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.”
There are some great members in the House that have been asking for change - Matt Gaetz, Chip Roy, Lauren Bobert and many more, but the leadership, Republican and Democrat, turns a deaf ear.
The problem is they have been bought off.
As Professor Hanson notes, Leo Armery faced a “timid political class” when he stood in opposition to the appeasers in Parliament.
Today, what any brave soul would face would be immediate, visceral hate and condemnation from all directions, likely Lawfare ending in the loss of a job and bankruptcy, or worse, the process of indictment, prosecution and possibly imprisonment.
Courage is indeed needed as it will require a brave soul who challenges the demonic orcs of the left.
But we need more of those “brave” souls, not the Mitch McConnell’s of the world, willing to sacrifice for the good of our collective future.
The only truly “brave soul” we have “out there” is one Donald J. Trump, and look what they are doing to silence him and imprison him for life.
My reading of history has really changed how I see all this. Hitler was mainly focused to his east. He admired the British people and their empire - he did not want war with the Brits, or France or other Western Euro nations. The British people, ravaged by WWI in their recent memories rejected the war mongering of the bloodthirty, drunken lout, Churchill. Consider that if Churchill had not manipulated Parliament into granting Poland a “War Guaranty” in 1939, that it had no chance of delivering on, Hitler continues to focus East. His main war was always with the Bolsheviks and their constant menacing threat, and on the communists in his own country who were allied with them and engaging in unending efforts to implement Marxist policies in Germany,
Did VDH skip this part of history? Why do THESE FACTS not matter to VDH? And most other ‘historians’ of the 20th century? Interestingly, VDH seems to think the will of the people signals ‘weakness’ - gosh, Vic, I thought we were a self-governing nation? Cuz the British and American people were in large majority dead set against going to war with Germany.
VDH hangs onto the vision of the U.S. as a savior nation, lol, when it’s nothing of the sort. The commies won WWII hands down, cuz FDR handed the world to them on a silver platter cuz he was a commie too. So was his wife and many of his closest friends and advisors in and out of govt.
But hey, let’s keep cheerleading a war FDR escalated intentionally that cleared the field for commie domination of Europe and Asia, lol. Nice job, VDH…