Churchill rules

In connection with our “Churchill investigation” post below, don’t miss Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO column of yesterday: “The seven faces of ‘Dr.’ Churchill.” VDH asks whether Churchill even exists and demosntrates that his “faces are made up out of whole cloth.” He is a fraud, a charlatan, a con man of the kind immortalized in Melville and Twain. VDH finds that Churchill is an academic everyman and deduces the laws that are the key to the academic everyman’s existence and prosperity:
Rule 1: Profess to be as far left as possible, understanding that extremism in the service of utopian virtue is no vice.
Rule 2: Among the nerds and dorks, act a little like a Brando, Che, or James Dean, a wild spirit that gives off a spark of danger, who can at a distance titillate Walter Mitty-like admirers and closer up scare off the more sober censors.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, reinvent yourself as anything but a white, straight American male.
Rule 4. Don

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