Terry Jones

One of several things I admire about Orwell is that he doesn’t pull any punches and he turns his guns on all comers. Here’s a nice passage from a 1943 review of Beggar My Neighbour by Lionel Fielden.

In the last twenty years western civilization has given the intellectual security without responsibility, and in England, in particular, it has educated him in scepticism while anchoring him almost immovably in the privileged class. He has been in the position of a young man living on an allowance from a father whom he hates. The result is a deep feeling of guilt and resentment, not combined with any genuine desire to escape. But some psychological escape, some form of self-justification there must be, and one of the most satisfactory is transferring nationalism. During the nineteen-thirties the normal transference was to soviet Russia, but there are other alternatives, and it is noticeable that pacifism and anarchism, rather than Stalinism, are now gaining ground among the young. These creeds have the advantage that they aim at the impossible and therefore in effect demand very little. If you throw in a touch of oriental mysticism and Buchmanite raptures over Gandhi, you have everything that a disaffected intellectual needs. The life of an English gentleman and the moral attitudes of a saint can be enjoyed simultaneously.

And there’s more.

Today I resurrected as many of my old postings as I could find. I think I have about half. I’m still saddened by the loss of all those words. I can never believe it when I hear of writers who burn things, throw them away, etc. I even keep scraps of paper from 20 or more years ago that I wrote on. I don’t know why I place such value on simple words, but I do.

Anyway, I missed my blog. I miss some of the postings that are now gone forever.

I’m going to blog every single day, at least for today. Watch me.