70 vs. 200 years ago

Chamberlain was a political frontman for financial-imperial interests figuring that the loathed Soviets and the loathed-a-little-less Nazis would eventually set upon each other in mutually weakening confrontation to the benefit of the manipulative imperium. What does that have to do with now? I see some things, but it's rather complex, and should for all that be steered away from. How could any view of Stephen Harper fit in here?
If there is no implied reference to the eventual murder of so many by those Chamberlain is said to have appeased, what is the referent? To spineless leadership? That would be false, for Chamberlain & co. had their motivations. To moral failure? One could easily claim that Chamberlain & co. understood the British public's reticence for more war, memory of the one of some 20 years prior too fresh for Britons. To being a prosecuting part of a destructive imperium of his own? If that is the referent, it could be a more profitable if too complex rhetorical tack for Canadian political usage, but I do not think that that is Elizabeth's or others' full referent. The background referent also seems to be Churchill, the supposition being our need for someone like him right now. What then about his own significant & errant participation in that destructive imperium? Or moral lapse, eg when confronted during the war about intervening to halt the extinction of those about whom our own Canada said "none is too many", or on very many other things involved with that imperium & its resources? Strong leadership? If English-speaking people can still only be largely motivated to great causes by warlike rhetoric, I truly think there is no hope for them in the end.

But there are other Anglo heroes & heroic efforts that are more closely in line (although with their own impurities), and have even been suggested (via quotation from http://www.corporateknights.ca/content/page.asp?na... ) in a recent GPC document: the abolition of the slave trade, for which 2007 is the bicentennial, & eventually slavery itself. The problem is widespread intellectual laziness & self-destructive historical illiteracy. Who would readily relate to retelling the bicentennial tale of Wilberforce & those behind & around his parliamentary heroism, success attained 200 years ago? There were serious religious motivations behind that drive & Wilberforce himself, as well as other factors (like eventual mass movement) making the analogy even better for some of us. Now I do not believe that slavery would have been abolished when it was were it not for the nascent industrial replacements, the more extreme end of which is upon us now in a kind of endgame that we need experts like Elizabeth & many others to help lead us out of. But even that aspect of the availability of alternatives, of a necessarily changing economy, is useable in analogy.

The horrors of 60-70 years ago are indeed in line with those of today, in so many aspects. But it is ultimately only counterproductive to cloud matters with difficult to justify rhetoric. Let others be the lazier rhetoricians. Put in for the positive rhetoric, let's do Wilberforce; drop the misinterpretable negative, Chamberlain.