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Classic Kirk:<\/strong>a curated selection of Russell Kirk’s perennial essays<\/h4>\n
A Note from the Editor<\/p>\n
R<\/span>ussell Kirk once heard Winston Churchill \u201caddress a great crowd in Glasgow\u2014on the eve of his return to power in 1951, as matters turned out. Witticisms, apothegms, telling anecdotes burst from his lips like bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n In this book review for The Detroit News<\/em>, Kirk takes the opportunity to examine Churchill’s rhetorical power and his foreign policy realism, particularly as a salutary guide for America. \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ collapsed=”off” prev_background_color=”#ebebeb”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”essay text” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ text_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”text_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ text_text_shadow_horizontal_length_tablet=”0px” text_text_shadow_vertical_length=”text_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ text_text_shadow_vertical_length_tablet=”0px” text_text_shadow_blur_strength=”text_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ text_text_shadow_blur_strength_tablet=”1px” 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header_4_text_shadow_vertical_length_tablet=”0px” header_4_text_shadow_blur_strength=”header_4_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_4_text_shadow_blur_strength_tablet=”1px” header_5_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”header_5_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_5_text_shadow_horizontal_length_tablet=”0px” header_5_text_shadow_vertical_length=”header_5_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_5_text_shadow_vertical_length_tablet=”0px” header_5_text_shadow_blur_strength=”header_5_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_5_text_shadow_blur_strength_tablet=”1px” header_6_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”header_6_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_6_text_shadow_horizontal_length_tablet=”0px” header_6_text_shadow_vertical_length=”header_6_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_6_text_shadow_vertical_length_tablet=”0px” header_6_text_shadow_blur_strength=”header_6_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ header_6_text_shadow_blur_strength_tablet=”1px” box_shadow_horizontal_tablet=”0px” box_shadow_vertical_tablet=”0px” box_shadow_blur_tablet=”40px” box_shadow_spread_tablet=”0px” vertical_offset_tablet=”0″ horizontal_offset_tablet=”0″ z_index_tablet=”0″]<\/p>\n Review of Winston Churchill\u2019s World View: Statesmanship and Power<\/em>, by Kenneth W. Thompson, in The Detroit News<\/em>, April 27, 1983.<\/strong><\/p>\n E<\/span>ver since World War II, Sir Winston Churchill\u2019s reputation for courageous statesmanship has stood even higher in the United States than in Britain. In postwar Britain he was a partisan leader; in America, he could be admired without regard to party.<\/p>\n Four decades after Churchill\u2019s finest hour, it is possible to examine the statecraft of the great prime minister with dispassion. This Kenneth Thompson does\u2014temperately but admiringly. His study offers serious readers the opportunity to examine the present world perils in the light of Churchill\u2019s realistic foreign policy.<\/p>\n One of the more important chapters of this valuable book is titled \u201cPublic Opinion and the Dilemma of Realist Foreign Policy.\u201d In democracies, the author reminds, \u201cPublic opinion in the short run tends to be corrupted by purveyors of deceptively simple and attractive slogans and panaceas or by the influence of politicians who mislead by identifying their selfish interests with the aspirations of the whole nation.\u201d<\/p>\n Churchill\u2019s understanding of the uses of power, his attachment to the concept and the reality of the balance of power, and his hard-headed suspicion of the Soviets (vindicated by events) did not endear him to idealistic liberals. His demand for \u201cblood, sweat, and tears\u201d was not a popular line to take in a sentimental and comfort-loving democracy. How was it that Churchill contrived to win over public opinion repeatedly?<\/p>\n Why, through audacity and rhetorical power.<\/p>\n Once I heard him, a bowed and corpulent old gentleman, address a great crowd in Glasgow\u2014on the eve of his return to power in 1951, as matters turned out. Witticisms, apothegms, telling anecdotes burst from his lips like bombs. He seemed common sense incarnate. Liberals and Laborites might denounce him as an antique figure from the past century, a pillar of detested imperialism. No matter: In an hour of crisis, he was John Bull, \u201cthe true-born Englishman,\u201d popular with the crowd\u2014yet John Bull endowed with wit, shrewdness, and much experience in great concerns.<\/p>\n Like Burke and Disraeli before him, Churchill disdained ideology and utopianism. Like them, he knew that much was to be learned from history. His foreign policies and his understanding of international affairs were rooted in custom, convention, and a realistic apprehension of human nature.<\/p>\n Yes, Professor Thompson\u2019s study is highly relevant to our present international discontents. His chapter on \u201cThe Disarmament Dilemma\u201d reminds us how history repeats itself\u2014although always with variations. \u201cWe learn from history that we learn nothing from history,\u201d Hegel wrote\u2014not that history is valueless, but rather that we ignore its lessons. How true this is of perennial arguments about disarmament.<\/p>\n In 1950, some influential people on either side of the Atlantic demanded that all great states agree never to resort to atomic bombs. Churchill replied to their argument that no nation should use that bomb unless it has first been employed against them.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat this would mean in practice, he declared, was that nations would agree never to fire unless they had been first shot dead. \u2018That seems to me undoubtedly a silly thing to say and a still more imprudent position to adopt. Moreover, such a resolve would certainly bring war nearer. The deterrent effect of the atomic bomb is at the present time almost our sole defense.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In 1948 and 1950, Churchill said what ought to be obvious enough today:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is indeed a melancholy thought that nothing preserves Europe from an overwhelming military attack except the devastating resources of the United States in this awful weapon. That is at the present time the sole deterrent against an aggressive Communist invasion. No wonder the Communists would like to ban it in the name of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cold diplomacy\u201d so vigorously represented by Winston Churchill was better calculated to maintain the peace than the idealistic \u201cnew diplomacy\u201d of the liberals, Thompson concludes. Woodrow Wilson\u2019s notion of \u201copen covenants, openly arrived at\u201d always was an illusion: It is needful merely to glance, for evidence, at the daily performances in the theater of the absurd on the floor of the UN General Assembly. As Churchill put it, \u201cUnder conditions of the fullest publicity nothing of any importance could ever be done.\u201d<\/p>\n Strongly influenced by the teachings of the late Hans Morganthau, Professor Thompson presents a salutary dose of diplomatic realism\u2014both Churchill\u2019s specific and his own. Liberal diplomacy is failing us gravely, Thompson writes; we confront a crisis brought about by \u201cthe inadequacies of parliamentary diplomacy, the weakness of American concepts of diplomacy, and the evils that arise from the authoritarian practice of Soviet diplomacy.\u201d Unless we Americans can rise to a world view comparable to Churchill\u2019s, once more the failure of diplomacy may end in general war.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ column_structure=”1_3,1_3,1_3″][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_image admin_label=”More Classic Kirk Essays image” src=”https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Classic-Kirk-Essays-button.png” url=”https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/?page_id=33656&preview=true” url_new_window=”on” align_tablet=”center” align_last_edited=”on|desktop” _builder_version=”4.0.11″ \/][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_code admin_label=”Mail Chimp sign up code” _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_padding=”0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ z_index_tablet=”500″ locked=”off”]<\/p>\nChurchill: \u2018Common Sense Incarnate\u2019<\/h1>\n