‘The Guardian Goes Full Orwell’
January 15th, 2011 - 3:08 pm
The Public Secrets blog notes:
I realize the UK’s Guardian is pretty far down toward the Left end of the scale, but does
CommissarSimon Jenkins realize just how… dumb this headline and summary sounds?Free speech can’t exist unchained. US politics needs the tonic of order
If America is to speak in a way that heals, as Obama wishes, it needs the curbs and regulations that make freedom of expression real
Didn’t guys named “Benito” and “Adolph” say much the same thing in the last century?
Well, think of it as the liberal fascisti, or enlightened Nazism, as another Guardian-approved writer said 80 years ago.
But then, as I wrote earlier today at the Tatler, it’s Orwell’s world, we’re just living in it:
- “NYC Schools Chancellor Cathie Black jokes solution for overcrowded classrooms is ‘birth control’”
- Seattle Family “charged ‘death tax’ for baby who lived one hour.”
And of course in retrospect, the Guardian went full Orwell long ago.
The amount of irony available in the universe is inversely proportional to the level of self-awareness.
Are you really saying that the more self-aware you are, the LESS irony? I’m doomed!
“The tonic of order”? It even SOUNDS like the 1930s.
No thank you.
We have the ‘tonic of order’ here, Mr. Jenkins. Elections every two years.
Looks as if Mr. Jenkins did not get the memo. We settled who runs this country two and a quarter centuries ago. It isn’t him.
“Free speech can’t exist unchained.”
Why not?
Thanks for the link, Ed!
“Free speech can’t exist unchained.”
I just had a little talk with Free Speech. She says she can do very well without the chains, thank you.
Give Jenkins a little credit. I’m sure he’d fight to the death for “Piss Christ”.
I think they meant the ‘TeuTonic of order’.
The “tonic of order”, huh? By Obama’s very own healing words it would seem that the order of U.S. allies follows thusly:
1. France
2. Great Britain
On second thought, number two might be Cuba or something. You never know with this White House; a bust of Castro could be en route as we speak.
“If America is to speak in a way that heals, as Obama wishes, it needs the curbs and regulations that make freedom of expression real”
That may well be the most ridiculous sentence I’ve ever read.
Summing up in a nutshell the idiocy of the left. You’re free to say whatever you like… as long as we approve of it.
After all, “hate speech isn’t free speech,” and “hate speech” seems to be more or less whatever the left finds offensive. And isn’t there a constitutional right not to be offended? (This right does not extend to white males or Jews, of course.)
To expand on what Steve said in #4, we settled who runs this country by means of everybody picking up a gun and shooting at all the guys in red coats who thought they ought to do it.
I just saw this in the Guardian from someone who used to be, maybe still is, on the conservative/libertarian end of the spectrum, but sure sounds Guardianish here. As well as totally misreading the American zeitgeist. That’s what happens when you live in Britain for too long. Like, a year.
With the educational system in shambles here and in Great Britain,
do the Guardianistas know who Orwell is?
There is a varnish of truth here, that a productive discourse for resolution of political options has a’ priori conditions. An appeal to common reason, an agreement on facts and reality, willness to subject one’s propositions to evaluation by others, among others.
The Left feels bound by none of these, or any other restraint, so there is no discourse with them. When they argue
to keep discussion polite to reach some end of supposed social harmony, what they mean is that we shut up in the presence of our superiors.
Simon Jenkins as far behind the curve as Eric Blair was ahead of it.
UnRegWords are doubleplus ungood!
You should have read to the end: “Free speech cannot exist without chains”.
Now there’s an Orwellian statement.
“Free speech can’t exist unchained.”
Let’s see. Unchained means free. So…it translates (from lefty doublespeak to normal English) as free speech can’t exist if it’s free.
Makes about as much sense as any other drivel spewed by leftists.
Sounds like he ordered a double when he hit the tonic before writing the column…
Not that the headline is anything but gross and stupid, of course, and I’m sure it reflects the article’s content; but in Britain journalists and commentators don’t write the headlines for their work. They’re supplied by newspaper sub-editors. I don’t know how it works over there.
Three problems of Wells’ vision are 1) its appeal: who wouldn’t want to be ruled by the best rulers possible?, 2) it’s a lie: in the political sphere, the people of the abyss (the sociopathic, scheming, self-interested, and professional politicians) easily master Wells’ samurai aristocracy; 3) the Wells’ aristocracy pretends (and actually believes itself) to be ruling the best interest of the race (Hitler) or of the people (Mussolini) or of the state (Stalin) but sccumbs to corruption impelled by avarice and masked by self-delusion (Gore).
Jenkins is one of those fools who wishes for a Hitler, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Stalin, et. al. who he wrongly believes will rule in Jenkins’ interest and, along the way, crush Jenkins’ enemies. The EU is on this path already. Let us not lift a finger nor raise a voice to save them. If the 20th century didn’t convince EUropeans of the vileness of their philosophies, nothing will.
