Carrie Chapman Catt's Speech "The Crisis," A Metaphorical Call for Women's Rights

Carrie Chapman Catt

“I believe that a crisis has come,” said suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, as she spoke in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 7, 1916, “which, if recognized and the opportunity seized with vigor, enthusiasm and will, means the final victory of our great cause in the very near future.”

“Victory.” “Great cause.” Chapman Catt gave a militaristic speech in wartime, and her militaristic metaphors carried forth her call for women’s rights, democracy, and economic wisdom. She did not just give a political call, however; no, it was a symbolic battle.

How do metaphors work in speeches? A metaphor directly equates two things, for example, “life is a rose.” Unlike similes (“life is like a rose”), metaphors change how we think. When we talk about a table’s legs, we literally forget that a table isn’t a person, doesn’t really have legs, and does not actually stand on legs, or anything else, for that matter. Instead, the metaphor shapes how we think about tables. So, with women’s rights, there wasn’t literally a crisis, not in the sense that Europe was in a crisis, and no bombs were bursting around the suffragists’ demonstrations. Instead, Chapman Catt’s metaphors created symbolic power. And, in the long run, what kind of power is greater?

Indeed, Chapman Catt insisted in warlike manner, “our victory hangs within our grasp.” She talked about a “long drawn out struggle” and “cruel hostility.” Chapman Catt began by reviewing women’s practical wartime contributions, and ended with a symbolic but militaristic call for women’s struggles. Chapman Catt’s military metaphors – “crisis,” “struggle,” “cruel hostility,” stressed the fight for women’s rights.

So, in 1916, World War I was ravaging Europe, while the United States remained at peace. With the world thinking of war – they called it the Great War, for they never imagined that an even worse war was coming – Chapman Catt’s metaphors drew women’s rights from the global conflict.

So, while casting her eyes on the war’s social and economic effects, Chapman Catt recognized that the war would overturn the social order and create a new world.

Woman working in British
airplane factory, 1914

Citing unnamed authorities, she agreed that the war would “lead to social and political revolution throughout the entire world.” She predicted “that the war presages a total change in the status of women.”

To emphasize her point, Chapman Catt reminded her audience of the war’s economic cost in money and human lives. With the men at war, women began to fill traditional men’s roles. In sad contrast, as Chapman Catt pointed out, men who could have contributed economically were, instead, destroyed on the battlefield. Many of the survivors would, she continued. “go to their homes, blind, crippled and incapacitated to do the work they once performed.” In the meantime, she noted that the war forced women into the workplace, growing crops and building bombs, while also giving “tender and skilled care to the wounded.”

With the war bringing women’s economic contributions forward, what choice would the world have, Chapman Catt asked, then to recognize their work?

“The economic axiom, denied and evaded for centuries, will be blazoned on every factory, counting house and shop: ‘Equal pay for equal work’; and common justice will slowly, but surely enforce that law.”

And thus, as the war ripped the traditional economic system to bits, Chapman Catt stated that the violence of warfare would soon release women from their symbolic (and sometimes more literal) enslavement:

“So it happens that above the roar of cannon, the scream of shrapnel and the whirr of aeroplanes, one who listens may hear the cracking of the fetters which have long bound the European woman to outworn conventions.”

Not just freedom, she said, but “cracking of the fetters.” Building on that symbolic but potent connection, Chapman Catt ended by calling, not only for “emancipation,” but for a “bugle call” to lead women as they march toward freedom. The military metaphor had, in her speech, now become a real battle, emerging from the war’s horrors, and bringing liberty to women who fought for their freedom:

“The Political emancipation of our sex calls you: Women of America, arise! Are you content that others shall pay the price of your liberty? Women in schools and counting houses, in shops and on the farm, women in the home with babes at their breasts and women engaged in public careers will hear. The veins of American women are not filled with milk and water. They are neither cowards nor slackers. They will come. They only await the bugle call to learn that the final battle is on.”

Like the fighting men in Europe, American women were, she said, “neither cowards nor slackers.” Instead, they prepared for “the final battle” to begin. Thus, her prescient discussion of the war’s political and economic effects had now culminated in full-grown military metaphors.

