The following is a speech delivered by Jack Kemp to the International Churchill Society’s 10th International Conference in Washington, D.C. on 7 November 1993.
It is an honor to be with the International Churchill Society once more. We are a diverse group with a common purpose: to preserve Sir Winston Churchill’s memory and legacy. By studying Churchill, we can better understand our world today and the unique set of challenges we face.
No one has made that more clear to me than Martin Gilbert. As exemplified by his address this weekend, “Churchill and the Holocaust,” he set a standard of scholarship that is unequaled. Martin has also written of Churchill’s “uncanny understanding and vision of the future unfolding events.” This is the reason Churchill speaks to us so clearly across the years. This is the reason his wisdom always has current application. Tonight, I hope to draw on some of those lessons.
Over the past eighty years, America and the Western Democracies have overcome unprecedented challenges to freedom. Two world wars extended their wrath across the globe, destroying nations and empires and extinguishing millions of lives, including nearly the whole of European Jewry. A cold war haunted our times with nuclear nightmares, and turned suddenly hot in places like Berlin, Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and in our own Western Hemisphere in Nicaragua. Whole nations became prisons where words of freedom were spoken only in private, and always in fear. Man in the intellectual community, from Oswald Spengler to Jean Francois Revel, predicted Democracy’s demise.
But one man experienced all the trials of our century also foresaw their end. Speaking at MIT in 1949, with the gift of a prophet, Winston Churchill foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of freedom. Listen once more to his words:
The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time, but the soul of man thus frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where, and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.
The democratic nations have successfully weathered this century’s violent storms. But at the end of every one, there has been both tremendous opportunity and a test of our mettle. Consider the tragic mistakes and the terrible consequences which could have been averted.
At Versailles, diplomats tried to create a new world. They created instead the seeds of another war.
At Yalta, they tried to construct a stable peace. They raised an iron curtain.
Today we have won “the long twilight struggle” against Communism. The history of our response is yet to be written.
In shaping this response, we can learn from the man who both made and wrote history. From international relations to international trade, from economic policy to social policy, there are lessons in the life and thought of Winston Churchill that are directly relevant to our times and our challenges.
Sir Winston demonstrated in his long career that a great leader always has a great vision. Charles de Gaulle said of a leader: “He must aim high, show that he has a vision, act on the grand scale, and so establish his authority over the generality of men who splash in the shallow water.”
Churchill always swam in deep waters. The essence of his vision was freedom. His greatest contribution was to preserve it from extinction by rallying people behind a noble cause. But today the legacy of Churchill’s leadership is under attack by authors who “splash in shallow water.” In his revisionist history, a recent biographer makes the case that Neville Chamberlin, Stanley Baldwin and the appeasers were just “pragmatic realists” while Churchill was an ideologue and warmonger willing to sacrifice Britain’s Empire for the futile cause of defeating Adolf Hitler. The Fuehrer, after all, only wanted lebensraum to the East intending only benign treatment of the West.
Far from being a warmonger, Churchill was in fact the earliest advocate of “peace through strength.” He spent ten lonely years in the political wilderness determined to inform the British people about the growing threat of Nazi rearmament and the dangers of isolationism. He repeatedly challenged the government’s policies of appeasement and bluntly asked whether Britain was doing all it could to defend democracy. Two years before Munich, he said:
We must recognize that we have a great treasure to guard. The inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries…there is not one of our simple uncounted truths today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause.
Imagine if there had been no Churchill to rally the British people and the west to defend the cause of freedom and defeat Nazism. The new revisionists would have us believe the British Empire would have thrived under Hitler’s boot. That’s not history. That’s nonsense.
The truth is that an appeasing Britain would have lived in the Nazi shadow. An appeasing Britain would have lost its Empire in any case. An appeasing Britain would have lost its liberty as well. Such a historical interpretation is more than bad history; it is a dangerous blindness.
We must never forget the lessons of history: that weakness tempts tyrants; that weakness, not strength, is provocative. Whenever these lessons are forgotten, freedom is endangered.
Today the American republic is engaged in a great debate over America’s proper role in the world. On the political right, where most interesting debates take place today, some are questioning how involved we should be in the world now that Soviet Communism has collapsed. Some want to turn inward, believing there are no great threats to our national security. They call for a new isolationism, alleging that America has no interest beyond her borders. They say, “Come Home America!” Ladies and gentlemen, America cannot be first if she retreats from the world, but America will be first if she leads the world.
