Our finest hour?

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties"

On one of the darker days of late, I turned to Winston Churchill’s¹ Dunkirk speech for comfort. It would remind me that even if a battle is lost - if Donald Trump should win the election next month - that we would never surrender and, of course, triumph in the end, just as the Allies did against Hitler.

But the famous conclusion to that speech of 4 June 1940 is not so reassuring:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.²

The question now is: Who would rescue us?

I used to be quite skeptical about US exceptionalism and annoyed by American influence abroad. After my brother Dan joined the US army, he asked me if I thought he’d been brainwashed.

“Maybe not brainwashed,” I said. He’d asked for a subscription to The Economist, after all, so he could keep up with things. “But I wonder a little,” I told him, “when you keep referring to the ‘Free World.’”

I realized last night how much my outlook has changed when I read this sentence in a group email: “Each of us has the high privilege and opportunity to play a role in history, protecting our beloved country as the leading beacon of the Free World.”

Yes, I thought, for all our failings we do have a role as a beacon, and I now believe there is something we can call the Free World, again knowing that there are plenty of gaps and failings and much work to be done.

It reminded me of the conclusion we came to after completing the 2007 Global Perspectives on the United States, which had contributions from experts in many countries. That was a low point in global opinion, and many of the chapters showed how critical other nations were of the US. But we also learned that people around the world wanted the US to live up to its ideals because those ideals mattered elsewhere, to people living under repressive governments as well as to people in newer democracies.

This has been a year of changed perspectives. I’m coming round to the idea that women leaders have a real edge over men. Watching Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, and Nancy Pelosi, I conclude that they are more courageous than most of our male politicians. I’m sick of men bleating about how they can’t stand up to Trump because of personal threats. I’ve not heard a single woman whine about personal danger and being therefore unable to do the right thing. (Nancy Pelosi deserves special credit, given that she herself was one of the main targets of the mob on 6 January and that her husband nearly died in an attack by a Trump supporter.)

And I never thought I would find myself agreeing with an American political pundit named Bill Kristol, son of a famous 20^th-century conservative. He was the token Republican on TV programs I watched a decade ago. He was a typically smug East Coast prep school WASP right-winger, I thought.

Kristol still quotes traditional poetry and classical Western Civ texts, but he’s now part of The Bulwark, a political media platform that draws together centrist Republicans and Democrats who share the conviction that Donald Trump is the greatest human threat the world has seen in a very long time.

My readers here  hold a wide range of views. One regularly sends me curt messages about Gaza, no matter my topic of the day. Others are devout Christians. What I hope is that all of you who can vote in the US, no matter your party affiliation, will cast a vote for Kamala Harris now. Not sure? Let me know in the comments and I will respond.

And I hope you’ll subscribe to The Bulwark to get a different view of US politics. There’s quite a lot that’s free but during the tense weeks in July, when Joe Biden was refusing to drop out, I paid $300 for a Founder subscription. It included 3 additional gift subscriptions, which I have duly shared, and it’s been worth every penny.

This team of Never Trumpers have distress and anger and turned it into a media tsunami: podcasts, YouTube, and lots of newsletters. Their writing is not the same old thing one reads in the New York Times and Washington Post. They get indignant. They talk about morality and dignity, and country over party. They talk about joy and make me laugh when they make fun of certain politicians as “clutching their pearls” over some novel idea. And they sound like real people. Want authentic? Try ‘em.³

Don’t Blame Kamala

They are former Republicans, for the most part, and I assume that’s why they do not mention climate change enough. On the other hand, they bring up gun violence quite often. The women contributors were more down on Biden than the men. The men keep calling him a hero for giving up power, where we women have seen too many men refusing to admit that they don’t have the political virility they used to have, becoming old jerks who make life difficult for the rest of us. But those are issues we can debate after the election.

Here’s a bit from a speech Churchill gave 2 weeks after Dunkirk, on 18 June 1940:

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”⁴

Indeed, those of you around the world who wonder how the United States could have become so unstable are right to be concerned. Electing Kamala Harris is vital, but there is so much more to do. I will be writing more about US politics because the loss of community and resultant tribalism are key to the surging support for authoritarian strongman leaders. And third places can help.

And I’ll be canvassing tomorrow in the New York 19th congressional district, an upstate “swing” district that’s just over the border. News about that next week.

Chartwell, Churchill's country home, taken in 2003.

1.

At an editorial meeting for the Encyclopedia of Leadership in 2002, one of the editors said we should not include Winston Churchill and other old dead white men like him. We did include a biography of Churchill, of course, discussing him in the round. I have always been rather partial to him because I love his use of language, and have happy memories of days visiting Chartwell, his country house in Kent.

2. https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/

3. Here’s the intro to a newsletter earlier this week. It sums up much of what I so appreciate about their enterprise:

Hey fam: We got a lot of new members yesterday and I want to welcome them by explaining a bit about what we do here.

First: The comments section is part of our community and we have some guiding precepts for it. Comments should be true, necessary, or kind—at least two of those and, hopefully, all three. That’s the ethos. We try to enlighten, amuse, and lift each other up.

I try to moderate comments as best as I can, but if you see something that bothers you, please flag it and then email me about it. All gardens need tending.

Second: The Bulwark is not an arm of the Harris campaign and this is not a place for political affirmation.

I was kind of surprised to see some comments yesterday from people offended that I said Harris might be a good president, or a bad president, or a middling president. The expectation seemed to be that I should be testifying to her greatness.

That’s not what we do here. Our mission is to speak honestly and openly. To analyze with integrity. And to help you see around corners.

I believe—and have written—that Harris is running a very good campaign. But it’s basically impossible to know if a candidate will be a good president. The job is too big and her success/failure as president will be over-determined by events. Anyone who insists that Candidate X will be a great president is selling you something.

This reality does not mean that we can’t make reasonable judgments and speculations. Is Harris superior to Trump? Absolutely. Are there indications she might be a good president? Sure. And if she turns out to be a bad president, will her election still have been vastly better for the country? 100 percent yes.

But none of that means that we should engage in cheerleading or make-believe. We encounter the world as it is. Even when it’s uncomfortable, or conflicts with our priors.

Point is: If you’re new here and you’re looking for boosterism or apologetics, you’re probably going to be disappointed. The Bulwark is a place where we can have serious conversations about the Biden administration’s mistakes and failures while still making the case that he’s one of the most successful presidents of the modern era.

It’s a place where we embrace tensions instead of erasing them. Where we don’t assume that our preferences are correct or that our priors must be confirmed.

If that doesn’t add value for you, that’s okay! No hard feelings if you decide not to stick around. Seriously.

But whatever happens tomorrow, I want to thank you for being here today and assure you that, no matter what, we’re all in this together.

4. https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/their-finest-hour/