“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” -George Orwell, 1984
Biden – “Antifa is an idea” (that loots and riots…amazing!)
Trump vs COVID, Mainstream Media & Biden…I’m still betting on Trump!
President & First Lady Test Positive for COVID: We pray for a speedy and full recovery for the First Family and every other American Family impacted by COVID. Stay safe and together our country will pull through this pandemic.
Debate Summary: Trump to Biden “I did more in 47 months that you did in 47 years”.
Trumps Greatest Accomplishments: Why re-elect the president?
- Brought back manufacturing jobs to America (when Obama/Biden said they were gone)
- Reduced taxes and regulations to stimulate the economy (socialism doesn’t work)
- Appointed 3 constitutionalists to the Supreme Court (instead of activist judges)
- Exposed corruption within the Deep State (Obamagate much bigger than Watergate)
- Re-started the peace process in the Middle East (bringing Arabs & Jews to the table)
- Re-investing in a strong defense after years of neglect (Peace through Strength)
Taxes & Theft: “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.” – Thomas Sowell
Why the Left Hates Judge Amy Coney Barrett: Her very existence repudiates the left’s binary thinking about womanhood — that women have to deny what makes women different from men to achieve professionally. And that’s why they hate her.
Barrett has done exactly what the left’s anti-woman feminist narrative says is impossible — obtaining a high-octane education while maintaining religious devotion, marrying in her 20s and choosing both a big family and a big career. To really rub salt in that eyeball, her big career has consisted of kicking butt and taking names in a field the left believes is their own and is central to power.
If America Falls, Where Will You Go? Our strengths as a nation have been our diversity of thought, judgment, unity of spirit, courage as a people, and devotion to what is right & just.
Our Founding Fathers were imperfect and not politically correct. They spoke their minds, shared their ideas, worked with their fellow countrymen and risked life, liberty and property to ensure that the opportunities that freedom presents would be institutionally guaranteed during their lifetime.
Protests vs Riots – But Mostly Peaceful: “Right to Peaceably Assemble” is granted. “Right to Vandalize, Destroy Public & Private Property, Assault, Injure, Kill, Inflict Fear, Public Nuisance & Hide – These & Other Criminal Behaviors Under the Cover of Angry Mobs” is not.
The problem is innocent people, families and private businesses, who had NOTHING to do with police shootings or excessive force are being targeted and terrorized by arsonists, vandals, looters and rioters.
Russian Hoax turns into Obamagate: It was a hoax and Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lied. They dragged our country through some of the worst of times…purely in hopes to score political points.
I hope Americans revolt against the Democrats at the voting booth! We didn’t deserve this…no one did.
Obamagate Exposed: The weaponization of both domestic and foreign intelligence against a presidential campaign from a sitting administration solely for political purposes to prevent the smooth transition of power and weaken his presidency to limit his legislative successes.
Since the investigations by the Crossfire Hurricane team became public, every Democrat, media figure, and anti-Trump personality threw out every allegation they could get their hands on, all of which stemmed from the implications of the Steele dossier – that Trump himself was being used by Russia and that the foreign power was trying to undermine our national security for their own purposes through him. Without the initial allegations that Russia was behind Trump’s campaign/victory/agenda, none of the follow-up allegations and whistleblower complaints would have been filed, and the media would not have latched on to every single one of them and given them wall-to-wall coverage.
That’s what Obamagate is all about…they spied, they lied and tried to cover it up.
This should NEVER happen to ANY American…there should be bipartisan outrage!!!
-Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
Amazon will help US if you say yes: At NO cost to you, you can help the 60 Plus Foundation in its efforts to support conservative policies to protect senior citizens, get rid of the death tax and defend social security and medicare using sound fiscal policies.
Sign up…and Amazon will donate 0.5% of what you spend to the Foundation! Please help us out by signing up here…at NO cost to you!
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/01/supercut-james-comey-doesnt-recall-anything-about-anything/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-deflects-again-court-packing
If America Falls, Where Will You Go?
Where will you go to find another country that provides the opportunities and individual guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness outlined in our founding documents and guaranteed by a government of, by and for the people?
