CalendarReflections
June 21, 2008The Churchill Society of North Carolina invites comments from our members and readers. Please send your comments to dcraighorn@churchillsocietyofnorthcarolina.org.
Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, June 21, 2008, “the world admires, and wants to hold on to, virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That’s what it really admires.
“The young are told, “Be true to yourself.” But, so many of them have no idea, really, what that means. If they don’t know who they are, what they being true to? They’re told, “The key is to hold firm to your ideals.” But what if no one bothered, really, to teach them ideals?”
Peggy Noonan wrote about what “the things you actually need to live life well, and without which it won’t be good.”
“Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to mast the ethics of your field. And enjoying life.” Ronald Reagan once said, “Enjoy life, it’s ungrateful not to.”
“This involves guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond.”
We all look for guidance. It is natural to reflect on what others might do, or did, in similar situations. Some of us ask, as NEWSWEEK magazine did on June 23, 2008, “What Would Winston Do?”
What WOULD Winston do? We, of course, cannot know. But we do know of his commitment to honor, his conviction to and his faith in the goodness of mankind.
So, when we tell our youth to “Be true to yourself, “ we must be there to help them find themselves. When we tell them to “hold firm to your ideals,” we must give them ideals to which to hold firm. Leadership, statesmanship, vision, boldness and courage, these were the ideals of Winston Churchill. And these are the ideals to which we all need to hold firm.
Churchill wrote, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities…. because it is the quality that guarantees all others.”
William F. Buckley once mused, “I found myself wondering why exactly it was thought appropriate, let alone necessary, to praise famous men.”
Emulation would be a good thing!
D. Craig Horn, Chairman, The Churchill Society of North Carolina