Funny, these wealthy people only get Socialism, and ideas outside their own expertise after they make their billions. It seems to empower them that they know everything about anything. Bill Gates is a 0 population socialist now, I doubt very much he even knew what that was when He was 26.

He was a socialist who had glimpses of the results of socialism, but was not yet convinced that you can't have one without the other. A stubborn but insightful man; I'd like to bring him back from the dead, to see if he can still believe the same way now.

Thank You.

Orwell was a socialist.

Michael Berliner, ed, Letters of Ayn Rand https://estore.aynrand.org/p/259/lett...

One can always tell a man's character by his private letters.

I've heard and read it; that Orwell was part of the Illuninati;(and I've always kept a ? beside that statement) but that doesn't jive with his personal writings or the book 1984 for that matter...so either that's bunk or there is more here than meets the eye.

Very interesting post...Thank You

"Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side." This describes for me virtually every Republican and Democrat politician, and the majority of those who vote for them.

With the exception of his views on government and the supposed "success" of the Soviet Union, everything else was spot on correct! Not bad for something written in 1944! Most of his writings are a great warning for the garbage that we are suffering today! Crony-capitalism, Market Socialism, Big Government out of control and leaders that all want to be Caezars with the worst of the lot currently infesting the WH!

we must continue making it the better cause ... Well Said, Sir!!! -- j
.

So because a couple of people with more money than sense hold those political positions the entire category is condemned ? I think there are just as many on the other side of the political divide, like the Koch bros - who are professed Libertarians - and Wynn from Vegas, etc. to indicate that Soros does not represent all millionaires or billionaires. He certainly doesnt speak for me !

True, raw democracy can be the tool used to deliver the chains of tyranny.

The concept of democracy arose (again) from a world where the default belief was in god-selected totalitarian kings who by their nature and existence could control your life, your religion, your trade. If the Rome of Western European civilization collapses under the weight of the Volkerwanderung of the immigration of technologically and socially less developed peoples, we will not loose nearly as much as we did in the 'real' Dark Ages.

Why? Because, the printing press. There are millions of copies of the works of freedom (and recipes for apple pie) whereas the fall of Rome had only tens of copies of its documents.

We may fall again, but it will not be so far. I would expect that general tech would fall as far as 1900; medical tech...probably about 1950. And the legend of freedom will not be suppressed. If you doubt this, please watch the movie "The Singing Revolution" and see how resilient the little country of Estonia proved to be in spite of being brutalized by both Stalin and Hitler.

Unfortunately, the warning that Orwell gave reflected the opinion that 'we' - the democratic countries - had the duty to revise the political system of peaceful and relatively benign countries we judged to be less advanced: overthrow their totalitarian regimes in favor of governments that we thought better represented the populace. If we had avoided that arrogance, the world would be more stable. (Their people have the right to evolve their own government system from the ground up - perhaps coming up with one better than ours.)

Jan

In "1984", Orwell demonstrates what a totalitarian state can be from the inside out. Can't you just see Donald Trump's face superimposed on Big Brother? It is a brilliant piece of writing and can be read side by side with "We The Living."
The letter, if read carefully shows the flaws in Orwell's thinking, and the fallacies in his premises, but still, he was an author worth reading, books and letters together. It makes me wonder if there is a cache of Rand's letters that would make an interesting publication.

"Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer."

Raw democracy can also be a great danger. Without a respect for individual rights, democracy simply devolves into a system where ever changing mob majorities constantly justify taking what the groupthinking crowds want by forcing others to work and eventually pay for its wants.

I take exception to conflating Stalin and Anglo-American millionaires.

Good read and great site, AJ Txs

Hello AJAshinoff,
Good find.
Thank you,
O.A.

Wow.

I agree, worth reading.