Ursula von der Leyen Warned Us of the Totalitarian Winds

 

Eleanor Roosevelt's Speech about the Struggle for Freedom

 

From disaster, Chapman Catt had drawn hope. She expected “that the war will be followed by a mighty, oncoming wave of democracy.” Her reason was that “the conflict has been one of governments, of kings and Czars, Kaisers and Emperors; not of peoples.”

Overall, Chapman Catt and her metaphors tied her themes together brilliantly. Yes, the Great War had brought women into economic roles that men had previously served. The men answered the call to fight. The women answered their call to serve. The war disrupted the economic institutions that the traditionalists mistakenly thought they were preserving. As the war ended, the fight for women’s rights would just begin. The Great War was a war of slaughter. The metaphorical war of American women was a fight of freedom. Symbols helped create the new reality.

Now, Chapman Catt led various women’s organizations, and we remember her today as the founder of the League of Women Voters. One of her predictions came true: the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed only a few years later, recognized women’s right to vote. In that sense, her optimistic belief that the war would lead to more democracy had some truth. Unfortunately, the war was also followed by a tariff war, the Great Depression, economic upheavals, and the rise of worldwide dictatorships. Another war, even more evil than the first, would soon ravage the world. Indeed, the second war was delayed only by the need to raise a new generation of soldiers to replace the ones who died the first time. And I, for one, saddened by the rise of Donald Trump and his movement of resentment and reaction, remain unconvinced that the nation ever learned the lessons that Carrie Chapman Catt so eloquently taught.

by William D. Harpine   

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Research Note: Many outstanding scholars have written about metaphors, but, as I wrote, I was particularly thinking about I. A. Richards’ The Philosophy of Rhetoric. And many thanks, once again, to AmericanRhetoric.com, co-founded by my graduate school classmate and book editor, the late Martin J. Medhurst, for publishing the text of this important speech.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Carrie Chapman Catt: Joint Suffrage Procession Committee, 

public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of woman working in factory, University of British Columbia, 

public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Pope Francis Talks about the Stones that “Block the Hopes of Humanity”

In his 2024 Easter blessing today, Pope Francis asked a troubling question:

“Like the women disciples of Jesus, we ask one another: ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ (cf. Mk 16:3).”

Francis was referring to the huge stone that blocked the entrance to Jesus’ tomb, which women were visiting to perform a final ritual. In despair, the women saw no way to move the stone, and yet the stone moved (or was already rolled away). For Pope Francis, the stone that blocked Jesus’ tomb thousands of years ago was a metaphor for the terrible stones of war and suffering that, in Francis’ words, “block the hopes of humanity.” The metaphor of the stone reminds us never to give up hope, never to give up on love, compassion, and forgiveness. As Francis said:

“The Church relives the amazement of the women who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. The tomb of Jesus had been sealed with a great stone. Today too, great stones, heavy stones, block the hopes of humanity: the stone of war, the stone of humanitarian crises, the stone of human rights violations, the stone of human trafficking, and other stones as well.”

As Pope Francis acutely noted, horrible wars and suffering wrack the world, from the Middle East and Ukraine, and on to, central Africa, Kivu, and elsewhere. Francis reminded the 60,000 worshipers gathered at St. Peter’s Square that Syria suffers from a decades-long civil war. He appealed for humanitarian aid, the release of hostages, and cease-fires. He still came back to his metaphor of stones, asking, how will we ever roll these terrible stones away? He recognized that desperate people, who see no hope, who think themselves helpless, all face – metaphorically – the same dilemma:

“Without the forgiveness of sins, there is no overcoming the barriers of prejudice, mutual recrimination, the presumption that we are always right and others wrong.”

On the one hand, Francis assured the worshipers that only Jesus can roll away the stones of war and hatred. Francis did not, on the other hand, omit that human beings today need to act. Instead, to follow Jesus—means, according to the Pope’s blessing, for us to reach out with love and compassion to one another:

“Let us not yield to the logic of weapons and rearming. Peace is never made with arms, but with outstretched hands and open hearts.”

Sojourner Truth and Her Metaphors

Metaphors carry great power. Metaphors—like equating a tombstone with today’s terrible moral failings—force us to see connections that our narrow-mindedness leads us to deny. Francis’ metaphor had two prongs. First, yes, the massive stones that block us seem overpowering and we feel helpless to move them. Second, however, in the biblical accounts, the enormous stone was, indeed, moved. The moving of the stone added hope to the Pope’s metaphor. To move today’s stones, Pope Francis said, we must reach out with our hearts and faith, to forgive one another, to show compassion, to move the stones, not with anger or violence, but with love.