Name a country that offers you and your family the same or more than our United States of America? The answer is: Nowhere; there isn’t such a place.
This is our land, these are our people, these are our cities, neighborhoods and streets and this is our country.
President John F. Kennedy described America as the beacon of hope for others around the world. This is our place and our responsibility and our founding, evolution and growth as a nation are precisely defined by our imperfections, experiences and abilities to redeem and renew ourselves.
What makes America that beacon of hope is that we are, traditionally, a nation of idea generators, problem solvers, decision-makers, communicators, doers, builders and warriors; we can think for ourselves, speak freely, act and deliver results.
…To secure our republic, every American must then do their part; this is what shapes America. All of us working on the little things across the country — for example, working on school boards, at your state capitol, in your church communities, in local races, on reforming voting laws, observing voting sites, speaking out about ever-changing mask policies or about uncertain vaccines, etc.
A Man vs. A Movement
Trump versus Biden is the choice between a man who believes America is good and a man who is controlled by a movement that believes America is bad.
I do not think the Republican leaders are framing the election properly.
Nor are they doing a good job describing what’s at stake in this election.
This election is a contest between a man, Donald Trump, who believes America is good, and a man, Joe Biden, who is controlled by a movement that believes America is bad. Or to put this another way, between a man who wants to preserve the American way of life and a man who will end up destroying it.
Republican leaders are too focused on policy. This is not a policy election. This is a regime decision; a way of life election. One way of life, the traditional American way of life, is based on individual rights, rule of law, and a shared understanding of the common good. Government’s role is to create the conditions for freedom to flourish.
The other way of life I call “multiculturalism” or “identity politics.” This way of life assumes that society is made up of identity groups, all of which are oppressed by white males. Government’s role in this regime is to create equal income and power for each group.
In a Sane World, America Would Have Just Fallen in Love with the Barrett Family
What’s not to love? A woman of excellence. A testimony to marriage. A household of hospitality. A love of America and the Constitution. A tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and recognition of her role in history. Putting a spotlight on the powerful friendship between Justices Scalia and Ginsburg. And the implicit love of the Virgin Mary that should come every time we hear the name of that school in South Bend.
And, of course, there’s the radiance of the Dogma Living Loudly in such a beautiful way.
I have a particular love of the Barrett family because this is another potential Supreme Court family who have adopted. Of course, social media being what it is, people are wanting investigations into the histories of her two adopted children instead of taken the lesson that ought to be taken: We need that spirit of generosity that America has been known for. (Read Arthur Brooks, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) The morning after Election Day, when I have no doubt we’ll have no idea the official results yet, the Supreme Court will be hearing a case on foster care, where the city of Philadelphia has halted contracts with Catholic Social Services because the beliefs of the Catholic Church on marriage are no longer acceptable there. That’s dangerous territory. That’s one of the reason Barrett was cheered at the White House today. She’s not looking to impose beautiful charismatic Christianity on the country. She wants that Constitution that’s protected us to be able to operate on our different beliefs to continue to operate.
Today is a beautiful day in America. I wish people would take a deep breath and be inspired. Let the Barrett family stretch your heart. Let Amy Barrett’s tribute to family and country remind us all what is most important in life.
Amy Coney Barrett Disproves All The Left’s Lies About Women
Newest Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is almost the polar opposite of the “Sex and the City” chimera of female empowerment: a serious Christian who eschews hookup culture and has seven kids. Half of her resume consists of behavior the leftists who control feminism constantly attack as anti-woman: big-time motherhood and big-time religion.
Fertile women who are serious about prayer get derided as brainless sex slaves, with the “Handmaid’s Tale” imagery that gets deployed against any skepticism of abortion. Of course, this is a steaming pile of horse hockey, and Barrett proves it. She is obviously not a browbeaten, barefoot and pregnant caricature of a conservative woman. Those kind of women are not professors at Notre Dame Law School, or Supreme Court clerks, or federal court judges.
Barrett has done exactly what the left’s anti-woman feminist narrative says is impossible — obtaining a high-octane education while maintaining religious devotion, marrying in her 20s and choosing both a big family and a big career. To really rub salt in that eyeball, her big career has consisted of kicking butt and taking names in a field the left believes is their own and is central to power.
