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Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest.

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From: Reason
Date: 19950301
Author:Karlgaard, Rich

George Orwell: Since your day something has appeared called totalitarianism.

Jonathan Swift: A new thing?

Orwell: It isn't strictly new, it's merely been made practicable owing to modern weapons and modern methods of communication.

Orwell himself penned those lines (and read them aloud on his BBC wartime broadcast in 1942) in "Jonathan Swift: An Imaginary Interview." While Orwell's sentiments were his own, he cut and pasted together Swift's from the Irish-born satirist's estimable oeuvre. The result is a virtual dialogue between two of Great Britain's sharper minds, one ...

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