Our Animal Farm

Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness

George Orwell published Animal Farm in August 1945, in the closing weeks of the Pacific War. Orwell saw that the desire for power stamps out all ideological pretenses. It creates an untouchable ruling clique central to all totalitarian movements. Beware, he warns, of the powerful who claim to help the helpless. The revolutionary animals are now running the farm in a way that would be nightmarish even to Farmer Jones. They won. They are now one with—but also far, far worse than—what they rebelled against.