B.P. Terpstra
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell exposed Labour’s state socialism, Stalinism, and politically–correct intellectuals, among other tools.
Adored by conservatives, the dystopian novel, helps us understand the adjective, Orwellian, aka the “Official encouragement of policies contributing to the socio-economic disintegration of the family.” Here’s why:
Energy
“Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week.”
Control the energy and you control the people. The fact is less energy for the average citizen means more energy for state-serving purposes. There are always hidden economic reasons to reduce energy too. You see, the unaccountable government asks you to do more with less, gaining more control over families in the process.
Marriage
“In all questions of morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral code. The sexual puritanism of the Party was not imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished, divorce was permitted.”
Puzzled? The totalitarian state promotes selective promiscuity and sanctifies expressive marriage breakups among the people because the state sees them as animals. “Proles and animals are free.”
Likewise, the early Red Russians, encouraged marriage breakups through easy-to-send postcard divorces. Sexual orientations from bigamy to incest were also nonjudgmentally decriminalized.
Statists adopt new seasonal libertarian codes, because family-destroying liberties mean more government dependence when you think about it, not less.
Prostitution
“Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed.”
George Orwell distrusted government-endorsed libertine positions. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the state acknowledged the destructiveness of prostitution among its own, which is why elites encouraged the lower classes to embrace their animal instincts. “The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it.”
In Bible-based Christianity, sex-related ethics apply to all believers. In contrast, the state sees people as tribe members and power-hungry bureaucrats selectively apply rules.
Birth
“All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions.”
The controlling state has undeclared and declared ideological purposes, however unrealistic. The artificial insemination culture is not about choice but playing god. In communist Russia too, the art was not only endorsed but used to promote nonjudgmental human-to-animal insemination projects.
Big Brother was no brother, of course. While encouraging prostitution on the outside, the Party also encouraged celibacy for young members on the inside because the state was the family. The public institution was your mother and father.
Education
“The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed [by 2050]. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be.”
Bold literature means thinking time for students. Better, therefore, to erase or water down the works of greats, and replace them with government-approved literature, in service of socialist ideals.
Mind you, today’s union-first educators endorse cultural relativism, or a world where Shakespeare’s sonnets sit alongside Gore’s poetry. For when trash is invited in, wisdom is often shown the door.
Religion
“Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards.”
Reports of religious abuses (real or imagined) make for great campfire stories, sing-alongs and socialist-endorsed curriculums. Totalitarian regimes love them. 100 million-plus people died under communism, but so what?
The genius of Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it exposes the dangers of the state-as-god ethos, which when combined with a surveillance culture, equals hell. In a controlling thought system, “the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterise our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party…” Under secular priests, we’re all laboratory rats.
Confession
“I allowed the word ‘God’ to remain at the end of the line. I could not help it!”
Political incorrectness is blasphemy. In a toxic relationship, citizens are made to feel guilty for using the “G” word while prostitution is legalized. In the above case, one tool of the state was producing “a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling” and couldn’t avoid the religious line.
While voluntary confession, balanced with grace, is a part of healthy religions, the left’s confession culture is cultic. Indeed, even the word sorry is used as a stage for guilt-inducing political purposes.
Another fun conservative fact: one of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s most memorable characters is named Julia, without a surname. Some critics say she was a backstabber. But who dares to see our glorious Prime Minister in Nineteen Eighty-Four? Or Bob Brown? Orwell’s dystopian novel, after all, promotes critical-thinking questioners and therefore healthier families.