One of the first things Donald Trump did when he returned to the White House was return the bust of Winston Churchill to its rightful place in the Oval Office. The Wartime Friends of Winston Churchill had originally given the bust to LBJ in 1965. Barack Obama removed it in 2009, Trump replaced it in 2017, and Biden again removed it in 2021. It’s not a surprise that Churchill, a champion of Western civilization, doesn’t hold much appeal for modern Democrats.
I love Churchill (I named my dog, Winnie, after him!) and one of the great things about him was that he was so confident. He, like many of us, thought he was right about virtually everything, almost all the time. The difference is, probably more than most of us, he actually was. Everyone knows about his taking over as Prime Minister after Chamberlain’s Appeasement and his extraordinary speeches that steeled the British people to withstand the Blitzkrieg, but relatively few know about his decade in the “Wilderness.”
Between 1929 and 1939 Churchill was a Member of Parliament but held no official position in the government. After a decade of consternation, he was finally returned as the First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1939. A large part of his “Wilderness” period had to do with his constant and vocal haranguing of the government—even of his own party—about the threat of the Nazis in Germany and his push to prepare the military for war. Mostly his warnings fell on deaf ears and to many he was considered a war monger.
But his warnings on Germany weren’t the only instance of his prescience. He was equally adamant about the evil of the Soviet Union. From the Russian Revolution until the day he died, Churchill was an adamant anti-communist. Although during WWII a pragmatic Churchill understood the necessity of working with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis, after the war he made his thoughts crystal clear in his famous “Iron Curtain“ speech at Missouri’s Westminster College.
There are two lines from that speech I find particularly compelling and relevant to our modern world. The first comes after he described the darkness overcoming much of eastern Europe: “Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts- and facts they are-this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up.” He continued, “From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.” Churchill was seeking to animate the West about the emerging malignancy of communist tyranny.
If those two lines from Churchill ring familiar, they should. They were basically echoed last month when JD Vance went into the lion’s den and gave a speech in Munich.
He said, “…the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values—values shared with the United States of America.” A bit later he continued, “And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners.”
To this, he added,
If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.
[snip]
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.
Churchill was warning of an external threat while Vance was warning of an internal threat. And much as Churchill was lampooned for his forceful denunciations of the Soviets and the Nazis, Vance’s speech about upholding western values was met with shock and disdain across the Continent.
But the reality of Vance’s argument is sound. The United States has been a partner with most of Europe for a century and with parts of Europe from her very founding. That partnership has stood on a combination of shared values, from Christianity to individual liberty to free markets and democracy. Those values and that partnership have largely served both sides well, with standards of living and individual freedom exceeding anything in human history.
But the reality is, as one side drifts from those bedrock principles, should the partnership continue? To phrase it somewhat differently, why should it continue?
Economics? Sure, American companies sell lots of products in Europe and vice versa, but as is seen by American trade with China, we don’t have to share values in order to trade.
Security? Sure, Russia invaded Ukraine, but Europeans haven’t taken defense seriously, spending on average 1.45% of their GDP on it over the last 25 years. For eighty years the United States has provided an umbrella of security to Europe (spending 3.83% of GDP over the same period), allowing European governments to spend an extra 2.4% of GDP on creating cancerously generous social welfare states.
Culture? Peppered with castles, chateaus and extraordinary cathedrals, Europe was the leading light of culture for much of the last millennium, but what extraordinary, game-changing can’t-live-without advances has Europe given the world in the last half century?
At the same time, as Vance points out, from free speech to free elections, Europe is becoming a giant police state where insulting politicians, praying at home, sharing memes, reporting facts or calling someone fat can get you arrested or thrown in jail.
And not coincidentally, this is occurring just as the self-loathing Europe is finding itself willingly—at least from the perspective of the elites—overrun by armies of largely single military-aged men from third world dystopias. It would be one thing if those invaders were somehow contributing to Europe and assimilating the western values that made Europe great in the first place… But that’s not happening. Just the opposite.
The invaders have to be supported by the taxpayers, they’re committing crimes and are bringing a religion that is largely incompatible with @estern values of free speech, freedom of religion, and equal rights between the sexes. Indeed, in France, a nation that has been Catholic for 1,500 years, three Christian churches and monuments are targeted for arson or some other attack every single day.
In Romania, where the elections in November were thrown out by the elites, the conservative who won has just been banned from running again.
Add to that the draconian green energy laws that handicap European economies and the social program spending that obviates the ability to actually defend themselves, and it’s not a wonder that Americans question whether Europe is really an ally in the pursuit of prosperity and freedom.
Before the 20th century and two world wars that required American might to win, European history was largely one of near constant war between shifting alliances. With the emergence of an American-imposed peace, the second half of the 20th century brought unparalleled levels of peace and prosperity around the world.
The ironic thing is that that very peace and prosperity have dulled Europe’s senses and made them forget the very things that made prosperity possible in the first place, with Christianity, freedom of speech and free markets at the top of the list. Hopefully, with Vance, unlike Churchill, it won’t take a world war for people to start listening to him.
