Churchill, Orwell and the Essence of Western Society

Yesterday I listened to an inspiring Fresh Air interview with Tom Ricks, who recently wrote a book about Winston Churchill and George Orwell.

At first glance, these two British heroes appear to have little in common, but in fact they were similar in many ways.

Both men started their careers as war correspondents. They saw first-hand how people from both the political left and the right interpreted these horrific events to justify their own views and agendas. Due to these experiences, both men became keenly interested in the notion of objective truth, and language as a tool to promote or corrode that truth. Both men also cautioned against the dangers of political manipulation and propaganda. Ultimately, they spent their professional careers fighting against totalitarianism, and advocating for freedom and independent thought.

Ricks ended the interview with a powerful summary of what he calls “the essence of Western society” embodied by both men: that objective truth exists, is knowable and must be sought. In Ricks’s words, the critical formula for living in such a society can be distilled as follows:

“First of all, you need to have principles. You need to stand by those principles and remember them.

Second, you need to look at reality to observe facts and not just have opinions and to say, what are the facts of the matter?

Third, you need to act upon those facts according to your principles.”

It might seem obvious, but today, as people are bombarded with an overwhelming amount of information from the media, politicians, corporations and other interest groups, it is absolutely critical to take this formula to heart.