George Orwell pointed out that one of the first casualties of socialism is language. The damage is not collateral, it is deliberate—designed to numb minds and render critical thought difficult or impossible. The instrument of this dumbing down in Nineteen Eighty-Four was Newspeak, the official language of the English Socialist Party (Ingsoc). Newspeak was a sort of totalitarian Esperanto that sought gradually to diminish the range of what was thinkable by eliminating, contracting, and manufacturing words.

Two of the leading British moral philosophers in the years after the end of World War II clashed about America’s dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and their clash has much to teach us about the principles that should govern a free society. The two thinkers are R.M. Hare and Elizabeth Anscombe. I’ll start with Hare because his way of looking at moral decisions is one many people will find reasonable, even if they don’t agree with his conclusions in this particular case. But it is Anscombe’s position that will teach us the most.

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Re-reading Economics in Literature: A Capitalist Critical Perspective
by Matt Spivey
Lexington Books, 2021
133 pages

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United States jobless claims have picked up, since the elections and the second wave of coronavirus have slowed down the economic recovery. Uncertainty about tax increases and changes in labor laws, including an increase in the minimum wage, add to the fear of new lockdowns, as employers see the devastating effects of these lockdowns in European employment.