Jeff Greenfield remarks on Politico concerning the prophetic powers of … George Orwell:
In the most provocative segment of [The Road to Wigan Pier], Orwell also cites “the horrible, the really disquieting prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw toward them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” And he notes the prospectus for a summer Socialist school in which attendees are asked if they prefer a vegetarian diet.
That does make me laugh. I’ve never read The Road to Wigan Pier, so perhaps Orwell later identifies the reason the Left attracts the ‘cranks,’ but for me it’s due to the facts that the Left is almost always devoted to toppling the de facto power and compelling its own vision of the future on the populace.
And so, too, is the crank: vegetarians, quacks, even pacifists all have their militant members who passionately believe the world would be greatly improved if only their philosophy, their dogma is widely adopted.
Combine that with the Left’s commitment to upset the old Order, and the cranks will gather like maggots to a body, hoping to inflict their vision of the future upon the world.
This would seem less likely to happen with conservatives, but then I look at some of the flakes frantically running for elective office, and I have to wonder.
And so we see the value of gatekeepers.
