Sir Arthur Salter was a shipping agent who served briefly in Churchill’s last wartime cabinet. He was elected as an independent to Parliament in Labour’s landslide victory that stunned the world by turning Churchill out of office immediately on his completion of leading Britain and the world to victory over Hitler. (READ MORE: Churchill’s The World Crisis Is a Warning About Today’s Crises)
Labour’s victory was gigantic. A great many of its large majority in the House of Commons were young men who had never been in Parliament before. The Conservatives had dominated during the Thirties, and there had been no general election since before about ten years. People who had a modernist, semi-revolutionary outlook brought people suddenly face to face with the august institution whose constitutional traditions sanctioned their ascent to power as legitimate. It was clear that many were adrift and had little idea of how to relate to their new position. (RELATED: The Political Wisdom of Sarah Churchill)
Salter grasped this and put it in words to his contemporary, Harold Nicolson:
The whole thing might have got out of hand had it not been for Churchill. It was not only the speeches that he made on the Address, but his general attitude and the patience with which he has sat in the House and listened to many maiden speeches. He has succeeded in making all these young impatient people realise what centuries of tradition lie behind the House of Commons and has shown to them that when one of the greatest Statesmen in our history can accept electoral defeat without bitterness, and display the utmost deference to the working of the Constitution and the authority of the House itself, then younger Members, however gifted and impatient they may feel, must adopt a similar attitude of discipline and reverence.
One is apt to take the word “magnanimity” as some academic expression. Churchill, since July 26, has given it a concrete splendour.
Salter’s observations point to the heart of the chief virtue of conservatism, a virtue it dares not lose sight of – our need to preserve our tried and tested institutions. Salter points to an ‘attitude of discipline and reverence’ that was shared across party lines, and a loyalty to the Constitution and the House that should be – and was — deeper than the devotion to victory that any successful politician must have.
For decades, academics have taught that there is no meaning in literature, and that all our culture is only an unending struggle for power. Though they have always portrayed themselves as anti-fascist, their philosophy is effectively identical with Hitler’s philosophy of power. They agree that there is no credible morality and that those who teach there is are simply using a sophisticated mode of battling for power. All institutions are only instruments of power; all are disposable if power so dictates. (READ MORE: This Is Bigger Than a Culture War: Blame Michel Foucault)
This crypto-fascist philosophy has gone viral in the Woke Revolution, which has infected so much of our politics. This is true even of our own side.
The woke worshippers of power find it useful to manipulate the images and employ the tropes of democracy and freedom. This is the age-old human problem of the psychopath – the person who trusts no one but evades detection of his manipulative personality by adeptly employing all the outer markers of trustworthiness.
In this, the tyrannies of the left excel. While the classic fascists have been explicitly hostile to democracy, the fascists of the left have skillfully employed the language and rhetoric of democracy, setting up Peoples’ Democratic Republics and the like. They signal opposition to racism, seeming for all the world as if they believe in the transcendent morality based in “Nature and Nature’s God” that is the foundation of the democratic structure; yet they utilize every kind of racist trope in order to demolish minorities who oppose them politically.
In short, facing the woke fascists, just like facing the old-fashioned fascists, we must realize that they play the psychopath’s game and will be perfectly glad to use our democratic civility in order to subvert the civil order to achieve their vision of a thoroughly thought-policed, regimented future.
It becomes necessary, then, to go meet the deadly threat with appropriate force — that is, enough to preserve our democracy. But unlike the would-be tyrants, we must constantly be on guard that we do not extinguish our democracy in our act of preserving it.
Consider someone who defeated the military of the states who quit the Constitution to defend slavery – William Tecumseh Sherman. Victor Hanson describes him as an atavist – a savage personality who comes to the fore when civilization is threatened and uses the uncivilized art of war of our savage past to save the free and civil society that was threatened. He knew war was hell and he didn’t shrink from it. He engineered victory and helped to compel complete surrender.
He also knew enough to know that he was not the type who should be at the head of a civil government. He could have had the nomination and the presidency after the war with just a nod. But he announced that if nominated he would not run and if elected he would not serve — and he meant it.
But unlike the would-be tyrants, we must constantly be on guard that we do not extinguish our democracy in our act of preserving it.
He knew what he excelled at. He could defend against our enemies. He deferred to others whose skills were more suited to what civilian leadership requires.
It is clear that the woke psychopathy must be confronted and defeated. Yet if we treat half of the country as if they were already committed wokeists, we could win the battle and lose the war, by becoming addicted to power ourselves and losing Churchill’s splendid magnanimity.
There was no fiercer warrior that Churchill. He set the goal against Hitler as victory, and nothing less. He forged his country into hard steel, gained allies, and achieved with them all the great victory.
And a mere two months after the victory, his people had dumped him.
His response to this is something we need to emulate even more than his indomitable resistance to political evil. For the strongest kind of evil is that which is within, which perverts our own purpose, and undoes our most cherished hopes of attaining human greatness in our own lives.
For constitutional conservatives, the winner in any election must be the Constitution, that instrument that defines the conditional agreement made by the governed to empower a coherent government. When the government in turn honors its role under this pact, its workings will be respected by the people who will obey its laws and rulings, even if they disagree with them.
We need to hold before us what Salter called the “concrete splendor” of Churchill’s example. Real courage comes from within; we all know that. To unite against woke tyranny, which denies that, we need to set before ourselves the highest model of courage and hold ourselves and our leaders to it.
Churchill was often criticized through his career as being impetuous, overly belligerent, and tempted into bravado. Those things can all be vices, hurtful to our politics. Yet Churchill harnessed all these qualities to become an unparalleled war leader against perhaps the foulest evil the world has ever seen.
Yet when the moment came in which most lesser people would have given in to hurt and resentment, he showed the deepest and most fundamental power of democracy – self-government.
Without inner control, the fighting spirit is guaranteed to destroy more than it will save. With it, we have a path to a robust and free civil society, in which with God’s blessing, “nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.”
Churchill put it in his own inimitable way, speaking of this as a political ideal that requires practical application:
There is no Party question in this. Whatever views we hold, a free country under Party politics, we must always try our utmost, and other people must always try their utmost, to put country before Party. Let us make sure we set the example.
We can lead. We must lead.
