I’ve always wanted to read a book by Churchill or about Churchill, but never done it. The problem is once I start to read a book, I want to finish it even if I don’t like it. I am afraid that I won’t like a book of Churchill because of his prejudices against people from the third world. Well, if a book is really well written, I probably would enjoy the reading despite not liking the hero. Still, there are so many books about Churchill that one doesn’t know which one to choose. I almost started to read William Manchester’s book about Churchill a while ago, but I didn’t.
He talked about “in the cause of freedom and democracy”, but what he actually meant was in the cause of freedom and democracy defined by the British Empire. Such a definition results in a good enough life–though far from the freedom and democracy that ancient Greeks practiced–for a limited amount of people while leaving a large amount of people in the British colonies behind. During the WWII, no doubt Churchill is a great leader and deserves all the admiration piled on him, but he is only a great leader for the British people or European people. For the British colonies of Malaysia, Hong Kong and many others in the Southeast Asia, there’s no defense whatsoever. Basically the colonies were left to fend for themselves–most don’t even have a minimum defense army. Churchill considered this justified since colored people from the colonies are “beastly people with a beastly religion”.
