"There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety." --Winston Churchill
Tonight we got our first little taste of spring showers. The short downpour delayed my walk with Lucy and Sadie, but I got the opportunity to do a bit of reading.
In the wake of the latest developments in Iran with regard to the British hostages, I had been thinking about Winston Churchill and his difficulties with the appeasement of Adolph Hitler by European leaders before WWII.
Hitler time and again had disregarded world opinion and made it clear he'd continue his plans to conquer Europe and the free-world. Churchill said that democratic leaders didn't have the resolve to do what needed to be done because they feared the long fight and hideous ravages of war. Churchill said ignoring and appeasing Hitler seemed a more palatable solution, (I'm paraphrasing here.)
How is it possible for rational thinking people NOT to consider the radical, Islamo-fascist movement any less a threat? Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad figured he could make the UK seem smaller in the eyes of the world and by all accounts he was right. Democrats in the US Congress have announced the "War On Terrorism" is over. It's done. Too bad we're betting they are right, we're betting our freedom and the freedom of our children and the freedom of our children's children.
(BTW, Nancy Pelosi wants to know why women are not governmental representatives in countries of the Middle East based in theocracy rather than democracy? Why is that? Why aren't more women involved in government in Saudi Arabia? Oh yeah, I forgot women can't become legislators in Saudi Arabia, it's against the law.)
Back to my original thought. Here are a few quotes I find especially insightful from Winston Churchill:
"When nations are strong, they are not always just and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."
"I never worry about action, but only about inaction."
"Nations which go down fighting rise again, those who surrender tamely are finished."
"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 life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, 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 lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour! ' ”