I like the rules about posting on a thread about how evil it is to put limits on free speech. Also when fascist start looking liberal to you, you may have moved to far right.
@ Ben. Well said, sir! I can’t help but notice the vitriol aimed at a person who is simply telling us how to make our freedom of speech work for us instead of against us. Does anyone here think that the British live under a repressive regime? No, yet they don’t sond as ridiculous as we do either.
Are the responses here serious? The “Left’s” position is to curtail speech? LOL. Some grammar-challenged pundit makes an off the cuff remark about how “free speech” needs some limits, and uses the word “chains,” and now, all the “rightists(???)” think that “the Left” wants to rein in all forms of speech. Get real. The “left” in the present day is any scientist, politician or corporate executive who reveals what’s actually going on. The “right” is everyone else. You can have all the opinions you want about stuff, but PEER REVIEW is what makes things real. You can call out the CBO, denigrate 99% of scientists, attack half-witted fools like this one, but it won’t change a thing: when taxes are raised, middle class wages rise, when they are lowered for the rich, middle class wages go down. When large countries allow their goods to be made by slaves, owned almost completely by Republicans and their commie allies in business, then Americans lose jobs. When Reagan deregulated S&L’s, we lost 2 Trillion in capital in 2 years, and Stockman later admitted that this was THE PLAN, in order to DENY DEMOCRATS MONEY FOR SOCIAL PROGRAMS. These are FACTS. But forget facts, just keep believing whatever pap your lastest angry loud mouth has to say to make you feel anger and elation.
Owl -
A misnomer if I ever heard one.
“When Reagan deregulated S&L’s, we lost 2 Trillion in capital in 2 years … ”
That’s nothing. When the dot.com Bubba Bubble cracked almost exactly one year before Clinton left office, the NASDAQ fell $2.5 trillion before Clinton’s term was up. Government revenues and tax receipts, the GDP, and the markets were falling like a coyote off a cliff as Clinton departed, and they continued to fall for nearly three more years. The Clinton Recession added $3 trillion to the national debt and the collapse of the Democrats’ Unaffordable Housing Program has since added an additional $5 trillion to the national debt.
I am looking at the GDP figures and graph during the Reagan years, and there is absolutely nothing that indicates “we lost 2 Trillion in capital in 2 years”. According to my firm recollection and according to answers.com, the S&L scandal began in the late 1970s (during the Carter Catastrophe, which resulted in President Reagan’s election) and involved massive fraud. I seem to recall that some Democrat congressmen lost their jobs because of their involvement in that fraud.
The DOW flat-lined from 1965 to 1982 when LBJ began taking hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy each year ($6.6 trillion from 1965 to 1995). Reagan restored investment growth and jobs, and the Democrats have never forgiven him. Whatever S&L capital was lost from the Carter Catastrophe was recovered by Reagan’s superb economic management. Reagan is the only president who had a degree in economics, but not from Harvard University, fortunately.
“PEER REVIEW” is what the lying global warmists/climate changists/Al Gorithmists did when they were trying to perpetrate a worldwide fraud.
Owl -
Peer Review? More Leftist (leadership worthy of all Orwellian socialist representation) doublespeak for “whatever my own self-interested sphere of like-minded, self-approving, self-influenced circle of people deem appropriate.” Peer review is a joke. Someone wants a pat on the back? Peer review your work.
Professors want tenure? Peer review. Quasi-scientist want a “prize”…Peer Review.
The real meaning of Peer Review is intellectual circle-jerk.
Simon Jenkins has been one of those strange reverse barometers his entire journalistic career. Essentially, whatever he says you can be sure that the truth is 100% diametrically opposite. It’s actually quite handy: in order to know what to think about an issue, simply read Jenkins and assume the contrary.
I totally agree, free speech can not exist unless it is restrained. Free implies will, which we all know we don’t have freewill. Freewill is the rubbish you hear about in fantasy novels that empowers you with the idea that you are capable of substantial change either internally and/or externally in the world around you.
On top of redefining free speech in order to legitimately outlaw it, a verification system needs to be put in place. People must register if they are leftists or rightists. People can then say whatever they want as long as it coincides with his or her sphere of influence. This subscription of ideologies will allow us to accurately identify terrorists interested in causing conflict and discord in our society.
I find the most Orwellian thing about the article is the uproar it has caused in people who think they actually have free speech. Free speech died in the U.S., no later than, when free speech zones were put in place. In person is the only sure way you can practice unfiltered/unaltered free speech, which if it is at a venue with a lot of people, where it actually matters, you will most likely be arrested or worse. On the internet etc., the speech is filtered, monitored, and regulated with these supposed healthy *curbs*.
Anyways, something as non-existent as free speech is the least of people’s worries. Additionally, how can you genuinely express free speech if you’ve been socially engineered your whole life?