Churchill Mass Effects In Modern Life

https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/mass-effects-in-modern-life.html

A worthy article whose meaning is mostly lost in summary.

The meaning is that "making all the same" ... "leveling", "equality", like all in this mortal coil has it's cost. Man needs his heroes -- and we can see that with the veneration of mere movie stars or athletes. We are so desperate for heroes, that we are drawn to the imaginary -- the "Marvel Universe", and various videogame "realities".

The irony is if course that Churchill himself at the time he authored this was one of the last remaining true heroes ...

No, we must take the loss with the gain. On the uplands there are no fine peaks. We must do without them while we stay there. Of course we could always, if we wished, go down again into the plains and valleys out of which we have climbed. We may even wander thither unwittingly. We may slide there. We may be pushed there. There are still many powerful nations dwelling at these lower levels, some contentedly, some even proudly. They often declare that life in the valleys is preferable. There is, they say, more variety, more beauty, more grace, more dignity, more true health and fertility than upon the arid highlands. They say this middle situation is better suited to human nature. The arts flourish there, and science need not be absent. Moreover, it is pleasing to look back over the plains and morasses through which our path has lain in the past, and remember in tradition the great years of pilgrimage. Then they point to the frowning crag, their venerated El Capitan or Il Duce, casting its majestic shadow in the evening light; and ask whether we have anything like that up there. We certainly have not.

Churchill's Trial, Larry Arn

https://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Trial-Churchill-Salvation-Government/dp/1595555307

https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/mass-effects-in-modern-life.html

It's a "trial" in the sense of difficult challenges he dealt with, not a court trial.

A delight to at least students of Churchill. While much of our study of Churchill focuses on his life prior to him being summarily dumped from office in 1945 after having saved the nation and the world from the scourge of National Socialism. Naturally, the British people were ungrateful and anxious to be coddled in the warm reptilian embrace of socialism. As one of history's certified great men, Churchill was not particularly angry -- he understood human nature very well and realized that ever since the Garden of Eden, man has been extremely prone to accept false promises.

The quote we all need to keep before us as the population again, even efter many harsh lessons, returns to the siren song of Socialism:

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

From his "Crazy Speech" that helped him lose the 1945 election:

I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently ­worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

I'm reminded of the excellent "Liberal Fascism" which covers the "why" of this statement in more detail. It is human nature to work for our own gain, and do be the ones who decide how the fruits of that gain are apportioned -- we may well be very generous, however there are few among us who joyfully pay our taxes. Increasing force is required to achieve the goals of any form of Socialism, be it labled "National" (Nazi), or a cover for Communist (USSR).

On page 225, Arn recounts an interesting observation from actual excellent politicians in a Democracy from Churchill ... "They are quite downcast and offended when the (nasty) cartoons stop. ... they murmur; " We are not mauled and maltreated as we used to be. The great days have ended.""

Democracy is messy, Totalitarianism in any form is very quiet with the exception of massive STAGED hordes of shouting masses all of coerced single mind "Heil Hitler"! The people "loved" the leadership of the USSR -- as long as they were forced to at gunpoint -- and then the "beloved" statues came down. 

On p 182, Arn summarizes the population of a modern near-Socialist state, numbed by the "Mass Effects": 

"Their opinions shaped by the "machinery" of the press and widespread diffusion of standard  views. Education was "universal and superficial", it produced "standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments according to their class or party". 

Sounds a lot like much of the current population of the west!  

The Reichstag Is Still Burning, Jaffa

https://americanmind.org/features/the-reichstag-is-still-burning/

A brilliant essay by a newly discovered (for me) brilliant thinker, Harry Jaffa. My introduction is by way of the entertaining and educational Powerline Podcast, which I regularly enjoy while taking my walks.

An excellent discourse on one of my common themes -- when universals (like "chair" being a useful descriptive term) are denied, then statements like "all men are created equal" become meaningless, since metaphysical abstraction is denied along with metaphysics. If ALL is MATERIAL, and there is no use in any abstraction that can't be "resolved" (as in Object Oriented Programming) to a specific physical "object" (experimentally verifiable fact/thing), then all we can work with are "white men", "black men", "gay women", "undefined gender beings", etc ...

This discourse gets us quickly back to Hegel - Heidegger, who in believing in Historicism (that history is "progressing" to "the correct thought"), and Hegel declaring "we've arrived", then "universals are what smart people declare they are" (in this case Hegel).

Modern "progressivism" declares "there is no end" -- although thinkers like Francis Fukuyama have extended Hegel/Heidegger to say "we are REALLY there now" in "The End of History". 

When we can no longer think in terms of "all men", we are driven to "white men" and their "privilege", or a "Master Race" because POWER ("Might is right") is all that matters in the world of the completely physical.

The title refers to the example of American educational system being driven to add and remove areas of study through riots and physical violence, so that study of "dead white men" (the ancients, the founders, the Bible, Shakespeare, etc)  were driven from the academy.

American Ulysses

https://www.amazon.com/American-Ulysses-Life-S-Grant/dp/1400069025/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1579297486&sr=8-1

What a great book for our time! Americans REALLY had something to fight about, they did, and at great cost (likely more like 750k dead rather than the 600k commonly quoted), AND, they moved on -- with Grant being a (if not THE) major factor in that happening.

I find this review to be worthy to give you an overview -- it is definitely a book complimentary to Grant.

My thoughts:

• We ought to have Washington, Lincoln and Grant on Mt Rushmore! (and we need a new one -- like a cross between Reagan and Trump)
• That Longstreet stood up at his wedding, then was one of the big generals for the South, THEN they returned to solid friendship says an awful lot about the men and the times! 
• We see that "Fake News" is not a new phenomenon -- Grant, a "doer" had a period of heavy drinking when he was stationed in California with nothing to do -- and that was that. The rest of the accusations of this "problem" are examples of people telling stories to tear down an modest and quiet man for their own advancement. 
• That Grant was supposed to attend Ford's theater with Lincoln on the night of the assassination and decided against because his beloved wife Julia wanted to be with the kids is a great example of how "little things" change history. Based on Grant's capabilities is quite likely he would have foiled Booth -- and he was forever sorry that he was not there to try. 
• Why our educational system gets Grant so horribly wrong is yet another example of how we have been brainwashed -- he was extremely loved, AND he was a unifier! However, he had an R next to his name, he was for less government / strong currency, and was hated by Democrats. Apparently ending slavery and being assassinated was good enough for academia to honor Lincoln (for now). Without Grant (the indispensable general), Lincoln would likely NOT have been re-elected in 1864, and thus the 13th Amendment freeing the slaves would not have happened. Lincoln would have been remembered as a failed president that cost the lives of more Americans than any other. 

If we want to return to the principles that made America great, we need to return to an educational level something like "1950", where virtually all voters understand significantly more about what it takes to have a Constitutional Republic, and how far we have strayed! 

Highly recommended!