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August 5, 2020

Leftists go after two plus two equals four

By Andrea Widburg

In George Orwell's dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four, the concept that two plus two equals four had extraordinary symbolic weight.  The State, as embodied in Big Brother, controlled everything that people could think or say.

Part of how the rebellious Winston Smith fought back against this totalitarianism was to remind himself that, no matter what the State said, two plus two does, in fact, equal four.  To the all-powerful State, though, Smith's belief in objective math was a threatening form of insanity.  The State therefore used a mixture of torture and cajoling to force Smith to embrace a State-sanctioned "sanity" that denied reality:

"You are a slow learner, Winston."

"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."

By the novel's end, with the State's torture having broken him, Smith readily conceded that, yes, if the State said that two plus two equals five, that would be the correct answer.

Judging by a comprehensive Twitter thread, we have reached the Orwellian world of Big Brother.  This is a world in which those who represent power for the sake of power are working overtime to convince their fellow Americans to dismiss reality and concede that two plus two does not equal four but, instead, equals five:

The left knows, and truly hates, the fact that reality tells Americans some important things:

  • Humans cannot control the enormousness of our climate.
  • Except for a minute subset of people born with damaged DNA, boys are boys and girls are girls.
  • Penalties help deter criminal activity.  Without penalties, crime gets worse, and people engage in vigilante conduct that is worse for criminals than the rule of law.
  • Race is real, but it's only as a superficial construct (different skin color, different eyes, etc.).  What is infinitely more important is that we are all members of the same human species, and that's true whether or not one believes we are made in God's image or reached this point through pure evolution.
  • America has raised up more people around the world from poverty and into liberty than any other country in history.
  • Socialism has failed everywhere it's been tried.  As a reminder, socialism succeeded in Europe as long as it did only because America funded Europe during the Cold War.  All of you, with your 80-hour work weeks, helped bring Europeans their 35-hour work weeks and mediocre cradle-to-grave "free" medical care.

If leftists are to convince Americans that socialism has succeeded, they must convince them to deny all those other things that Americans know are true and real.  If boys aren't boys, if race is the only thing that matters, and if America is evil, then socialists can also make us accept that socialism is a workable system that just "hasn't been done right before."

In 2020, as the election looms, Americans must have a death grip on reality.  Two plus two equals four, no matter how much the critical race theorists (the ones who hold that the only reality is power and what the powerful deem true) claim otherwise.  If we do not hang on to the life raft of reality, socialism offers no life vest and we will all drown.

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