Fauci: The Response Of Trump Admin Has Been Impressive, I Can’t Imagine Anybody Could Be Doing More
Dr. Anthony Fauci says the White House Coronavirus Task Force is working around the clock to fight the coronavirus outbreak in an interview with Mark Levin on FNC’s ‘Life, Liberty & Levin.’ Fauci said Trump has never challenged him on the science of coronavirus on ‘Life, Liberty & Levin.’
MARK LEVIN: Welcome back. Dr. Fauci, let me ask you a question. You’ve been doing this a long time. Have you ever seen this big of a coordinated response by an administration to such a threat? A health threat?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, we’ve never had a threat like this and the coordinated response has been, there are a number of adjectives to describe it. Impressive, I think is one of them.
I mean, we’re talking about all-hands on-deck is that I, as one of many people on a team, I’m not the only person, since the beginning that we even recognized what this was. I have been devoting almost full time on this — almost full time.
I’m down at the White House virtually every day with the Taskforce. I’m connected by phone throughout the day and into the night and when I say night, I’m talking twelve, one, two in the morning. I’m not the only one. There’s a whole group of us that are doing that. It’s every single day.
So I can’t imagine that that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more. I mean, obviously, we’re fighting a formidable enemy — this virus. This virus is a serious issue here.
Stunning revelations expose FBI’s Trump probe as dirtiest political trick in US history
Evidence continues to mount that Trump was been victimized by rogue and lawless government actors throughout his entire presidency
It was always a witch hunt designed to “get Trump.” Collusion was an illusion invented by a suspected Russian spy but zealously embraced by malevolent actors at the FBI and later by scheming prosecutors on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team of partisans.
These are the stunning revelations contained in two sets of newly declassified documents that pull back the curtain on the Russia Hoax, the dirtiest political trick in American history.
In testimony that is corroborated by records, FBI Special Agent William J. Barnett has exposed how the bureau’s collusion investigation of Donald Trump was based on nothing more than “supposition on supposition” and devoid of any credible evidence.
Assigned to lead the bureau’s original investigation into former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Barnett came to realize that the case against Flynn was being engineered or manipulated as way to damage President Trump. Flynn, whose life and livelihood were ruined, became collateral damage.
FBI investigators, who concluded there was no plausible case against Flynn, were ignored. Instead of closing the investigation down, the critical decision to move forward was made “top- down.” Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who had a contentious past relationship with Flynn, was calling the shots. The retired three-star Army general didn’t stand a chance.
The James Comey Election
His testimony this week was a reminder of everything that enrages Trump voters.
The political elite remain puzzled—and in agony—over how Donald Trump could still be in the race. A bullying debater! A purveyor of mistruths! A would-be autocrat! How has our country come to this?
The answer sat staring at them on a videolink this Wednesday, in the smug countenance of James Comey.
This obvious truth will be missed by the left and the media, which continue to comfort themselves with the fiction that Mr. Trump won in 2016 by preying on the weak and ill-informed. The opposite is true. The businessman was propelled to office on the fury of those who had seen too much. They’d watched for decades as an insulated elected class—Democrat and Republican alike—broke promises, failed to solve problems, and blamed it on the system.
These voters had watched the swamp take over—IRS targeters, self-righteous prosecutors, zealous regulators—armed with stunning powers and a mentality that they were entitled to make the rules, to tell the little people what was best for them. Voters fumed over the double standard. Hillary Clinton deleted government emails with abandon, while a 77-year-old Navy veteran went to prison for building a pond in contravention of “navigable water” rules.
Mr. Comey personifies what enrages those Americans. His testimony this week was a vivid reminder that the election won’t hinge only on the issues as defined by the media elite.
Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been dinged several times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during the coronavirus crisis, including a total of 11 “Pinocchios” from the Washington Post.
Over the course of three weeks between March 13 and April 3, Biden was fact-checked five separate times for making false or misleading claims concerning the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic.
A Washington Post fact check on March 13 awarded Biden four Pinocchios, the fact-checker’s most severe rating, for two manipulated videos the Biden campaign circulated.
