When [Churchill] walks into the House, it is as if
History itself materializes before our eyes, and is holding us accountable.
-- From Leo Rosten’s essay, “Winston”
Obama
fatigue is setting in. Indeed, I’ve gone from Obama fatigue through full-on
Obama Epstein-Barr to end-stage Obama narcolepsy.
–Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg’s description
of how he is experiencing the speeches of President Obama can just as easily be
said of the majority of our political leaders on both sides of the aisle. [WARNING:
Long Sentence] Here we are facing terrorists, the return of a cold war with
Russia, economic disaster, disappearing borders, Ebola, and the continual
disintegration of our Constitutional freedoms, and our leaders seem to think it
best to put us to sleep with words that say everything and nothing so we won’t
notice our houses are being ransacked.
Whereas Winston Churchill “armed the English language and sent it into
battle,” present day politicians bastardize the English language, so we won’t
notice the nature of the great battles before us.
In times of great peril we
need leaders whose words instill vision, courage, and hope, not words that put
us to sleep both physically and psychologically. We need bold, bare-naked words
that leave no doubt as to exactly what is being said. We need words of steel
that slap us across our collective face and challenges us to get a grip and stop
whining about petty grievances that only distract us from our real enemies, both
domestic and foreign, who are determined to destroy us and our nation,
Consider some of Winston’s*
words:
“The deadly, drilled,
docile, brutish masses of the Hun.” No political correctness, here!
“Hitler has liberated
Austria from the horrors of self-government.”
“It is better to be
frightened now than killed thereafter.”
Describing Parliament: “Good
honest men who are ready to die for their opinions, if only they knew what
their opinions are.” Sounds familiar.
On Prime Minister Baldwin’s
government: “So they go on in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided,
resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift…all powerful to be impotent.” Ouch.
When Parliament was jubilant
over Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler:
“All is over. Silent,
mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness….It is a
fraud and a farce to invoke the name [self-determination].
We have sustained a defeat
without a war….We have passed an awful milestone in our history…The whole
equilibrium of Europe has been deranged….Terrible words have been pronounced against
the Western democracies: ‘Thou are weighed in the balance and found wanting.’”
“And do not suppose this is
the end….This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which
will be proffered to us year by year….”
Words matter. How we
perceive the person speaking also matters. Once we lose respect, once we doubt
the integrity of the speaker, even the most erudite sound to us as so much
white noise. Leo Rosten makes this point when he writes, “It was Churchill’s
very refusal to be ‘expedient’ or utopian that made him the one man whom
England, on the brink of disaster, had to turn.” Winston’s words had the ring
of trustworthiness.
The London Times made the
same point: “In the hour when all but courage failed, [he] made courage
conscience of itself, plumed it with defiance, and rendered it invincible.”
Winston’s words could not produce something in others that was not already
within the man himself. His soul fueled his words.
Words matter
The quality of the person’s soul matters
Awareness of where the lines of the most critical
battles are forming matters
Clarity of vision matters
And congruency of words, soul, awareness, and vision matters most of
all, when it comes to choosing leaders.
* All quotes taken from Leo
Rosten, “People I Have Loved, Known, Or Admired,” McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1970
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014
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