By all accounts Winston Churchill was an incredible man and worthy of his place in history. Churchill was voted the “Best Briton of All Time” in a far-reaching poll conducted by the BBC in 2002, besting the likes of William Shakespeare and Princess Diana. The people are hardly alone in their admiration of Churchill. Here at RealClearHistory, there have been no less than two glowing hagiographies of Churchill in the past month (here and here). Historians on both the left and the right have widely admired the man (though of late his views on empire and race have fallen into disfavor with scholars).
All of the wonderful things written about Churchill are no doubt true. He was nothing less than the 20th century's Otto von Bismarck: a man, a statesman, a gentleman who could understand theory but also put it into practice, who stood athwart history and yelled not to stop, but to reform both slowly and radically. Yet, as a libertarian and also a citizen, I find it troubling when society at large venerates men - individuals - and forgets about the rules and the agreed-upon procedures to follow such rules. Hero worship is, if not done carefully, a potent cultural complement to the political and economic decay of the rule of law. So, in the spirit of contrarianism and liberty, here are 10 reasons why you should think of Churchill as a mere man, and not as a myth.
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