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