Check it out. I have a terrible confession. I like it. The guy’s art is appealing. His murals of Mexican peasants and industrial workers touch me. I love his bold, bright colors. My hero Winston Churchill said he planned to spend his first thousand years in heaven assaulting canvasses with nothing but the loudest, brashest of colors. So what’s the row about good old Diego? Well, the big Mexican folk artist (big in reputation, and 300 pounds big) was a big Communist. The Rockefellers kind of balked at his May Day mural featuring good old Vladimir Lenin leading the happy peasants and workers through Red Square. Lenin, it should be remembered, whose Communist Party card was Number One, refused to let his mistress play Beethoven piano sonatas for him; he didn’t want them to soften him. Lenin enjoyed, really got a rush out of picking up a telephone in his Kremlin office and ordering a thousand people shot in Vladivostok, 9,000 miles away from Moscow. Okay, so I can’t help liking Rivera’s art, minus Lenin. But here’s a link I felt honor-bound to consult. I doubt you’re going to see Nikolai Getman on the “Don’t Be Evil” corporate logo anytime soon. He’s unknown outside conservative circles. But I hope we will all check out his Gulag Collection. He doesn’t have as many bright colors as Diego Rivera.

Slave labor camps tend to be a bit monochrome. Look at Getman’s haunting paintings of zeks being shot, or forced to work in uranium mines, or even being staked out, Christ-like, on a tree to be attacked by swarms of Siberian mosquitos. So, feeling guilty about Diego Rivera reminded me to check out Nikolai Getman once again. Our heroes will never be the most popular. Their work will never be seen in Rockefeller Center. They will not be offered in exhibits in the National Gallery of Art. Their birthdays will not be celebrated by Google. But here’s a consolation. If you study Nikolai Getman’s Gulag Collection, you’ll have a leg up on not being evil.

We certainly didn’t have photographs of Winston’s minutes after his birth–seven months after his parents’ marriage–on this day in 1874. But we know he was born not in his parent’s fashionable London flat. Instead, after his mother’s riding mishap that day, he came into the world early. He was born at Blenheim Palace, the ducal estate of his famous Marlborough ancestors. They were not nearly so famous then as they would become. Winston would write four great volumes on the great Duke of Marlborough, who had defeated the armies of Louis XIV and who was a central figure in England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89. Many American Founders looked to that revolution as their model for our own.

Winston was intensely proud of his noble English forbears. But he was just as proud of his American antecedents. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was a beauty from New York, whose tycoon father owned the New York Times. Jennie’s ancestor was said to be Pocahontas. That American princess married an Englishman and captivated the royal court of her own day with her beauty and wit.

Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a reforming politician, a Tory democrat, who was on track to become Prime Minister before he rashly challenged his party leader, Prime Minister Salisbury. Like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, Lord Randolph fell from the post of Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer–second highest in the House of Commons, never to rise again.

All his life, Winston would be dogged by his father’s spectacular flame-out. He was haunted by his father’s ghost, too. When, during World War I, Winston was cast out of the government, people shook their heads and said: Like father, like son. Unsteady. Winston was given the blame for the disastrous Dardanelles campaign. Tens of thousands of British, Australian, and New Zealand troops died in a vain attempt to knock the Ottoman Turks out of the war. The movie “Gallipoli” shows the horror of that ill-starred campaign. But Winston’s plan was never put into being. He was the scapegoat of others who resented his genius and his willingness to take a risk so that the long, bloody stalemate of trench warfare could be ended. Winston even then had a gift for the gripping phrase. Britain’s Tommies, he said, could be better employed in a flanking movement around the German front than to “chew barbed wire in Flanders.”

Throughout the 1930s, his “wilderness years,” Winston went unheeded. He was a voice crying in the wilderness, warning of the “Nozzie” peril. Instead, Prime Minister Chamberlain came back from Munich, promising “peace in our time.” His piece of paper, with Hitler’s signature upon it, lasted less than six months.

President Obama famously pitched the bust of Winston Churchill into the snow days after his arrival in the White House. That’s perhaps another reason I admire Winston so. Once hailed as “a sort of God,” by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, no one today can tell you what Obama said at Normandy, just two years ago. I can tell you what Winston did there 67 years ago. He demanded to go over with the first of the landing craft. General Eisenhower–the five-star Supreme Commander–could not order Prime Minister Churchill to stay behind. But King George VI could. And he told Winston that if he insisted on exposing his life to such danger, then he, the King and Emperor, would go ashore with him. Only then did Winston relent. He got his chance, though.

