Churchill and Orwell

by Thomas E. Ricks

When there is no coherent strategy, tactics, no matter how flashily executed, become meaningless.

Less noted about the essay is that it isn’t simply against bad writing, it is suspicious of what motivates such prose. He argues that writing that is obscure, dull, and Latinate is made that way for a purpose—generally, in order to disguise what is really happening. “Political language . . . is designed to make its lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

They responded with courage and clear-sightedness. If there is anything we can take away from them, it is the wisdom of employing this two-step process, especially in times of mind-bending crisis: Work diligently to discern the facts of the matter, and then use your principles to respond.

To refuse to run with the herd is generally harder than it looks. To break with the most powerful among that herd requires unusual depth of character and clarity of mind. But it is a path we should all strive for if we are to preserve the right to think, speak, and act independently, heeding the dictates not of the state or of fashionable thought but of our own consciences. In most places and most of the time, liberty is not a product of military action. Rather, it is something alive that grows or diminishes every day, in how we think and communicate, how we treat each other in our public discourse, in what we value and reward as a society, and how we do that.