The first video claimed to show Trump at a Feb. 28 rally saying Democrats were turning the coronavirus into “their new hoax” after they failed to bring Trump down through impeachment. Biden’s video was edited to make it appear that Trump was calling the coronavirus a hoax. Trump, however, was referring to the Democrats’ attempts to blame him for the virus, not the virus itself.
The Weak Leading the Woke
What we ask about when we ask about Joe.
…“Ask yourself,” Joe Biden said during an appearance in August. “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?” No, Mr. Vice President, you look like a grandpa and elder statesman. But as any beleaguered conservative professor will confirm, by virtue of being both more numerous and far more compliant than the communists, the careerists are always more dangerous.
Among inveterate critics of progressivism are some who find it exhausting and distasteful to have Donald Trump in the White House. One need not share these sentiments to understand them. Similarly, the opinion that Donald Trump should be denied a second term and his Republican “enablers” voted out of Congress, as George F. Will has urged, is contestable but comprehensible.
It’s not clear, however, why America should be punished—with reckless policy initiatives and the rolling repudiation of constitutionalism—for what are held to be the Republicans’ Trumpist sins. Complacency about this outcome requires substituting spite for thought. Nor does it make sense that losing an election is supposed to be a cleansing, edifying experience for one political party…but not both. Perhaps nothing less than two defeats by a despised opponent can disabuse the Democratic Party of its growing contempt for democratic processes and prerequisites. But are there Democrats who grasp that their party’s leftward shift fortifies the woke intolerance now jeopardizing the republic? And, if so, are any of them willing and able to explain the crisis in terms that even Joe Biden can understand?
Detroit Police Chief Explains the Real Issue Behind Riots – and It’s Not Race
Detroit Police Chief James Craig told Townhall in an exclusive interview that the unrest that’s taking place across the nation has less to do with race relations and is more about a radical faction of people attempting to undermine the government.
I can tell you that this group that’s marching, like so many across the country, the anarchist factions of these groups are promoting violence and attacks on police officers. They don’t speak for Detroit,” he told Townhall. “And I recognize that it’s not all of the protestors it’s the core, that little small group, that really tries to create violence.”
According to Craig, Detroiters have helped prevent groups like Black Lives Matter from causing chaos and destruction in the city .
“I can tell you: Detroiters don’t like it. They support this chief. They support this police department. They do not support defunding [the police],” he explained. “They know what defunding looks like.”
…The middle ground that Americans and law enforcement can come to, according to Craig, is simple: officers can make it clear they support a person’s First Amendment right to peacefully protest.
“What’s non-negotiable is violent attacks against police officers,” he explained. “Most Americans would agree with that.”
Guns Prevent Thousands of Crimes Every Day, Research Shows
It never fails. A split-second after a mass shooting occurs, grandstanders and ideologues issue statements demanding new gun controls—even if the laws already on the books failed or the laws they want would have made no difference. Case in point: the tragic incidents in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, in early August 2019.
The message is clear: Guns cause violence. Tax them, take them, ban them, regulate them. Do something, maybe anything! Such knee-jerk, emotional responses are dangerous, writes Charles W. Cooke in National Review, “for when a nation sets up a direct pipeline between its emotions and its laws, it does not keep its liberty for long.”
Guns Don’t Kill People, They Save Them
Liberty isn’t the only thing likely to be lost when gun laws are passed to appease emotions over reason, evidence, logic, and rights. Lives will most assuredly be lost, too. Lots of them.
This raises a point amplified in another context almost two centuries ago by Frederic Bastiat in his famous essay with a title that sums it up, “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen.”
How many lives are actually saved by gun ownership? This is a supremely important question that the grandstanders and ideologues usually—and conveniently—ignore.
…I checked online and found some fascinating numbers. A good website with footnotes and references to authoritative sources is GunFacts.info. There I learned the following:
Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day. Most often, the gun is never fired, and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.
Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.
60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.
Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.
Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime.
If you doubt the objectivity of the site above, it’s worth pointing out that the Center for Disease Control, in a report ordered by President Obama in 2012 following the Sandy Hook Massacre, estimated that the number of crimes prevented by guns could be even higher—as many as 3 million annually, or some 8,200 every day.
