Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government by Arnn Dr. Larry

Author:Arnn, Dr. Larry [Arnn, Dr. Larry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

10

THE CONSTITUTIONALIST

Churchill wrote that a Municipal Trust would be more dangerous than the Beef Trust. Something must be done, he thought, for the victims of the Beef Trust and its kind, but whatever power is raised to do it is by definition a greater power. That greater power will also be directed and staffed by human beings. How shall that power be organized? This is a problem of constitutionalism, a constant theme in Churchill’s speaking and writing.

Think for a minute of the broad meaning of the term constitution. It is related in etymology to the words statue and statute, which come from a Latin word that means to set a thing firmly in place. When we make a statue, we set it somewhere firmly so it will not fall over. When we make a law, we make it to last. And if it is to last, those who live under it must follow it. Because laws have a way of reaching everywhere, either directly or indirectly, a people’s laws will reflect everything about them. This broad sense of the term constitution is the reason why the best books about politics—those of, say, Plato or Aristotle or Montesquieu—have a lot to say about institutions that we today regard as social and not political.

In this broadest sense of the term constitution, Churchill proposed the social safety net as a constitutional arrangement. Apart from the justice he thought it would do, it would also tie the classes of British society together and connect them to the welfare of the country. When Churchill said that the “minimum standard” might rise with the level of wealth in the nation, he was speaking to an audience of citizens. He wanted people to think that all of them benefited when the economy was prosperous, even if some benefited more than others.

In this sense, the free market economy is just like the social safety net. They are constitutional arrangements designed to protect one kind of life rather than another. Churchill saw these two arrangements as working together to protect a kind of life, that of liberty under law. Living that life, people for the most part take care of themselves, their families, their neighbors, their country. Churchill thought that this kind of living was the best for human beings, whose lives cannot be perfect, but who can be upright and successful at meeting the challenges of life.

Churchill said that civilization begins with the institutions of limited government and the rule of law. In the immediate sense, civilization is a political term calling for a liberal kind of politics in which the military is not all and civilians control the government. In liberal society we do not think of nonpolitical things as political, yet in one way they are: the regime that depends upon a private institution such as property, family, or religion will not do well unless those private institutions do well. When the Socialist Party adopts a different attitude toward religion or

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