A powerful Easter message. Will the world listen?

by William D. Harpinw

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Earlier Posts:

Pope Francis Asked the Catholic Church to Listen

Pope Francis' Sermon for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees

  

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The English text of Pope Francis’ blessing is taken from the Catholic News Agency.

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image: Pope Francis, edited from a historical White House photo

Sojourner Truth in 1867: Keep the Thing Stirring!

Sojourner Truth

“I feel,” said Sojourner Truth, “that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man.”

On May 9, 1867, Sojourner Truth, a former slave and famous abolitionist speaker, pressed for women’s economic rights in a metaphor-filled speech. She was speaking at the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, held at the Church of the Puritans in New York City. She spoke in metaphors to accentuate women's rights.

As she spoke, such metaphors as weeding the garden, riding horses, and healing a knife wound expressed the path toward economic equality. Metaphors, which link seemingly unrelated concepts, strike to our deepest feelings. Sojourner Truth’s speech about justice for women surely seemed radical in 1867. Yet, the problems of justice and freedom that she described in 1867 still plague the United States, indeed the world, even to this day. Indeed, just last year, the Pew Foundation found that, “even as women have continued to outpace men in educational attainment, the pay gap has been stuck in a holding pattern since 2002, ranging from 80 to 85 cents to the dollar.”

As she began, standing to applause, Sojourner Truth compared the oppression of women to the recent abolition of slavery:

“My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don’t know how you will feel when I get through. I come from another field—the country of the slave. They have got their liberty—so much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it root and branch destroyed.”

That was a metaphor.  Any gardener, then or now, knows that it is never enough to pull the leaves. Only when the weed has been destroyed, as Sojourner Truth said, “root and branch,” do we know that it will never grow back. Now that chattel slavery had been abolished, Sojourner Truth argued that it was time to push for women’s rights. She made her next point with a metaphor about ice fishing. A New Yorker, she knew that ice fishing requires one not only to break the ice, but to keep stirring to prevent the pond from freezing over again:

“I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.”

Church of the Pilgrims

The speaker had already warned that the audience might not be happy about everything he had to say. The end of the Civil War and the destruction of legalized slavery was a massive blow for freedom. It was, she said, not enough: not until women achieved the same rights as men. 

And, she said, it was not enough to talk about men’s rights:

“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women,” Sojourner Truth stated as she pushed for women’s rights. 

“Stir” continued the idea of “stirring” the ice. As a true agitator, Sojourner Truth sought to continue agitation until women, including freed women, had the same rights as men. Otherwise, she pointed out, women’s lot will not have improved at all:

“… and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Progressive Traditionalist. Will We Live up to Our Values?

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right

A master, of course, demands work without pay. That is not only a moral fault, but also an economic incentive. That is why it made sense when Sojourner Truth recounted the metaphorical chains that still held women to unequal pay for equal work:

“I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do, I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women.”

That is, just like a modern feminist, Sojourner Truth pointed out that women “did not get as much pay.” The problem that she alleged was that while, people viewed the end of slavery as a great triumph, they felt content—too content—to rest without fighting all injustice. Still comparing the oppression of women to slavery, she said:

“You [presumably speaking to men in the audience] have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”

It will feel all the better? Sojourner Truth harshly told the nation to get over their pain, to understand that everything would be better if the nation could heal: again, the speaker’s metaphor drove home a deeper reality. Yes, it hurts to give up power, but, yes again, a nation that heals will be better off. “It will feel all the better,” she said.

Finally, noting that nobody at the conference had been singing, Sojourner Truth said:

“I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.”

After singing the old standard, “We Are Going Home,” she reminded the audience that, before they get to heaven, “first do all we have to do here.”

As the audience listened to her sing, Sojourner Truth had already compared the unequal treatment of women to chattel slavery, spoken against the bonds that unjustly restrict women, and propounded metaphors about everyday life: cracking the ice, breaking chains, turning loose of the reins of injustice, and healing the cuts. She reduced the problem to basic economics: equal pay for equal work. Anything less was trickle-down slavery. And she sang.

