February 5, 2015

Finest Hour 163, Summer 2014

Page 07


Economist Thomas Sowell (www.tsowell.com) writes on the asymmetry of language between those on opposite sides of the ideological divide: “In the midst of an election campaign against the labour Party, when Winston Churchill said that there would be dire consequences if his opponents won, he said that this was because ‘they do not see where their theories are leading them.’ but, in an earlier campaign, Churchill’s labour opponent said that he looked upon WSC ‘as such a personal force for evil that I would take up the fight against him with a whole heart.’ ” In fairness Mr. Sowell should have added that Churchill also predicted “a kind of Gestapo” if labour won the 1945 election, although he didn’t call Clement Attlee “a personal force for evil,” and respected Attlee as a servant of his country, which was Sowell’s point.

“For the unduly imaginative,” wrote Florida Weekly, “the specter of Winston Churchill may haunt the grand chambers of state government in Tallahassee. That’s when 160 legislators—forty senators and 120 representatives—prepare for an eight-week round of bill-making, deal-wrangling, money-spending and bipartisan gamesmanship that shapes the way 19 million residents live in Florida. They call it ‘the legislative session.’ It begins Tuesday morning, March 4th. It was Mr. Churchill, after all, who pointed out: ‘Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ ” (Correctly noting that WSC did not originate this.)

Churchillian Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, was convinced by Churchill to buy donuts for his staff after he lurched into winning the NCAA basketball pool. Putting the question to his readers, Kristol was advised to be a liberal. Another reader threatened to report him to the Internal Revenue Service: “They may not look too kindly on unreported winnings from an illegal gambling operation.” Kristol wrote: “I was torn. but an appeal to the greatest political figure of the 20th century swayed me: ‘Remember Churchill’s formula of Magnanimity in Victory.’ So I bought the donuts (Dunkin, of course—much superior to Krispy Kreme or Tim Horton’s).” Oh dear, another controversy started—there he goes again. —Thanks for this to Ryan Vigil.

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