More literature references

Orwell has been used in reference to this administration in this blog and others. I was thinking about this the other day when Bruce Prescott over at Mainstream Baptist noted that the SBC publication had referred to SS as something close to socialism. Creeping socialism and loss of freedom have been dominant American themes for sometime.

Of course, many of those fears were legitimate. No one who observed the Soviet Union's purges or crackdowns on personal freedom could speak casually about communism. The funny thing is that I think we are closer to what we fear with a right wing President than anyone on the left.

Think about it. When people in this country refer to socialism, they mean the loss of freedom. Thought police; sending dissidents to gulags; and national id cards. Our president is taking us closer to this than anyone on the left in this country ever even considered. The Patriot Act has strengthened the power of police to impose on personal liberty--often without having to justify or even notify the person. We now have these obscenities called "free speech zones." The running joke is that the entire country used to be a "free speech zone." No more. Hell, the only thing that was good about socialism was the reduction in abject poverty. That came at a huge cost and I am not lauding it--but that is the only part of what we identify with socialism that we don't have now. We have the incroaching state--the removal of freedoms--the constant Orwellian language that reverses meaning--but by God, we will get rid of our safety nets and let the poor die in the streets.

And there is Orwell again. In one of the Star Trek films, Spock says that "only Nixon could go to China" meaning that only a conservative could engage with the communists. For some reason that has been bouncing around my head. Conservatives saw Orwell's novels as warnings about "creeping socialism" and the problems that came with them. They have been so trained to look to the left for danger signs, that they don't even see it when it happens. The biggest threat to individual liberty in the last 50 years is a Republican (though some would question his Republican credentials). What do conservatives do? Focus on abortion and gay people.

I am telling you. Bush and Rove quote Christ on camera, but they are reading Gramschi, Machiavelli, and Orwell off camera. Well, not Bush. He doesn't read. But his actions are more in line with those last three than the first. Time for the Church to stand up and demand that the President act his faith or shut up about it.