The ultimate evil of slavery, of course, is that masters force enslaved Americans to work under conditions of unfathomable cruelty, with no control over their destiny, and without compensation. The institution of slavery continued for centuries because masters gained such a huge economic advantage from unpaid labor. Slavery’s wickedness was a moral failing, but economic gain was its obvious cause. 

In her 1867 speech, Sojourner Truth pointed out the continuing injustice that occurred when women are oppressed economically. Her metaphors brought the injustice to life.

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Research note:

1. It is often surprisingly hard to get accurate texts of even the most famous speeches. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 Akron, Ohio speech, “Aren’t I a Woman?” is more famous. However, communication scholars have known for many years that the published text of “Aren’t I a Woman?” is not accurate. Sojourner Truth’s 1867 speech, which I discuss in this blog post, was recorded by a shorthand reporter, and so the text probably comes reasonably close to what she said and gives us a better idea of her actual speaking style.

2. Scholars have given many excellent discussions of the role of metaphors in rhetoric. In his ground-breaking book, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, I. A. Richards argues that all language is basically metaphorical. For example, when we talk about “the leg of the table,” we know perfectly well that tables don’t really have legs. It’s a metaphor. Richards showed that metaphors can carry literal and emotional meaning. Anyway, for people who want to learn more about metaphors and rhetoric, Richards’ book is probably a good place to start. 

by William D. Harpine

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image of Sojourner Truth, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of the The Church of the Pilgrims, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

George Whitefield's Sermon about the “Flaming Preacher”

George Whitefield

“Enoch,” preached Anglican priest George Whitefield in the mid-1700’s, “in all probability was a public person, and a flaming preacher.” 

Often credited as one of the Methodist movement’s founders as well as among the first American evangelicals, Whitefield mixed historical information with fiction to persuade his audience to “walk with God.” However, if we mix fact with fiction, what lesson have we learned? What does it mean to walk with God? For the idea of a “flaming preacher” is for raw, flaming, emotion to leave logic and tradition equally in its wake. Doing so, Whitefield set the stage for the 21st Century’s emotion-driven evangelical speaking. The reader might ask, is that good, or bad? Or some of both? As Whitefield’s emotional outburst, which evoked strong feelings while he stretched biblical devotion past any reasonable limit, offers the reader little functional guidance.

In his sermon “Walking with God,” Whitefield highlighted the obscure biblical character Enoch, a “flaming preacher.” Maybe, however, it was Whitefield himself who was the flaming preacher! Whitefield spun a moral narrative around a stunningly imaginative depiction of Enoch. Forsaking a scholarly exposition, Whitefield’s sermon resembled a modern infotainment program, in which he randomly intermixed documentable points with wild speculation, while making little effort to distinguish one from the other. Just as modern media often intermix fact with fiction, so Whitefield created a make-believe version of Enoch to make a point. Accordingly, the listener learns to “walk with God,” but never learns just what that means in their own lives.

Whitefield, a major figure of the Great Awakening in England and North America, preached heartfelt, energetic sermons to enormous, often outdoor crowds.

In “Walking with God,” Whitefield's theme was, ‘And Enoch walked with God’ (Genesis 5:24 KJV). By creating a metaphorical image that believers should “walk with God,” Whitefield personalized what could otherwise have become a dry, well, shall we say, “preachy” kind of sermon. Since the Bible says little about Enoch, Whitefield felt free to expand poetically to show how a fictionalized Enoch could symbolize the believer’s righteous path.

Tyler Perry at the 2019 BET Awards: "Helping Someone Cross" as a Metaphor for Reaching Out to Help


Enoch’s Imaginative Path

Right from the outset, Whitefield expounded on Enoch’s obscurity, while simultaneously creating a biography for him:

“Who this Enoch was, does not appear so plainly. To me, he seems to have been a person of public character; I suppose, like Noah, a preacher of righteousness. And, if we may credit the apostle Jude, he was a flaming preacher.” [italics added]

“I suppose?” “I suppose?” So, Enoch became, in Whitefield’s powerful imagination, a symbol of how believers can “walk with God.” Lacking evidence, Whitefield created Enoch as a dramatic character. Nothing prevented Whitefield from admitting the obvious, which is that almost nothing is known about Enoch. That, however, would be stunningly unimaginative. Whitefield chose a different, far more creative rhetorical path! For, instead of analyzing what the Bible says, Whitefield preached on what he supposed. Oddly, that tactic seemed to work.

