George Orwell, my favorite writer and intellectual hero, died in 1950. But he had much to say that seems awfully relevant this morning.
The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions—racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war—which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action … nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than … sanity.More of Orwell's observations on the 2014 elections after the steaming orange pile of reality.George Orwell, Wells, Hitler and the World State (1941)