[Peace-discuss] The "two faces" of Winston Churchill

[C. G. Estabrook]

  Yes, although for obvious reasons our intellectual institutions don't want to 
admit it:

"The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He,
Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short
a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his
own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all
others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the
same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth.* 'Who controls
the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past.'* And yet the past, though of its nature
alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from
everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was
an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control',
they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'..."


On 8/16/10 11:44 AM, John W. wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:31 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
>          ... gentle nurse,
>     I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night,
>     For I have need of many orisons
>     To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
>     Which, well thou know'st, is cross, and full of sin.
>
>     Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?
>     Use them after your own honour and dignity.
>     The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
>     Take them in.
>
>     David is in fact engaged in a godly enterprise - getting things right,
>     rather than acquiescing in an imperial mythology that promotes
>     the murder of innocents today.  That surely is sin.
>
> The latter, or the former?  *smile*  Yes, the murder of innocents surely is 
> sin.  Is that what Hitler....errr, I mean Churchill was engaged in?  And FDR?  
> And Abraham Lincoln?  And all the other luminaries whom you gentlemen despise?
>
>     On 8/16/10 11:11 AM, John W. wrote:
>>     I hope G*d is more merciful in His assessment of the two of you than you
>>     are in your assessment of virtually every human being on earth, living
>>     and dead.  Meanwhile, though, it must be glorious to possess such
>>     Olympian wisdom derived from books.
>>
>>     On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:04 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
>>     <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>          Nicely put.
>>
>>
>>         On 8/16/10 10:42 AM, David Green wrote:
>>
>>             http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
>>
>>             I don't think that there is as much irony or mystery about WC as
>>             Greenwald and
>>             NYT reviewer Hari make out to be. Hari refers disparigingly to
>>             Nicholson Baker's
>>             "Human Smoke," which I think gets WC about right. He was a
>>             monster. There is no
>>             more reason to revere Churchill for "defeating" Hitler than there
>>             is to revere
>>             Stalin, who in fact really did defeat him. I was not surprised by
>>             the NYT
>>             review, only a little surprised by Hari, and somewhat more
>>             surprised by
>>             Greenwald's take.
>>
>>             DG
>>
>
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