Indeed, to make his point clear, to assuage those listeners who were anxious to live a Christian life, Whitefield showed how Enoch demonstrated, in his own life (about which the Bible says almost nothing), how piously walking with God is the way to heaven:

“… there is a heaven at the end of this walk. For, to use the words of pious bishop Beveridge, ‘Though the way be narrow, yet it is not long: and though the gate be strait, yet it opens into everlasting life’. Enoch found it so. He walked with God on earth, and God took him to sit down with him for ever in the kingdom of heaven.”

On the one hand, yes, Whitefield is expounding on Enoch’s obscure story to the extent of near-fabrication. That is, from the brief statement that Enoch “walked with God,” a brief mention in the biblical Letter of Jude, and the account in Hebrews that Enoch ended up in heaven (Hebrews 11:5), Whitefield derived an important moral principle for his listeners. That principle is that we should walk with God. On the other hand, although the argument is strained, Whitefield’s premise does imply a certain amount of internal logic: 1) The Bible teaches a Christian life, and, 2) Enoch got to heaven. Whitefield reached a speculative conclusion from those two clues. Whitefield’s conclusion seemed so reasonable, at least to believers, that a listener could easily overlook his failure to offer meaningful textual evidence.


Personalizing the Doctrines

As his exposition reached its end, Whitefield continued to personalize Enoch, developing from Enoch’s character a lesson of Christian devotion:

“I observed at the beginning of this discourse, that Enoch in all probability was a public person, and a flaming preacher. Though he be dead, does he not yet speak to us, to quicken our zeal, and make us more active in the service of our glorious and ever-blessed Master? How did Enoch preach! How did Enoch walk with God, though he lived in a wicked and adulterous generation! Let us then follow him, as he followed Jesus Christ….”

The imaginative speculations with which Whitefield started have now, astonishingly, become moral principles. Was Enoch a preacher at all? Much more, was he “a flaming preacher?” The Bible seems to be strangely silent on those questions. Instead, Enoch’s personality was, in large part, a speculative creation of Whitefield’s creative impulses.

Yet, Whitefield was not preaching as a scholar. His method was to preach to, and from, the heart. He wanted his listeners to “walk with God.” From two simple biblical points, that Enoch walked with God and then went to heaven, Whitefield created a narrative frame, a character study, if you will, to inspire his listeners. Whitefield’s fictionalized Enoch seemingly helped listeners grasp his moral, religious perspective, with accuracy being, at best, a minor inconvenience.

In particular, it is astonishing for Whitefield to say, that Enoch “followed Jesus Christ,” when there is no scriptural support whatsoever for that claim. Indeed, I suspect that many rabbis would rightly find that connection to be obscure, if not offensive. In his conclusion, however, Whitefield was more concerned to inspire his audience, and less committed to informing them.

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Here are two present-day evangelical preachers. Does the reader see similarities to Whitefield, in their enthusiasm, or their tendency to speculate? Or not? 

Paula White Prayed against Trump's Enemies and Gave a Lesson in How to Shut Down Reasoned Debate

Franklin Graham Prays for the Divine Right of (Republican) Presidents: Religion Becomes a Political Tool

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Conclusion

So, Whitefield personalized his theological narrative by spinning out a semi-fictionalized version of an obscure person from the Hebrew scriptures. In Whitefield’s sermon, Enoch became a character in a moral drama. Interesting. Controversial. Emotional. Probably quite convincing. Strongly suggestive of preaching techniques that sometimes crop up in the present day. As we listen, today, to the preaching of Franklin Graham or Paula White, or the prosperity preachers, we still experience the Great Awakening’s rhetorical techniques.

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Two other preachers from the Great Awakening

John Wesley’s Sermon against Bigotry

Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:" Proof-Texting as a Rhetorical Tactic

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By William D. Harpine

Historical Note: Although Whitefield never left the Church of England, he often counts as one of the founders of the modern-day Methodist Church, and, later in his career, the American divisions of the Presbyterian Church. It might be more accurate to suggest that Whitefield rarely tied himself to any one religious authority. Indeed, “Walking with God” also presages the Dispensationalist perspective that would come to influence evangelical theology in the next century. In colonial America, Whitefield was known for operating an orphanage. Good for him. Although he insisted that slaves should not be treated harshly, Whitefield enslaved Africans on his American properties. How cruel. Moral complexities are nothing new, are they?

