Churchill and the Welfare State | Power Line: While Churchill supported social insurance, he never favored social engineering, which has been the dominant impulse of the Left for a long time now. He never thought government planning could be smarter than the marketplace. In fact, as early as 1908 Churchill was warning against central planning in terms that anticipated Hayek’s famous critique of the “knowledge problem” 40 years later:I reject as impracticable the insane Socialist idea that we could have a system whereby the whole national production of the country, with all its infinite ramifications, should be organized and directed by a permanent official, however able, from some central office. The idea is not only impossible, but unthinkable. If it was even attempted it would produce a most terrible shrinkage and destruction of productive energy.
Indeed, in 1929 Churchill contemplated writing a book on socialism to be called The Creed of Failure. He went as far as to outline the first five chapters, but abandoned the project when his publishers were unenthusiastic.
Moreover, Churchill was never a class war egalitarian. “The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind,” Churchill once remarked. Even more applicable, Churchill was an early supply-sider!
Just so. And he twists the handle in O Duce at the end:
The point is, in no way can Churchill be gamed as a model for the Obamanauts or today’s welfare state. In fact, I’m glad Obama sent the Oval Office Churchill bust back to London. It would soil the memory of the great man if Obama kept it around.
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