It's hard to recognize history, the significance of a leader or the rise of a successful ideology when you're living in the middle of it. The polarities of partisanship are so severe that enemies and uncritical idolaters ride a seesaw of justification and denigration. Clear thinking is hard to do. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Fortunately, time, events and awareness have a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Heroes emerge, ideas flower. When Winston Churchill urged Britain to re-arm and recognize the menace rising to power in Germany in the 1930s, many of his countrymen called him...