Biblical Note: Jude 1:14-16 KJV in the Bible says only this about Enoch, never mentioning a “flaming preacher:”

“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.”  

However, an ancient writing called the First Book of Enoch, which is not in the Bible, talks repeatedly about “flaming” (“Its ceiling also was flaming fire;” “The flaming fire was round about Him;” “And from underneath the throne came streams of flaming fire,” etc.). That may account for Whitefield’s claim that Enoch was a “flaming preacher.” Who knows?

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image, public domain, from Project Gutenberg

Ursula von der Leyen Warned Us of the Totalitarian Winds

Ursula von der Leyen

Sometimes even the tritest metaphor brings great power to a public speech. Metaphors express our values. So, we might ask, how are the winds of history blowing? What about the attacks that totalitarian regimes launch against seemingly stable democracies? On October 19, 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. She warned the assemblage that freedom was under worldwide attack. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel especially alarmed her. Winds, she said? No, she insisted, the attack on freedom was at “gale force:”

“The winds are not just blowing today. Today, they are at gale force. Our democracies are under sustained and systemic attack by those who abhor freedom because it threatens their rule. For more than 600 days now, our friends in Ukraine have been fighting and dying for their freedom against Russian aggression. And now, Israel has suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history, and the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.” [italics supplied]

Von der Leyen pointed out the common barbarity of Hamas and Russia in their terrible wars:

“Russia and Hamas are alike. As President Zelenskyy has said their ‘essence is the same”. Both have deliberately sought out innocent civilians, including babies and children, to kill and take hostage.”

Continuing her argument, von der Leyen insisted that the winds of evil can be stopped. The defeat of representative government is not written in stone. As she reminded the Institute, the democratic nations defeated fascist forces around the world during World War II:

“We have not forgotten that in World War II, democracy won over fascism and autocracy. This triumph set the foundation of our peace order. And this is not only about the past, but it will also define our future.”

So, von der Leyen was right. We must learn from the past. We look to the past to understand the future. We rely on our basic values. So often, people think that authoritarian and fascist governments are stronger than the world’s democracies and constitutional republics. History emphatically refutes that view. She reminded her conservative audience that the historical lesson rings true today.

In the United States Congress, support for the Ukrainians is under emphatic attack from major Republican leaders, while a few Democrats have expressed reluctance about supporting Israel in its fight against Hamas. Surely, while she never mentioned names, von der Leyen timed her speech well.

Why Do Republicans Praise Vladimir Putin in Their Speeches?

The foreign policy implications of current world conflicts are complex, and I have no foreign policy expertise. Still, can we remember von der Leyen’s metaphor, that “gale force” winds are attacking the world order that has brought us prosperity and which has kept us free from World War for decades. She stated to all of us that history is on the side of freedom. She reminded us that vicious, murderous regimes bring their countries to bad ends.

The Hudson Institute is a conservative think tank that is sometimes associated with the neocon movement. Von der Leyen, a voice for European conservativism, called for unity, not discord, between Europe and the United States and the struggle for freedom. Her simple metaphor of “gale force” winds reminds all of us that we face horrible challenges.

European President Ursula von der Leyen Called for European Unity during the Russia-Ukraine Crisis

Peace, justice, and prosperity must always be supported by wisdom. The speech received little attention in the United States, despite the influential audience to which she addressed it. The American press is more interested in Biden’s gaffes or Donald Trump’s temper tantrums. Von der Leyen ignored the squabbling details of American and European politics, relying instead on moral values drawn from history.

Indeed, calm, reasoned, and thoughtful rhetoric should never go out of date. As we face terrifying winds, let us acknowledge them, at the same time that we remember the blessings of living in free countries.

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P.S. Von der Leyen, a conservative German leader, faced up to her nation's Nazi past in this speech. I'd love to hear more American conservatives rise above our own past. What do you think? 

by William D.Harpine

© Copyright 2023, William D. Harpine

Image: European Union, via Wikimedia Commons