Editor’s Message

What the government takes from it citizens, it rarely gives back. That includes power and rights.

It would seem odd that author George Orwell would write a book that almost precisely describes where we are at now in our country and across the world.

Human beings appear to be less important to politicians than complete power – even if it hurts the population and destroys the economy.

Published in 1950, George Orwell wrote in his “1984” novel:

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.

“The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

As I watch our government, and others around the world claiming to be “free” democracies fall to the allure of complete power over their citizens, stripping them of hope of freedom – I think George Orwell’s book may not have been fiction at all, but a foretelling of the future.

Benjamin Franklin also gave a warning.

“"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Without liberty, there is no safety.