I was thinking the other day that it is good that George Orwell isn't alive to see what's happening. Then I reflected that perhaps it would be better if he was; he might actually have something to say about it. Perhaps he could snap us out of the stupor into which we've fallen... and make it clear whether two legs or four legs are, in fact, better.
Only the most recent examples:
The White House has begun an advertising campaign to support the President's illegal alien amnesty executive order. Now, the President had stated on over twenty separate occasions that he did not have the Constitutional authority to issue such an order. I heard him say it myself. Yet, when he did issue the order, he claimed that it was within his Constitutional authority to do so.
Two legs or four?
The thrust of the current PR campaign is to convince the American public that amnesty is good for the economy. Yet just six years ago in one of his memoirs (how many is a man entitled to?), the President stated that amnesty for illegals would be bad for the economy.
Four legs or two?
The President celebrated the release of Sgt. Bergdahl in a Rose Garden ceremony, and his National Security adviser declared on television that he had served honorably and with distinction. Now the Army has concluded that he was a deserter and will bring charges against him, and the White House is doing everything it can to prevent both the release of the findings and the pressing of charges. "Bergdahl is a hero," runs the logic, "and so we must not allow the public to know that he is a deserter."
Two legs or four?
And now, in the latest Orwellian contortion of logic, the Administration declares that the Taliban are not a terrorist organization. These are the same Taliban who offered a safe haven to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan from which 9/11 was planned, who have carried on an unrelenting and merciless campaign of terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan, who shot a Nobel Peace Prize winning child in the head for trying to attend school, who slaughtered an entire school full of children, and who, just yesterday, murdered two Americans in an attack on an airbase disguised as Afghan soldiers. They are the same Taliban who stone women to death for adultery, cut off the hands of thieves, and behead people in soccer stadiums for violating Sharia law. They are, by any conceivable definition of the word, among the most dangerous terrorists in the world. Yet, as of today, according to Mr. Obama's press secretary, they are not a terrorist organization, they are an "armed insurgency."
And why? The Administration negotiated with the Taliban for the release of Sgt. Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban terrorist leaders. But the longstanding policy of the United States has been that we do not negotiate with terrorists. Yet we did negotiate with the Taliban, and so, deductively, the Taliban must not be terrorists. They are, instead, an armed insurgency. Just like the Continental Army.
Four legs or two?
Orwell made famous the question of how many legs are good, how many bad, to make the point that some leaders will distort logic to any extent necessary to serve their personal and political agendas. Doing so has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration. And allowing this President to get away with such egregious lies and contradictions has been a hallmark of the media which did so much to put him, and keep him, in office. Mercifully, he will be gone in a year and a half. What troubles me is that the same servile media who have covered for him these past six years will still be in place after he is gone.
And Hillary Clinton looms.
