On Churchill and the pulling down of statues, September 11th, 2024. Introduction. The issue for me is not that questions have been raised about Churchill

in the Second World War. Anybody who has read anything at all about the tangled issues

involved in that war knows that our side, comparatively righteous as I believe it was, was nevertheless guilty

of atrocities. For a balanced and conservative treatment of such things, I would refer you to

Paul Johnson's modern times. The issue for me is how and why conservatives have gotten suckered into the popular

pastime of pulling down a statues.

This is not at all the same issue.

Wait, look around for a second. How do we wind up in this mob? How is it that we are marching in this particular direction shouting these slogans?

This will take some unpacking, so bear with me. Fair disclosure. To anticipate and answer a likely non sequitur right at the front end,

I acknowledge that I was born just eight years after that war ended. I grew up in an atmosphere

that smelled and tasted like that post-war liberal consensus that everybody likes to talk about. that

smelled and tasted like that post-war liberal consensus that everybody likes to talk about these days.

My father-in-law fought in that war and was wounded at Guadalcanal.

My father enlisted as soon as he could, which happened to be two weeks before Germany surrendered.

I remember him joking once that they saw me coming.

After the war, Churchill famously said that an iron curtain had descended upon Europe and the

geopolitical movements and jockeying for

positions throughout the following Cold War were all ramifications and

consequences of the way that earlier war had been fought and concluded. This

included the Korean War, which my father spent

three years fighting, earning nine battle stars there, and then the Vietnam War came. I joined the Navy in

1971, just 26 years after the close of World War II, doing my part to resist the commies

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