iCitizen Logo Winston Churchill, iCitizen Hero It has been 50 years since the death of the great British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on Jan. 24, 1965. For several reasons, iCitizen hails Churchill as a Hero of Democracy and an inspiration to civic engagement. Churchill-464460-editedWinston Churchill a hero … why? For his clear-sighted understanding of the threat to democracy posed by Nazi Germany. For his ability to rouse and organize his weary countrymen to defend their nation. And for his unflagging devotion to public service. When in the late 1930s a weak Western Europe allowed Adolf Hitler to seize free country after free country, Britain stood almost alone against the onslaught. And for a time Churchill stood almost alone against his own country’s policy of appeasement. Let Hitler have some territory, the thinking went, and he will be satisfied, and another dreadful war will be avoided. Churchill’s predictions of what appeasement would bring, proved true. So true that in 1940 France fell to Nazi armies. Britain was in peril. With his military experience – though not uniformly successful – Churchill was brought into the British government and soon became prime minister. Not a moment too soon. His powerful speeches, administrative prowess and dogged determination to save Britain galvanized a nation. It’s difficult to realize now how close the world came to losing the light of democracy. But Churchill fully understood what he was up against, what it would take to prevail, and how to convey the urgency of the time. “Churchill’s speeches and broadcasts carried a message of determination and defiance around the globe,” as a Library of Congress biography says. Historian Geoffrey Best wrote: “Britain was facing the first serious threat of invasion since 1805. It was easy in such circumstances to despair and to look for a way out of a war that seemed impossible to win. Any leader but Churchill would probably have done so.” Crucial to victory against Nazi and Japanese totalitarianism was enlisting the United States on Britain’s side. The U.S. public was reluctant to get embroiled in another world conflict, and President Franklin Roosevelt “felt compelled to adopt a gradual approach,” the Library of Congress writes. Churchill cultivated Roosevelt’s and eventually America’s understanding of the powerful threat Nazi Germany represented. Churchill didn’t mince words. When “the scale of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews became apparent,” History says, Churchill called the Holocaust “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.” That’s not all: “Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.” The defeat of the Axis powers in World War II did not give Churchill a feeling of unalloyed triumph, because democracy was still threatened – by communism. Churchill popularized the terms “Iron Curtain” and “Cold War,” and “called for a firm, united stand against Soviet encroachments,” the Library of Congress says. The great statesman’s entire public life was defined by his deep love of democratic principles. As the Library of Congress reports, “During a dinner held at the Yalta Conference (1945), the topic of a casual discussion turned to leadership in democratic societies. Churchill told Roosevelt and Stalin that ‘although he was constantly being beaten up as a reactionary, he was the only representative present who could be thrown out at any time by the universal suffrage of his own people and that personally he gloried in that danger.’” “What is good enough for the people is good enough for me,” Churchill said. Historian Best agrees: “Besides being a popular leader, Churchill was also an emphatically democratic one. Parliament continued to sit throughout the war, and the war’s progress was publicly debated. Churchill assumed full responsibility and, during the dark months of 1941-42, when he often had to report disasters, he had to bow a bit to his critics. The normal peacetime freedoms of the citizen were of course restricted but rarely beyond the limits of reason. The world could see no hypocrisy in Churchill’s claim to be fighting for democracy and human rights against tyranny and barbarism.” As Churchill himself declared in 1947: “We accept in the fullest sense of the word the settled and persistent will of the people. All this idea of a group of supermen and super-planners, such as we see before us, ‘playing the angel,’ as the French call it, and making the masses of the people do what they think is good for them, without any check or correction, is a violation of democracy. Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” Today we have the democracy that Churchill, Roosevelt and countless others fought for. At times it feels like an underappreciated gift. What are we doing with our democratic freedoms? Are we using them? Are you using your democratic freedom to help shape the society of the future? iCitizen exists to help people do just that. We think Winston Churchill would have approved. Use your democratic freedom! Visit icitizen to download the iCitizen app.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:41:53 +0000
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