Volume 5, Issue 23
Most activists and many leaders today attempt to define truth through their own jaded eyes for an ulterior purpose of justifying their own political views or to increase their economic or political power. In this process, they conjure up scenarios wherein those who don’t agree with them must be silenced, or worse, eliminated. The tragic example of this today is the ongoing partisan political debate in Washington, DC, other capitals of Western Europe and college campuses.
What makes Orwell and Churchill exemplary, and secures their place in history, is that they sought truth in its natural state.
These men both took a step back from the world in which they lived, and asked the simple question unselfishly - what is truth that renders benefits to all mankind equally?
They couldn’t have been more different in their political origins, yet they were in fact very similar in their compassion for individual liberty. Orwell was a commoner and a democratic socialist who fought against societal injustice. Churchill was a nobleman, born of privilege, who fought for the right of individuals to participate in government. They did not believe that they were somehow innately ordained to determine truth through their own experience and intellect. They looked at the facts and determined a conclusion based upon the reality of the times. In other words, they allowed principles to lead them to the truth rather than analyzing facts through the personal lens of their individual desires.
George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, came to the conclusion through his experiences of war that Joseph Stalin was a dictator who so controlled the people that he suppressed independent thought. Under Stalin’s rule, it was a crime to think independently of the State. From this example, he wrote the novel Nineteen Eight-Four, in which the omnipresent surveillance of government, acting as Big Brother, would destroy liberty and the purpose of human individuality.
Winston Churchill, raised in a peerage and having held various positions in government and the military, also through the experiences of war, came to the conclusion that democracy was the best form of government to protect the purpose of the individuality of mankind. He believed that not only must democracy be protected, but totalitarianism must be confronted.
Both men, coming from divergent political views of the left and right, believed that total government control was stifling and oppressive to the human spirit. They each came to this conclusion by taking a step back from their prejudices to reflect on the reality of the world they sensed was in jeopardy. They sought eternal principles, unfiltered through the lens of their personal ideologies. They were unselfish in their search in that they sought truth that provides for the relief, dignity, and prosperity for all mankind. They separated reality from their blurred personal political perceptions.
They were seeking the natural state of truth.
It is also important to note that Churchill and Orwell were of sequential generations. Churchill was born in 1874. Orwell was born in 1903. Two men from different generations, from different economic backgrounds, and from different formative political views, from 1933 to 1935, came to the same conclusion about man and government. Freedom is paramount to advance liberty and prosperity.
The national press and progressive elites would have you believe that the United States is losing its position as a world leader. Why? Because the U.S. government has not embraced the Paris Agreement on climate, NATO, and other world initiatives. The United States today is stronger than ever. We have the only military capable of striking anywhere in the world at any given time. We have the only worldwide Navy, Air Force, and strategic military bases. We are the largest economy and the largest banking system. But most importantly, we manage the world’s currency. If the U.S. is so weak, then why did Chinese President Xi Jinping ask for a meeting with President Trump and agree to meet at the President’s personal country club and personal residence, especially after a rather vitriolic political campaign season? It is because China needs help in stabilizing their sovereign currency, the yuan, which is struggling to be traded in world foreign exchange markets.
Europe, or course, has made substantial progress in the development of their governments as democracies. But let’s not forget that it was the United States in 1776 that broke from the tradition and concept that kings are supreme by declaring our own independence. It is the United States, by committing its honor to the concept that birth is not destiny, that laid the foundation for Orwell’s and Churchill’s final pronouncements of stated principle.
Graduates walking out of commencement speeches, students refusing to allow diversity of ideas, and liberal elites demanding that President Trump reform his philosophy or be impeached, are examples of groups and institutions seeking truth to justify their own selfish perspectives rather than seeking the natural state of truth.
George Orwell and Winston Churchill pursued the definition of truth in its purest state. They separated true reality from delusional mendacity. Once they had satisfied themselves on their statement of truth, they committed their lives to defending it. They both faced criticism. Orwell once responded, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Many people of faith today, sound and consistent in their commitment to their beliefs, feel persecuted. Churchill at one time was exiled for demanding that Hitler be confronted. But he always stood firm in defending truth against contemporary thought. In a 1938 radio broadcast to London and the United States, Churchill spoke these words,
“The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.”
It is not just the respect for the opinions of others that is essential; it is the recognition that none of us is supreme in our own opinion.
Great leaders who have sought and defended truth in its natural state have all, at one time, been ostracized and isolated by the Establishment in their effort to sustain a prevailing view of thought. Change causes an unraveling that is unsettling to the status quo. Freedom can be a scary proposition to those in power. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and yes, even Donald Trump, are examples of leaders who have been pilloried by the intellectuals of their day.
It is not process and protocol that are critical to the governing element. It is seeking the natural state of truth and committing to the defense of its integrity that advances the dignity and opportunity of mankind.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?