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01/28/2003 Archived Entry: "Orwell and intellectualism"

WHY ORWELL MATTERS BY CHRISTOPHER...ERRR....ORRIN JUDD: Brother Orrin over at Brothers Judd Blog posts a great essay about George Orwell that is a response to Louis Menand's assertion that what we commonly believe about the great writer is "a distortion of what he really thought and the kind of writer he was." That includes a hatred of the middle class that Menand says Orwell carried.

"Mr. Menand is right then to call him a middle class intellectual, but wrong that he hated the middle class, and, more importantly, fails to consider that the very term 'middle class intellectual' is an oxymoron. In any economically healthy democracy with a reasonably broad franchise the middle class will be the ultimate source of power in the State, simply because they will be, overwhelmingly, the largest group in society. This will necessarily tend to make the middle class conservative, in the very broad sense that will try to conserve the basic structures, traditions, etc. of the state they control. The powerful just don't tend to be risk takers where their own power is concerned. The philosophy of the middle class then, its intellectualism, tends to be rather conservative, traditional, and opposed to change or experimentation with a system that's working pretty well by their terms."

Brother Orrin says, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, Menand ought to check his premise about who he thinks Orwell was and what he believed. I'd write in support of Orrin but what would the point be? He nailed his points admirably.

Anyone who thinks blogs are a waste of time doesn't read the ones captained by cats like Orrin Judd.