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As one looks at the current state of England, one becomes both amazed and saddened by how such a once proud and stoic country turned into a poor and pale comparison to what it once had been.

The refusal of the British Home Office to permit the entry of Geert Wilders is hardly in the spirit of free and intense debate that once marked the British Parliament from the 1500s onwards. The worry of the official who barred him was that his film contained hate speech against Muslims. I hardly believe quotes of Islamic leaders and from the Koran and Hadith would be hate speech. The problem is instead a moral complacency mixed with cowardice.

The complacency is that there will always be an England recognizable as the one they have known or idealized, the cowardice is that they will not confront Muslim intimidation and even terrorists for fear of the public disruption it would cause.

Such sentiments are hardly new, Churchill confronted them in his day.

The Prime Minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations between the peoples. Our hearts go out to them. But they have no power. But never will you have friendship with the present German Government. You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.

What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure. It is to prevent that that I have tried my best to urge the maintenance of every bulwark of defence - first, the timely creation of an Air Force superior to anything within striking distance of our shores; secondly, the gathering together of the collective strength of many nations; and thirdly, the making of alliances and military conventions, all within the Covenant, in order to gather together forces at any rate to restrain the onward movement of this power. It has all been in vain. Every position has been successively undermined and abandoned on specious and plausible excuses.

We do not want to be led upon the high road to becoming a satellite of the German Nazi system of European domination. In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the Press, for it will be said - indeed, I hear it said sometimes now - that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticised by ordinary, common English politicians. Then, with a Press under control, in part direct but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey.

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1189

The difference here is that unlike the 1930s, very few people today are willing to even think about the threat to the freedoms of people that stems from a totalitarian ideology such as Islam. One factor influencing this is that Westerners are almost exclusively from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Judaism and Christianity are religions of internal moral searching and condemn forced conversion and view such acts as despairing of any moral effect. Islam is vastly different in its focus not on inner spiritual obedience to God but to the submission of all public acts to Allah.

The societies based on the Judeo-Christian concepts of Morality (not as exclusive as the terms implies as almost all other religions agree) are inherently contradictory with those based on Islam. Islamicists recognize this as do some Westerners but States are not run by those people. Western governments are led by a usually incestuous class of leaders, bureaucrats, and journalists with a few public intellectuals to give it a veneer of respectability. Rarely do they look beyond good intentions as a basis for their policy and perceptions.

In this, the state of modern England is far different that in the 40s. Then the cowardice was from explicit self-interest that could be reasoned into fighting for its survival. Now it is a wilful blindness of those who fear excommunication from the society of the Bien Pensants. The social responsibility of the "great" and "good" will now be our suffering and potential ruin.

Churchill was not blind to the dangers of facing Nazi Germany, it is for that reason that his most memorable speech lives down today as the basis for many poorer imitators. He spoke of the situation with honesty and without any expression of false hope. He wrapped the truth of the bleak situation in the honor and glory of those who fight for right in the face of massive odds. And yet he communicated the threat of invasion, urban warfare and all the suffering that entails, as well as a perpetual war fought by the remainder of the British forces for the liberation of their once proud home.



He was a great statesman not only for his perceptions (which are revealed as all the more insightful than previously thought save when dealing with Stalin in personal meetings and with Yugoslavia) but in his ability to rouse people. To paraphrase Jim Hacker, "Sadly, we have no such people now for want of a comprehensive education to make up the wont from the Comprehensive Education."