Orwell and Stalinism

If you don't visit Neo-neocon, you are really missing some great stuff. This is a particularly chilling description of the American Left.

Does this look familiar?

It is in the nature of Stalinism for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying—and not only to others, but first of all to themselves—a fundamental part of their lives. It is always a mistake to assume that Stalinists do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically For their loyalty is to something other than the truth. And no historical enormity is so great, no personal humiliation or betrayal so extreme, no crime so heinous that it cannot be assimilated into the ‘ideals’ that govern the true Stalinist mind which is impervious alike to documentary evidence and moral discrimination.”

She concludes:

Of course, rationalization and denial of facts that don’t fit a person’s previously held beliefs is not just a province of the Left. It’s a general human trait, and that is why a mind is a difficult thing to change. But the Left carefully nurtures, fosters, advocates, and even requires this sort of denial, whereas it is my observation that the Right (and this was something that was formative in my own change experience), while hardly immune, is much less demanding that its adherents dismiss and deny logic and inconvenient facts.

There is much more. Stop in and see.