Sunday, August 15, 2010
Some thoughts from Orwell
We were poking around the other night on our Roku and found the BBC documentary archives with a segment called "Useful Idiots". (See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p008vd41.) They cited a paraphrased quote from George Orwell, "There are some things that are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them." In searching for a citation, I could not find this quote exactly; but something very like it appears in an Orwell essay Notes on Nationalism, May, 1945. He uses the word "nationalism" for something very broad - the belief and defense of the superiority of a group. This group might be a nationality, or a belief system. It's still applicable and worth a read: http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/nationalism.html
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