Churchill and Orwell

by Thomas E. Ricks

core principles of liberal democracy: freedom of thought, speech, and association.

Orwell and Churchill recognized that the key question of their century ultimately was not who controlled the means of production, as Marx thought, or how the human psyche functioned, as Freud taught, but rather how to preserve the liberty of the individual during an age when the state was becoming powerfully intrusive into private life.

Orwell once wrote, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”—most

Orwell’s most famous comments, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

the powerful would almost always try to obscure the truth.

This set him on his life’s work, to push continually to establish the facts, no matter how difficult or unpopular that might be.

“a communist and a fascist are somewhat nearer to one another than either is to a democrat.”