In reviewing Paul Johnson‘s recent biography of Winston Churchill for The Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward ? who’s compared the great British prime minister to America’s 40th president (and others) ? notes with curiosity the negative reaction many left-leaning thinkers have toward one of the 20th century’s icons:
There is more going on here than a critical disagreement with
Johnson?s approach to Churchill, or even a mere dislike of Johnson?s
Tory leanings. Mann and Chotiner are hardly alone among center-left
writers in disdaining Churchill and decrying the fondness conservatives
display for him. Both Christopher Hitchens and Michael Lind have written
disparagingly of the ?cult of Churchill? on the right, with Lind going
further to designate Churchill as the patron saint of neoconservatives,
which is tantamount to saying that Churchill should be regarded as
something of a devil.This lazy disdain for Churchill reveals yet another facet of the
decaying liberal mind, for Churchill ought to be as much of a hero of
liberals as he is for conservatives. He was an enthusiast of
Progressivism and the New Deal, and an early architect of the British
welfare state. In American politics Churchill preferred Democrats to
Republicans, got on well with Truman but badly with Eisenhower?indeed,
he confided to several people that he preferred a Stevenson victory over
Ike in 1952. (Lind?s complaint against Churchill as a neocon icon is
based partly on seeing it as another Straussian/Republican plot,
apparently unaware that Leo Strauss was also a Stevenson supporter.)
Churchill?s political philosophy, Johnson notes, was somewhat opaque;
late in life Churchill told a Labour MP, ?I?ve always been a liberal.?
Johnson notes that Churchill ?found the center attractive,? and
Churchill?s dislike of partisanship, manifested in his multiple party
switches, makes him the ideal prototype for today?s fetishists of
post-partisanship. There?s seldom been a better example of ending
?gridlock? in government. Far from sending Churchill?s bust back to
London from the Oval Office, Barack Obama should have added another
layer of polish and adapted the legacy to himself.