The Sweep of History

``Hitler knows he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe will be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the light of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, `This was their finest hour.' '' — Winston Churchill.

It is impossible for scientists to predict the exact motion of the countless individual molecules in a jar of air. The collective properties of the molecules, however, are precisely predictable. The random motions and collisions of air molecules conspire to produce properties of pressure, temperature and volume that are easily computed. At the macroscopic level, the individual particle motions are not relevant.

Flush with the success and arrogance of the physical sciences, the Left in the previous century argued by analogy that although individual behavior might not be predictable, collective behavior conforms to immutable laws. Mass movements, economics and ideology are important. Individuals are swept along by the currents of history. In part, this assertion was an effort to lend a scientific patina and the aura of inevitability to the ideology of the Left.

There is some truth to the notion that there are strong forces that guide the directions of civilizations. The rise of agriculture and then industrialization changed both subsequent human societies and the character of the people in them. Nonetheless, only especially small people do not recognize that there are exceptionally large individuals who change, redirect and mold civilizations. We are not all the same air molecules. It is part of the conservative temperament to notice that the nobility of character at crucial moments in history can overwhelm multitudes. Consider three examples.

By 1940, the Nazi juggernaut had crushed Poland, rolled over the Low Countries and humiliated the French. Britain was ill-prepared to forestall a German invasion. It was Winston Churchill's rhetoric, martial character and stubbornness that infused the British with the necessary belief in victory. His pugnacious bearing served as a metaphor for Britain's fortitude. If not for Churchill, the course of the twentieth century could have been radically different and radically worse.

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