Behind all the false bluster lies a timid nationalism based on fear: fear that America can’t compete with low-wage Mexico or high-wage Japan; fear so great that some actually want to build walls on our borders.
I disagree.
I believe America has a vital national and world interest in expanding freedom and democracy. I believe America must continue an activist strategy of helping to spread the democratic idea of freedom and equality of opportunity. This is not lofty idealism, it is hardheaded pragmatism.
Wherever they exist, democracies give rise to peace and progress. They promote good relations among citizens, for the same reasons they promote good relations among nations. But there is also a passion to American foreign policy that goes beyond a narrow Realpolitik. There is a moral commitment that has defined the national purpose from the nation’s founding. It is enshrined, as Churchill declared, in the Declaration of Independence, and can be traced back to Magna Carta and British Common Law. Sir Winston demonstrated this same passionate commitment to defending democracy when he asked:
Have we not an ideology…of our own in freedom, in a liberal constitution, in democratic and parliamentary government, in Magna Charta and the Petition of Rights? Ought we not be ready to make as many sacrifices an exertions…as the fanatics of either [Fascism or Communism]? Ought we not to produce in defense of right, champions as bold, missionaries as eager, and if need be, swords as sharp as are at the disposal of the leaders of totalitarian states?
In its Declaration of Independence, the United States became the first nation in history founded upon the rights that all men share in common: universal and inalienable rights that are true for all time, and for all people. The defining principle of American foreign policy must be freedom. But the path to achieve it is not through hollow words or shallow idealism. As Churchill argued, “Virtuous motives are no match for armed and resolute readiness.” Therefore, the first obligation to freedom is the defense of the nation.
Yes, the Cold War was won, Margaret Thatcher commented, “without firing a shot.” Today, America is the sole superpower. Careful cuts in defense should be considered, debated, and in modest ways, pursued. But America and NATO must remain firm in their resolve to keep their power and keep the peace. The reason is simple: a dangerous world still demands a sharpened sword.
The breaking-up of empires is always a moment of unique and heightened danger. It is certainly true in the fragments of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Central Europe, where two world wars began, is once again in the grip of nationalist, religious, and ethnic violence. Missiles and nuclear technology spread easily from to hand, to places like North Korea and Iran. The CIA estimates that fifteen or twenty “developing” nations will have ballistic missiles by the end of the century. We still face a world of risk. Our defense strategy and defense spending must take this fact seriously. American actions, binding on the future, will determine the quality of its force, the safety of its people, and its ability to lead the free world.
I am concerned, in particular, about the determination to gut the Strategic Defense Initiative. We proved in Desert Storm that no one can defeat us on a conventional battlefield. It stands to reason that enemies will look for another way to attack. When weapons of mass destruction proliferate, every regional conflict can quickly become a global crisis. Americans must not allow America to be defenseless.
Churchill always understood the urgent need to protect free peoples against the terrible weapons of the modern age. That is why he always championed new technology against objections from both politicians and the military. In World War I, he was the chief advocate for the tank and military aircraft. During his political wilderness, he continually challenged the British government to maintain its technological edge. As Prime Minister, he saw the vital importance of radar. Can anyone doubt that today, Winston Churchill would be an outspoken proponent of SDI?
But freedom, Churchill knew, depended on more than weapons. It must also be protected by collective security. That too was a principle he defined carefully.
Churchill wanted power concentrated in the hands of the democratic nations. He envisioned strong leadership from the United States. This is very different from the collective security of Boutro Boutros-Ghali and the United Nations. Recent events have proven the point. American troops in Somalia were left without clear objectives from the Administration. Their goals were muddied by multilateralism, not aid by allies. Churchill hated military action without strategy. But that is exactly what we’ve seen too often lately, from leaders who view collective security, not as a means for America to lead others, but as an excuse for inaction and indecision.
Today, nations like Malaysia seem to have veto power through the U.N. In Somalia and elsewhere, U.S. troops in the field serve not under the American flag, but under the flag of the United Nations. This abdication of leadership had not just led to bureaucratic disputes. It has endangered American lives. This is not collective security. It is collective ineptitude.
For Churchill, freedom was the organizing principle of international affairs. It was also his lodestar in domestic politics. And it found its most consistent expression in Churchill’s commitment to capitalism.
