I could give you many other instances which go to prove that all wisdom is not new wisdom." - Winston Churchill, speech, Bele vue, Manchester, December 6, 1947.

"It is not Parliament that should rule; it is the people who should rule through Parliament." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons. November 11, 1947.

"We have to combat the wolf of socialism, and we shall be able to do it far more effectively as a pack of hounds than as a flock of sheep." - Winston Churchill, speech, 1937.

:Athough it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of this century, there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism." - Winston Churchill, B.B.C radio address, June 4, 1945.

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." - Winston Churchill, House of Commons, October 22, 1945.

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." - Winston Churchill, Perth, May 28, 1948.

"I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries: that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level; against the folly that it is better that everyone should have half rations rather than that any by their exertions, or ability, should earn a second helping." - Winston Churchill, London, June 22, 1948.

"Socialism is based on the idea of an all-powerful State which owns everything, which plans everything, which distributes everything, and thus through its politicians and officials decides the daily life of the individual citizen." - Winston Churchill, London, January 21, 1950.

"The British and Americans do not war with races or governments as such. Tyranny, external or internal, is our foe whatever trappings and disguises it wears, whatever language it speaks, or perverts." - Winston Churchill, Speech, Dorchester Hotel, London, July 4, 1953.

"You may try to destroy wealth, and find that all you have done is to increase poverty." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons. March 12, 1947.

"Nor should it be supposed as you would imagine, to read some of the Left-wing newspaper, that all Americans are multi-millionaires of Wall Street. If they were all multi-millionaires that would be no reason for condemning a system which has produced such material results.: - Winston Churchill, speech, Royal Albert Hall, London. April 21, 1948.

"Rich men, although valuable to the revenue, are not vital to a healthy state of society, but a society in which rich men are got rid of, from motives of jealousy, is not a healthy state." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, April 24, 1950.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.