Thread by @BillKristol

1. Short Orwell 🧵.

By the way, how great is Orwell? Here are excerpts from the short book review, from January 1939, containing the famous "restatement of the obvious" line:

2. From George Orwell's review of Bertrand Russell’s 'Power: A New Social Analysis,' January 1939.

"If there are certain pages of Mr. Bertrand Russell’s book, Power, which seem rather empty, that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth...

3. "...at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men...Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion...

4. "The most interesting part of Mr. Russell’s book is the earlier chapters in which he analyses the various types of power—priestly, oligarchical, dictatorial, and so forth. In dealing with the contemporary situation he is less satisfactory...

5. "...because like all liberals he is better at pointing out what is desirable than at explaining how to achieve it. He sees clearly enough that the essential problem of today is 'the taming of power' and that no system except democracy can be trusted to save us...

6. "...from unspeakable horrors. Also that democracy has very little meaning without approximate economic equality and an educational system tending to promote tolerance and tough-mindedness. But unfortunately he does not tell us how we are to set about getting these things;

7. "he merely utter what amounts to a pious hope that the present state of things will not endure. He is inclined to point to the past; all tyrannies have collapsed sooner or later, and 'there is no reason to suppose (Hitler) more permanent than his predecessors.'

8. "Underlying this is the idea that common sense always wins in the end. And yet the peculiar horror of the present moment is that we cannot be sure that this is so...Mr. Russell is one of the most readable of living writers, and it is very reassuring to know that he exists.

9. "So long as he and a few others like him are alive and out of jail, we know that the world is still sane in parts...He has an essentially decent intellect, a kind of intellectual chivalry which is far rarer than mere cleverness.

10. "Few people during the past thirty years have been so consistently impervious to the fashionable bunk of the moment. In a time of universal panic and lying he is a good person to make contact with. "

END