Just weeks later, he made it to Hitler’s impregnable Siegfried Line. That line bristled with guns and land mines. Winston approached it with his famous Havana cigar between his teeth. He flashed his inimitable “V” for Victory sign. Then, winking at staff and reporters, he urinated on Hitler’s line.

President Obama prefers the piddling  protesters of Occupy Wall Street. Say, Mr. President, I’d be happy to trade a CD of Winston’s speeches for a copy of that iPod you gave the Queen that contained all of your speeches.

President Kennedy thought better of Winston. He made him an honorary American citizen. He praised him with memorable words. “He marshaled the English language and sent it into battle.”

Indeed, he did. He faced down the menace of Hitler and he rallied the Western democracies to stand firm against an Iron Curtain.

I must have read dozens of books about the well-documented life of Winston Churchill. Only one ever said he was a Christian. Inspector Tommy Thompson of Scotland Yard in “Assignment Churchill” was emphatic. Winston always identified with the least of his brethren. He always thirsted for righteousness. No one else offered such a testimony. But Tommy Thompson spent nineteen years as Winston’s bodyguard, ready to lay down his life for his friend at any moment.

Perhaps he knew something we did not.

Then, he gifted Her Majesty with, what else, recordings of all his speeches. He followed that up with the amazingly thoughtful gesture of bestowing on Prime Minister Gordon Brown a $29.95 collection of DVDs of Hollywood’s greatest films. Mr. Brown is doubtless enjoying them now, in his retirement, if he can get an adapter.

The “Special Relationship” fostered so carefully by the World War II alliance of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt is in tatters. The Obama State Department is happy to tell us that Britain is no more special to us than any of the other 192 countries in the UN. (Of course, President Obama is known to think the U.S. itself is no more exceptional than Britain, or even Greece.)

It was fairly easy to be the new broom sweeping clean – back in 2009. Now, however, as Rev. Wright might say, Obama’s chickens are coming home to roost. Along with his sagging approval numbers is coming increasing disrespect. Rep. Maxine Waters is asking permission from her constituents to take the president to the woodshed. Former backer Peggy Noonan briskly calls him a “loser” on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and asks aloud if he might just be “snakebit.”

The worst example of dissing the commander-in-chief, doubtless came from leftist Bill Maher. He told a nationwide audience, in an obscenity-laced routine, that he had been hoping for a president who would shoot the BP executives after the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A short review of our Special Relationship might be in order. When Churchill crossed the U-boat infested North Atlantic seventy summers ago in the HMS Prince of Wales, he forged an alliance that lasted through World War II, the Cold War, all the way into the hills of Tora Bora, in Afghanistan and the oilfields of Basra in Iraq. Churchill, it was said in that 1941 First Summit, felt as if he was “going to meet God Almighty.” FDR’s son told the British Prime Minister his father thought him “the greatest man in the world.”

Following Roosevelt’s death and V-E Day in 1945, Churchill nimbly befriended Harry Truman. In fact, it was President Truman who invited the defeated ex-Prime Minister to Fulton, Missouri, the next year. Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College on March 5, 1946, made headlines around the world.

Returning to Number 10 Downing Street, Churchill welcomed in 1952 the election of his old wartime comrade Dwight D. Eisenhower as president. True, Britain’s Prime Minister was less entranced with Ike’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. “He’s the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him,” Winston said bitterly. But he took care not to break ranks with President Eisenhower, a man who was revered on five continents.

Ike’s successor, John F. Kennedy, might have had reason to shun Sir Winston, now in retirement. After all, his father, Joe Kennedy, bitterly attacked Churchill as the man responsible for World War II and blamed Winston personally for the death of his eldest son, Joe, Jr.

As president, John F. Kennedy rose above all that. In the last months of his life, in June, 1963, he named Churchill an honorary American citizen, the first such distinction granted since Lafayette. “He marshaled the English language,” said JFK at the Rose Garden ceremony, “and sent it into battle.” During the Berlin Crises and the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy had no stronger supporters than the British.

With Lyndon Johnson, we have the first tear in the fabric of friendship. When Sir Winston died in 1965, LBJ let it be known that he would decline to attend the state funeral in London. Instead, he sent Chief Justice Earl Warren. Johnson reacted with bitter sarcasm to press inquiries as to why, if he declined to go himself, he would not at least send Vice President Humphrey:

“I may have made a mistake by asking a Chief Justice to go and not asking the Vice President. I will bear in mind in connection with any future funerals your very strong feelings in the matter and try to act in accordance with our national interest.”

