Animal Farm

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I just finished reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm again. 

The last time I read it was in college in Germany in 1980. I read the German translation back then. I still remember one line that especially stuck out to me: 

“alle sind gleich aber manche sind gleicher” — all are equal, but some are more equal. 

Orwell did a great job satirizing the USSR. It’s fun to go back and look at all the parallels between the characters in the history of Soviet Russia and the animals in Animal Farm. It’s also interesting to see the parallels with other Communist countries: China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. 

It’s also eye opening to see the parallels with the USA today. 

Socialism always leads to Communism. That’s one of the things that scares me most about the “Democratic Socialism” movement. They don’t see the trajectory that they are necessarily on.