Put this one in the “the more things change, the more they stay the same” category. Though he was speaking to an English audience nearly 90 years ago, Churchill could have very well been addressing the American people yesterday afternoon.
The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within . . . They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement, into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what do they offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of Utopias?
Winston Churchill
“England”
Speech to the Royal Society of St. George
London, April 24, 1933