by Victor Davis Hanson
We need an American Leo Amery to stand up
Britain slept in the 1930s as an inevitable war with Hitler loomed.
A lonely Winston Churchill had only a few courageous partners to
oppose the appeasement and incompetence of his conservative colleague
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
One of the most stalwart truth-tellers was a now little remembered
politico and public servant Leo Amery, a polymath and conservative
member of Parliament.
Yet in two iconic moments of outrage against the Chamberlain
government’s temporizing, Amery galvanized Britain and helped end the
government’s disastrous policies.
In the hours after Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, there
was real doubt whether Chamberlain would honor its treaty and declare
war on Germany.
A Labour Party member, surrogate Arthur Greenwood, got up in the
House of Commons to announce that he would be speaking for Labour on
behalf of his ill party leader Clement Attlee.
Immediately Amery interrupted, shouting out, “Speak for England, Arthur!”
He was met with overwhelming applause and soon public acclamation.
After all, Amery was a political voice in the wilderness warning that
neither his own party nor opposition Labour was speaking or acting for
the real interest of the British people.
Amery, a shocked Greenwood, and others had finally had enough of the
partisan nonsense, and demanded the nation unite against Nazi Germany.
Britain hours later declared war on Germany, the first major power to do so.
On a second iconic occasion on May 7, 1940, Amery voiced even
stronger views—again, widely held by the public, but rarely voiced by
the timid political class.
The inept Chamberlain government had just lost a winnable Norway campaign to Germany.
Amery responded with a blistering attack on the incompetence of the
conservative Chamberlain administration by quoting Oliver Cromwell’s
hallmark 1653 order to the Long Parliament:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing.
Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
Three days later after Amery’s speech and the invasion of France, an
ill Chamberlain and most of his advisors resigned. Churchill became
Prime Minister. The rest is history.
We need a voice like Amery’s. Like Britain from 1939 to 1940, America is in existential danger.
The Biden administration has utterly destroyed the southern border—and immigration law with it.
Biden green lighted 7 million illegal aliens swarming into the U.S. without legal sanction or rudimentary audit.
China spies inside and over the U.S. with impunity. Beijing has never
admitted to its responsibility for the gain-of-function Covid virus
that killed a million Americans.
President Biden printed $4 trillion at exactly the wrong time of
soaring post-COVID consumer demand and supply shortages. No wonder he
birthed the worst inflation in 40 years.
In response, interest rates tripled, gas prices doubled.
Our military is thousands of recruits short. It lacks sufficient munitions.
Following Biden’s humiliating pullout from Afghanistan, vast troves
of arms were abandoned in Kabul. Billions more in scarce weapons were
sent to Ukraine.
The Pentagon’s woke agenda trumps meritocracy in promotions and advancement.
Our enemies—Russia, China, Iran, North Korea—are on the move, while the U.S. seems listless.
The Biden renegade Department of Justice, CIA and FBI have become
weaponized. Ideology, politics, and race—not the law—more often guide
their investigations, intelligence operations and enforcement.
The downtowns of our once majestic major cities are becoming unlivable.
They are mired in refuse and trash, violent crime and homelessness.
Stores and businesses leave. Millions each year flee the blue urban
coasts to the red west and south.
To even say there are still two biological genders, that global
warming may not be entirely manmade or necessarily destroying the
planet, or that class, not race, is the proper barometer of inequality
is to face ostracism and career cancellation.
The public assumes that President Biden is severely cognitively challenged, likely corrupt, and a serial fabricator.
Most know what must be done, but few will tell the truth: Balance the
budget. Return to legal only immigration. Restore a well-funded, but
unwoke Pentagon.
Insist on racial unity. Curb the overweening administrative state. Enforce the rule of law.
Produce more gas and oil. Reestablish civic education. Insist
universities protect free speech and due process—and stop proselytizing.
In other words, restore what until recently made America the
strongest, most prosperous, and freest nation in the world. And quit
undoing all the great good that eight generations of prior Americans
bequeathed to us.
Somewhere out there an American Leo Amery is growing infuriated over what is being done to America.
And if he finally stands up like Amery to call out our bankrupt
political class, the American people will echo his famous order to this
disastrous government:
“Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
Victor Davis Hanson
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/10/who-will-say-no-more-to-the-current-madness/
Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter
