Recently, on a flight out of London’s Heathrow Airport, I finally caught Darkest Hour, Joe Wright’s film about Winston Churchill’s becoming prime minister right as the Nazi threat loomed largest. (It seemed the right choice, given where I was flying out of.) Churchill is played by Gary Oldman, who, unsurprisingly, disappears into the role (for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor).
One of the best parts of Oldman’s performance is how he portrays Churchill’s inner life. The main drama of the film is Churchill’s resistance to the idea of negotiating with Adolf Hitler. The film takes some creative liberties, undoubtedly, but I am inclined to credit its depiction of Churchill in his own darkest hour. When things truly do seem dire, he starts actually contemplating entering peace negotiations. But there’s some kind of guttural spasm in his soul that forces him to reject the very idea, even though it seems rational in the moment.
It is now easy for us to say this was the right decision. But it wasn’t very easy for Churchill to conclude it at the time. Invasion of his native land was a serious possibility; there appeared to be prospects for some kind of settlement that would have, in theory, kept his people safe. But something deep within him, perhaps an irrational, almost animalistic hatred of Hitler, or of the idea of surrender, steeled him for the proper course.
Perhaps, in this moment, Churchill embodied the spirit of his land, as previously articulated by Edmund Burke, and cited by Russell Kirk in The Conservative Mind. In comments Kirk highlighted from Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke emphasized how reason is not always a sufficient guide for man. Indeed, sometimes, he must rely on prerational or even irrational sentiments to guide his behavior. Burke calls this “prejudice,” a word that has unjustly taken on an entirely negative connotation these days. Prejudice, however, can be indispensable:
Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts . . .
I have my disagreements with Burke (and Kirk). And prejudice is not always a worthy guide. Sometimes, it is, in fact, quite the opposite, hence its modern connotation. But Churchill’s conduct during the time depicted in Darkest Hour seems a striking vindication of prejudice as Burke and Kirk presented it. Doubtless there have been, are, and will be moments in our own time where such prejudice, rightly understood, might serve us well, and the momentary fashions of those Burke derided in Reflections as “sophisters, economists, and calculators” would lead us astray.