Liberal democracy dying - from the bottom up. NSW removes Orwell from schools.
Andrew Patterson (A.B. Patterson)
Author & Consultant. Award-winning author. Website: abpatterson.com.au. Consultant for investigations and ethics. National President AIPI.
Let's face it, liberal democracy as we know it is a small, albeit still powerful, player in the world - so much non-democracy out there. If we don't educate our young people to think about freedom of expression, then we as liberal democrats can kiss our free societies goodbye. There are tyrants aplenty out there just waiting to devour our corpses - China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, multifarious Islamic terrorist groups and pseudo-states, and the list goes on.
Today's news that the NSW Education Department is removing George Orwell's 1984 from high school reading lists is appalling. However, it's not remotely surprising. The woke/socialist agenda that has infected our Western societies like a cancer is a clever and cunning virus. Whilst the woke brigade uses Orwell as a how-to guidebook for the removal of freedom of expression and thought, and they have learned Orwell's lessons well, they of course cannot tolerate young people being educated in the real lessons Orwell had to offer - the warning, now all-too starkly clear, about how freedom ends.
Orwell's 1984 should be compulsory reading for all older high school students in our democracies.
We must keep the freedom discussion alive.