by G. Stolyarov II

Created on: December 23, 2006   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

On September 7, 2006, I attended a lecture by the renowned British historian Sir Martin Gilbert, inaugurating his new book: Will of the People: Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy. Sir Martin spoke eloquently and interestingly on the subject of Winston Churchill's political thoughts; I enjoyed listening to his lecture and have gained much valuable information from it. The information that I gained, however, has led me to adopt an opinion of Winston Churchill which differs greatly from Sir Martin's own highly positive characterization.

Winston Churchill was a keen and sophisticated observer of political systems, and Sir Martin's speech communicated clearly the reasons for Churchill's devotion to democracy: he thought that the alternatives to democracy were all ultimately violent, coercive, and totalitarian, much like the governments of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which Churchill confronted during his career. In Churchill's view, democracy was the worst system of government except all the others. While recognizing that democracy is riddled with problems, Churchill thought these problems to be the lesser of possible evils.

Yet this attitude, in my judgment, also blinded Churchill to ways in which the problems of democracies can be addressed and resolved without resorting to the totalitarian alternative. Following the lecture, I mentioned to Sir Martin a statement made by Benjamin Franklin: "When the people discover that they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury, that will be the end of the Republic." I further noted that virtually all "democracies" have gradually become transformed into welfare states, where the majority of the electorate, unchecked by institutional safeguards, has been able to legally expropriate and redistribute the wealth of millions of individuals without their consent. I asked how Winston Churchill would address this problem and what safeguards he would have in place for preventing such massive violations of private property form occurring.

Sir Martin's answer was that Winston Churchill would not see the welfare state as a problem at all! As a matter of fact, Winston Churchill was one of the architects of the British welfare state. In 1909, he instituted a series of "radical reforms," which included compulsory meal breaks for employees and mandates for "decent ventilation", clear violations of employers' sovereignty over their own property. Furthermore, Churchill forced firms who had disputes with labor unions to submit

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