Re:A New Biography of Churchill
by NeedMoreTea on Thursday October 11, 2018 @05:14AM
(#18191971)
Even Roy Jenkins (former old Labour cabinet minister) superb biography of Churchill concludes he was the greatest Prime Minister of the 20th century. He draws that conclusion even after pointing out Churchill's many flaws and mistakes. What human isn't flawed? Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Ghandi, all had flaws and racism too.
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Re:A New Biography of Churchill
by trukterious on Thursday October 11, 2018 @05:46AM
(#18192099)
Absolutely. The greater the man, the greater the flaws. Yet we still need heroes from history to look up to, and we can't judge solely by modern standards.
By analogy consider the contemporaneous movie The Wizard of Oz (1939). It's enjoyable and arguably morally-improving to watch. We are the better for it. Yet a great deal of immorality existed behind the scenes:
https://www.ranker.com/list/wizard-of-oz-behind-the-scenes-s...
Sometimes "great heroes" do bad things even by their time standards. It makes no one service to pretend it is not so and automatically assume everything bad was normal at the time. It was not and their bad decisions had opposition.
We dont need lies about history, even when that lie is by omitting ugly stuff about people we want to see as heroes. Such framing leads to dangerous worldview and dangerous implications about current times too. It makes us less capable to deal with actual real world complexity. Even heroes should be questioned and mythical heroes are exactly that - myths.
We need truth about historical personalities, not hero worship.