The second driver of the current Orwell boom is the post-9/11 rise of the intelligence state. - Thomas E. Ricks

Even so, his friend the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge would conclude that “he was at heart strongly anti-Semitic.” At

personal attacks on the morals and ethics of emerging opponents, often describing them as disloyal conspirators. Some of this surfaced in squabbles between cabinet members. But it became public in the pages of the fiercely partisan newspapers of the day, as they battled over the defining issues of the decade — Hamilton’s plans for the federal government, the proper response to the Whiskey Rebellion, the meaning of the French Revolution, and finally, the Federal counterattack on the newspapers themselves, in the form of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Chapter 12
The Classical

We can all endeavor to do the same, pursuing the facts of the matter, especially about the past of our own country. Facts are impressively dual in their effects. “Truth and reconciliation” meetings in Argentina, South Africa, and in parts of Spain’s Basque country have demonstrated that facts are marvelously effective tools — they can rip down falsehoods but can also lay the foundations for going forward. For democracies to thrive, the majority must respect the rights of minorities to dissent, loudly. The accurate view almost always will, at first, be a minority position. Those in power often will want to divert people from the hard facts of a given matter, whether in Russia, Syria, or indeed at home. Why did it take so long for white Americans to realize that our police often treat black Americans as an enemy to be intimidated, even today? Why do we allow political leaders who have none of Churchill’s fealty to traditional institutions to call themselves “conservatives”? The struggle to see things as they are is perhaps the fundamental driver of Western civilization. There is a long but direct line from Aristotle and Archimedes to Locke, Hume, Mill, and Darwin, and from there through Orwell and Churchill to the “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” It is the agreement that objective reality exists, that people of goodwill can perceive it, and that other people will change their views when presented with the facts of the matter.