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Churchill was a man of great intellect to be sure. He was also a man not adverse to tolerating those who wouldn't have Britain's best interest at heart that of course being Stalin.

He once said “If Hitler invaded Hell I'd side with the Devil
himself!’’ which certainly bears out your point that he was clearly didn't like Germany.

My reservations about him were that he delighted when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor because he knew then America was in the war.

I had family members who barely survived two wars fighting for Britain. While not a strict Anglophobe nor an Anglophile over all I'm not fond of the Brits.

They still tend to think of us as a colony.

Guess as I get old I get more taciturn. I work in a hospital chock full of immigrants from every crap hole on the planet including Western and Eastern Europe.

Quite frankly I don't care for any of them. I wish we could go back to pre-1965 levels of immigration, 300,000 a year.

Now we take in a million people a year. No nation on Earth does this. Why do we?

Oh yes, Churchill was a towering figure in history, but parts of his character are strongly ambivalent, no doubt about it.

I was very sorry to hear about your predicament :-(

It is so much worse that what I have (high-functioning autism aka Asperger’s syndrome).

May your life nonetheless be as good as possible, with help and good grace from the Almighty.

Yes and maybe you have some Irish ancestors?
Not a few of them do not have the best opinion about the English, there have been all too many dreadful episodes in history involving the English in Ireland (Cromwell, Wolfe Tone, the potato famine etc.).
It’s the old sad story of neigboring nations not getting along with each other - as a German I know this all too well. No nation has more neighbors than we do :lol:

This is not even restricted to Europe: ask a Pakistani what he thinks about the Indians, or a Turk about the Persians or the Arabs.
Not to mention the “fraught relationships” between China&Japan or Japan&Korea, or maybe Malaysia and Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia or Thailand and Myanmar. No love lost between them either...

And I honestly agree with you about America’s immigration disaster (as author Peter Brimelow called it).
There has been a very interesting debate about the 1965 immigration law and its consequences on FR just recently.

As you said, I think about 300,000 immigrants to the US might be just right - including foreign spouses of US citizens.
Footnote: dear U.S. law makers, please take the bias towards extended family reunification out of the next immigration law :-)

And I am really sorry to hear that the American medical system has the same problem being swamped with immigrants from all over the world as ours does.
I think the legal stipulation in older American immigration laws, which maintained that immigrants were not allowed to become a public charge, was very justified...

Though, honestly, the situation in other countries of Western Europe is only marginally better. You realize this as soon as you read their press, visit blogs from these countries or talk to their citizens.

I’m afraid we Westerners are all in this mess together. So I heartily applaud your optimism. It’s what keeps us going even in straited times like these. Thumbs up :-)