unregulated
unthinkability – soon
it will be questioned …
Watching the unfolding news cycle of the seemingly never ending War with Iran it seems to me that a few months ago, for most of us, the prospect of another war, to quote General of the Army, Omar Bradley, that was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy, was unthinkable.
And that word called to mind a time when Winston Churchill used that word, unthinkable.
It was in a House of Commons debate on Foreign Policy on March 14, 1934 that Mr. Churchill said:
So, in the end, what have we got?
We have not got disarmament.
We have the rearmament of Germany.
That is the monstrous child which has emanated from this immense labour — the rearmament of Germany.
Why, it is only a little while ago that I heard Ministers say and read diplomatic documents which said that rearmament was unthinkable — “Whatever happens we cannot have that. Rearmament is unthinkable.”
Now all our hope is to regulate the unthinkable.
Regulated unthinkability — that is what is the proposal now; and very soon it will be a question of making up our minds to unregulate unthinkability.
I think it is always an error in diplomatic policy to press a matter when it is quite clear that no further progress is to be made.
It is also a great error if you ever give the impression abroad that you are using language which is more concerned with your domestic political state of things than with the actual fortunes and merits of the various great countries upon the Continent to whom you offer advice.
Unregulated unthinkability.
Is there a better way to describe the current state of affairs in the government of the United States?
Unregulated unthinkability.
And that other sentence?
I think it is always an error in diplomatic policy to press a matter when it is quite clear that no further progress is to be made.
Mr. Churchill had been there, done that and he thought it is always an error in diplomatic policy to press a matter when it is quite clear that no further progress is to be made.
It is also a great error if you ever give the impression abroad that you are using language which is more concerned with your domestic political state of things than with the actual fortunes and merits of the various great countries upon the Continent to whom you offer advice.
Maybe it is said to well to be understood today?
Today, Mr. Churchill is ancient and you remember what CS Lewis wrote about ancient wrtier?
To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge – to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior-this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. … [Therefore, even though] learning makes a free commerce between the ages… every generation [is cut] off from all others… [and] …characteristic errors of one [are not] corrected by the characteristic truths of another.
So where does that leave us?
In the realm and clutches of unregulated unthinkability.
Where else?
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