Churchill sought no “third way” or “middle path” between capitalism and socialism. “If once you penalize the spirit of individual daring and initiative,” he said, “…then you are, in fact, abandoning the capitalist system, and you ought [to] go to other extreme and weave the whole industry of the country into one vast structure under state planning.”
For Churchill the most powerful argument in favor of capitalism was not merely economic. He believed capitalism was inextricably linked to human freedom. It was more than a utilitarian economic structure, it was a prerequisite for a free society.
Churchill was relentless in his believe because he never doubted that socialism would bring the slow death of democracy and the crushing of the human spirit. He once described the difference between capitalism and socialism as the difference between the ladder and the queue “We are for the ladder,” Churchill said. “Let all try their best to climb. They [the socialists] are for the queue. Let each wait his place until his turn comes.”
For Churchill, a thriving democratic-capitalist system was based on three fundamental principles: the rule of law, low taxes, and free trade.
As you know, he was so committed to the idea of free trade that in 1940 he chose to abandon his party rather than abandon that principle. Just months before he crossed the floor of the House of Commons, he gave an impassioned speech ridiculing the growing protectionist sentiment in the Tory party:
It is the theory of the protectionist that imports are evil…we free-traders say it is not true. To think that you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle.
When you hear his words, there is no doubt that for Churchill this was not just an economic argument—it was a matter of fundamental freedom:
We say that every [citizen] shall have the right to buy whatever he wants, where he chooses, at his own good pleasure, without restriction or discouragement from the state…in pursuit of this simple plan there came last year into [our country] from every land people under the sun, millions worth of merchandise, so marvelously varied in its character that a whole volume would scarcely describe it. Why did it come? Was it to crush us, or to conquer us, or to starve us, or was it to nourish and enrich our country? It is a sober fact that every single time…however inconsiderable, all that vast catalogue of commodities came to our shores because some [citizen] desired it, paid for it, and meant to turn it to his comfort or profit.
This debate between protectionists and free traders is as fresh as the morning papers. The same debate of 1904 today divides the nations, and my own Party—and the stakes are just as high. The outcomes of the North American Free Trade Agreement will determine the future character of that country. It will determine whether we turn inward or look outward, whether we try futilely to preserve the past or boldly seek a greater future; whether we view the global economy with fear or confidence.
There are members of my own Party who want to build walls against competition in a hopeless attempt to prevent change. But if our national goal is only to keep what we have, we will lose it. I will not be forced to leave my party like Churchill…because the Republican Party will remain the party of free trade.
Churchill also believed that a growing economy required a tax system where rates were low and incentives for production were high. Here, Churchill was adamant. In typical Churchillian style, he called the “idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity…one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind.”
He believed in particular that low taxes were the key to upward mobility for the disadvantaged in society. One of the first changes he announced as Chancellor of the Exchequer was a ten percent reduction in income taxes for the lowest income groups. This action, he said, would “liberate the production of new wealth from some of the shackles of taxation, [and] stimulate enterprise and accelerate industrial revival.”
But Churchill’s vision of Capitalism was not a Darwinian struggle where the strong thrive and the weak suffer. His model was the Good Shepherd. In his conservative philosophy, a nation could not advance while leaving people behind. He fought to establish a system that doesn’t surrender control to bureaucracy, but shows compassion for the least fortunate in society.
We call it a safety net, but Winston Churchill described it like this: “We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labor, yet above which they may compete with all the strength of their manhood. We want to have free competition upwards; we decline to allow free competition to run downwards. We do not want to pull down the structures of science and civilization, but to spread a net over the abyss.”
These are the direct and vital contributions of Churchill to the debates of today: an obligation to maintain a strong defense; a belief in American leadership to expand Democracy; a commitment to capitalism for the sake of everyone in society.
WE have lived to see the triumph of a world revolution of freedom. But freedom’s march is not complete and its success is not assured. Those who think that conservatism only meant anti-communism only know half the story. America must do more than just stand against something, America’s mission is to stand for something, to be that “city on a hill,” as President Reagan said so many times.
That vision of freedom is the idea for which Churchill lived his life. All defenders of freedom stand on Sir Winston’s shoulders. Thank God we have the International Churchill society to perpetuate his legacy, and to remind us never to splash in shallow waters.