Of a previous death in London, that of King Charles I, it was said: “He nothing common did or mean upon that memorable scene.” Lyndon Johnson did nothing common or mean, either, but only because he stayed home. Queen Elizabeth saved our honor then by inviting former President Eisenhower to be her personal guest.

Ronald Reagan revived the Grand Alliance. He and Margaret Thatcher were fast friends.

When Ronald Reagan became the first U.S. President to address the British House of Commons in 1982, he took care to wear a Royal Air Force tie. It was a visual reminder of Churchill’s tribute to the brave young fliers of the RAF: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

As we look back on the years of our lives, it’s interesting to note that all of Churchill’s greatest American friends – FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK and Ronald Reagan – died honored and loved by the people of this Great Republic, as well.

Just four years after he was hailed as a Caesar at his 1964 nominating convention, LBJ found he dare not show his face at his party’s convention in Chicago. Even his chosen successor, the hapless Hubert Humphrey, was hit by human excrement thrown by protesters and tear-gassed in his hotel by responding police as he claimed the mantle of party leadership. And who remembers Lyndon Johnson’s funeral?

I do not predict and certainly do not hope for such a fate for President Obama, or even believe he is snakebitten. I don’t think he has had just a run of bad luck. Nor do I think in my soul that he’s being haunted by Sir Winston’s ghost. Just don’t tell Bill Maher who founded BP–British Petroleum: It was Winston Churchill.

As much at home among titled English aristocrats as he was, Churchill also became the great commoner. All his life he defended democracy—the right of the people to govern themselves. And he boasted of his descent, on his American mother’s side, from the Indian princess Pocahontas.

One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to toss the bust of Winston Churchill out of the Oval Office. And as for any idea of a Special Relationship between the U.S. and Britain, there was none. The British were no different, as far as this White House was concerned, than any of the other 189 members of the UN.

Before the Waste Management truck comes to cart off what remains of the Special Relationship, it might be a good idea to recall what it was and why it was important.

Prior to 1939, there was still a great deal of hostility toward England and all things English in this country. Students in American high schools then learned a lot about our revolutionary struggles against the British monarchy. They probably also learned about some of the cruelties of our estranged “mother” country.

At the famous Battle of Bunker Hill, redcoats finally took the heights after a furious fight. Boston Patriot leader Dr. Joseph Warren took part in that struggle. “Act worthy of yourselves,” Dr. Warren told his men, in words that Ronald Reagan would quote in his First Inaugural Address. Reagan would not remind Americans that the victorious redcoats presented Dr. Warren’s head to their general as a trophy, in an act that marked them as savages.

Americans prior to World War II were taught that hundreds of our boys died during the revolution in rotting prison ships, stinking hulks tied to the docks of New York City. When our Continental soldiers tried to surrender to the redcoats on Long Island in 1776, Hessian mercenaries ran them through with their 17-inch bayonets. The heroic 21-year old Nathan Hale, convicted of spying in a drumhead court-martial, was even denied a chaplain to comfort his last moments on earth. It was Hale who, on the threshold of eternity, said: “I only regret I have but one life to give for my country.” His country was not England.

British troops conducted a campaign of rape and plunder across New Jersey in 1776. Their Hessian hirelings even stripped a Presbyterian army chaplain, forced him to his knees in the road, and killed him with thirteen stab wounds for the thirteen original states.

These are but a few of the stories—all documented—of British brutality against the American Patriots. Churchill knew all these stories. He knew our history better then than many of us know it now.

Churchill knew America better than any other British political leader of his day. He had traveled and lectured extensively in the U.S. He had many American friends. Almost alone among the leaders of the Conservative Party, Churchill actually liked Americans.

With the menace of Hitler’s formidable Nazi war machine arising across the Channel, Churchill instantly comprehended that Britain must have a closer tie, a Special Relationship, with what he called the Great Republic.

As war clouds gathering over Britain, Churchill began a correspondence with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He signed his letters “former naval person.”  In World War I, Churchill had been the leader of the Royal Navy, then the largest, most powerful in the world. He regularly informed FDR of events on the Continent and in Britain.

When Britain declared war on Germany following Hitler’s unprovoked attack on Poland in 1939, Churchill returned to the government, once again leading the Royal Navy. “Winston is Back” was the jubilant message cabled to every one of His Majesty’s Ships around the world. After nine months of phony war in the west, Hitler smashed through France’s weakened defenses and Churchill was catapulted into the Prime Minister’s office.

