WHAT CHURCHILL'S LOSS IN 1945 MIGHT TELL US ABOUT 2008 IN THE USA

BBC - JULY 26, 1945, (ALMOST EXACTLY 63 YEARS AGO):

Clement Attlee has been elected Britain's new prime minister after Labour won a sweeping victory in the general election.


The outgoing prime minister and great wartime leader Winston Churchill tendered his resignation immediately.


The landslide victory comes as a major shock to the Conservatives following Mr Churchill's hugely successful term as Britain's war-time coalition leader, during which he mobilised and inspired courage in an entire nation.

People voted for Attlee, in spite of admiring Churchilll as a hero

... Mr Attlee, 62, was welcomed by the King shortly afterwards and asked to form a new Government.

Throughout the election campaign Mr Churchill had appealed to the country to give his new National Government - formed after the dissolution of the Coalition government in May - a good majority.

But the appeal was rejected by the people of Britain, largely, it is thought, because they believed Labour's promises to implement the Beveridge Report and its plans for creating a welfare state.

Tired of war, the British people thought they could atke a holiday from history - again, just as they had after WW1.

Just as we did after the collapse of the USSR.

And the people who want Obama to become POTUS and CiC are animated by the same misguided, irrational and anti-historical impulses.

And the desire to have the government do for them what they should do for themselves.

The British Welfare State - like ours and like welfare states everywhere - was a failure. It diminished Great Britain and led to increased suffering. It took 30 years and Thatcher to undo it's stranglehold and save Britain from collapse.

The USA and Great Britain don't need to replay the mistakes of the past and elect Attlees or Carters or Clintons.

We don't need to take another holiday from history - not with Iran and al Qaeda still threatening the free world.

We don't need to expand the welfare state. That would just drag down the entire economy, if not the world's economy.

We don't need another Clement Attlee.

We need Reagans and Thatchers.

The closest we'll come this election is McCain - who is more like Churchill than Attlee.

CLEMENT ATTLEE OBAMA -
a dove who wants to reinvigorate the welfare state