Instead of pathetically pleading for American help, as the hapless Premier of France had done when Hitler’s panzer tanks overran his country, Churchill argued that only British courage and resolve would gain Americans’ respect. As Hitler’s Luftwaffe rained down destruction on London, Churchill made sure the Nazi blitz was transmitted to American firesides by means of radio broadcasts. His stirring speeches to the British people were the lion’s roar of resistance to an unspeakable tyranny.

Churchill spoke unapologetically of protecting “our hearths and our altars.” Though no churchgoer himself, he readily acknowledged that Britain’s fight was a fight for “Christian civilization.”

Courageous himself, he inspired courage in others. And he warned of what would happen if they faltered:

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Listen to the proposals of this administration, to all of its schemes to create human beings and then to use them for experiments. Then they will kill those very human beings before they can breathe free. To hear of these plots is to comprehend that phrase “lights of perverted science.”

Maybe that’s why this administration doesn’t like Winston Churchill. With all its bowing and “reaching out” to what it terms “the Muslim world,” where is the understanding we used to have of Western civilization? Where is the spirited defense of human rights against an ideology of slavery and murder?

Today, let’s remember Churchill’s leadership and his eloquence. Let’s be thankful that at such a time, America had such a friend.

I never wanted to be a fly on the wall, but I do admit I’d like to have had Inspector Walter Thompson’s job. Inspector Thompson spent nearly twenty years guarding the life of Winston Churchill. The Scotland Yard policeman got an unparalleled opportunity to observe greatness—up close and personal.

A friend just gave me a copy of Assignment: Churchill, Walter Thompson’s fascinating 1955 memoir. Thompson describes himself as “tough as a telegraph wire” as a young police officer. He had to be. Many a time, he waded in to hostile mobs and menacing would-be assassins.

One of eleven kids born in a London slum, “Tommy” Thompson dropped out of school at age 8 to help support his family. If this is how English grammar school dropouts can write, I suggest all English lads be put out at eight.

Thompson hilariously describes how he and Winston rode camels in Egypt with the great Lawrence of Arabia in 1921. On a camel, Thompson says, there’s nothing to reach for but the sky. And the line leading to the ring in the camel’s nose has the same effect as “a bell rope in a dead castle.” Later in that same trip, Winston, the most garrulous of men, enters Jerusalem’s Garden of Gethsemane. There he remains, silent, for hours.

Thompson claims what no other writer I’ve ever read claims about Winston Churchill: that he was a “practicing Christian.” Thompson, clearly a believer himself, says that Churchill loved all the simple people. And he hated every form of unfairness.

Winston was a terrible pilot, Thompson said. He mastered every part of the new art of flying except takeoffs and landings. His driving was little better. Thompson describes Winston’s attempt to jump the queue trying to catch a ferry at Dover. He drove up on the sidewalk. The English “Bobby” who collared the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain’s No. 2 political post) and forced him back into line, leaned into the car and said very quietly, very icily: “Sir, you will try to keep it in the road, won’t you?”

How to square Winston’s hatred of unfairness with such antics? Well, he once had to make up with a valet who had quit in a huff. “You were rude to me,” Winston complained, knowing he had no time to find another. “Mr. Churchill, you were rude to me.” Unrepentant, Churchill answered impatiently: “I know. But I’m a great man.”

That’s not as bad as it sounds to our American ears. Great men in England are men who have the care of the state in their hearts. They are expected to lay down their own lives unhesitatingly for the protection of the Realm. This Churchill did not once, but many, many times.

Back to that fly. We all know about perversions of science. Those “transporters” in science fiction movies rely on the belief that man is nothing more than an accidental collocation of atoms. Those science fiction writers are brute materialists.

It was such men that Churchill had in mind when he warned, in 1940, that if the British failed to stand up to Hitler, then all that we have known and loved would sink into “the abyss of anew dark age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science.”

We see just such perverted science today when people argue that we can cure all disease by scavenging the bodies of embryonic human beings for their stem cells. We see the perversion of science when people like Princeton’s unethical “bioethicist” Peter Singer argue for killing handicapped children up to one year of age.

It is just such brute materialists, I fear, such purveyors of perverted science who will be named this week to President Obama’s new bioethics advisory commission.

Churchill, in his long career, went from being one of the Queen’s cavalry subalterns fighting Islamist dervishes in the Sudan to summit meetings at Potsdam, in defeated Germany, where atomic weapons were first discussed. He never lost sight of man’s spiritual nature. From London, he spoke to our University of Rochester (N.Y.) on 16 June 1941:

The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men’s souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

We are spirits, not animals. And it is our duty to resist the abuses of perverted science. I thank God for the life and work of Winston Churchill, born this day in 1874.