Shootings, attacks against police officers in America are skyrocketing. The media is focused on ‘peaceful protests’.
All it takes is a quick scroll through social media to see the attacks on law enforcement. It’s about time we have a conversation about what’s happening.
A recent string of police shootings highlights the grim reality of the increased danger police officers face around the country.
… Gang members, when not committing crimes themselves, have been actively surveilling police officers while performing their functions. Their intent is reportedly to be able to film the shooting of the officer, and leak the footage to media sources around the nation.
Although no other such alerts have been reported, as of yet, there is no evidence that other such pacts would or would not exist in other parts of the country as well.
As a growing number of prominent anti-police voices pontificate on television about officers needing more training, it seems that more training is indeed necessary. The training, however, should follow more along the lines of how officers can better protect themselves from ambush attacks.
Netflix’s ‘Social Dilemma’ Exposes The Dark Side Of Big Tech, Omits Bias
While Netflix’s new documentary poetically presented problems plaguing society from America’s addiction to online networking, it entirely omitted big tech’s obvious animosity towards conservatives.
Netflix’s new documentary chronicling America’s addiction to social media appears to have struck a chord with a nation obsessed with online platforms. Moving into the last week of September, the top documentary trending on Netflix is on a course to become the first of its genre to become the most popular film on the streaming service’s digital library, according to Forbes.
Aptly named “The Social Dilemma,” the documentary poetically presents a plethora of perilous problems facing the addicted population over Americans’ compulsory use of social networking as a sort of virtual supplement to daily life in the 21st century digital era.
Americans, filmmakers explain through testimonies from former executives at Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others, have blindly fallen victim to financial incentives in the tech industry. These incentives attach them to their devices through manipulative algorithms that harness the human psyche to achieve maximum attention for the benefit of the paying advertiser.
“We’ve created a world in which online connection has become primary,” says computer scientist Jaron Lanier, where big tech has forged an entire generation whose relationships are built on the internet. Experts throughout the film say that’s a dangerous predicament citing a severe mental health crisis worsening with the rise of online platforms, particularly among younger people.
Trump’s healthcare plan puts the patient where Obamacare didn’t: First
First as a candidate and then in the early days of his tenure, President Barack Obama proposed big changes for the U.S. healthcare system. They mostly consisted of slogans and promises, lacking much specificity as to how his plan could guarantee insurance, lower premiums, and protect individual choices all at the same time.
Nevertheless, his party and the media cheered him on. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously argued at the time, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Fast-forward to last week when President Trump unveiled his own health system overhaul, the America First Healthcare Plan. Unsurprisingly, the Democrats and media who were unphased by Obama’s lack of detail are now demanding specifics.
In truth, Trump’s healthcare plan is exceedingly specific in its diagnosis of all the damage Obamacare has wreaked upon the country and the solutions to reverse it.
Obamacare is a monument of broken promises: You can keep your doctor, you can keep your health plan, the average family will save $2,500 per year, and so on. In the end, Obama’s legislative legacy was nothing more than a boon for the insurance industry. It dramatically increased healthcare costs, reduced access to services and providers, and limited choices.
One heartbreaking example of the design flaw found in Obamacare is that if someone receives a cancer diagnosis, none of the centers of excellence (Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, and Memorial Sloan Kettering) are in-network in any of the law’s health insurance exchanges. That prevents patients who bought insurance from the exchange from choosing the best cancer centers in the country.
James Baker’s 7 Rules for Running Washington
When James A. Baker III came to Washington in the mid-1970s to take an obscure post in the Commerce Department, he had no prior experience in government and had hardly even voted regularly up until that point in his life. He had only been a Republican for a few years, and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather — all distinguished Texas lawyers like Baker himself — had imposed a strict family creed of staying out of politics. For his first 40 years, Baker had followed their lead.
And yet, within a year of arriving in the capital as a nobody in the Ford administration, with little to recommend him but his friendship with an up-and-comer named George H.W. Bush, his doubles partner from the Houston Country Club, Baker somehow found himself running the campaign of the incumbent president of the United States. Over the next few decades, Baker would go on to run five presidential campaigns, winning two of them, and hold a number of the most powerful positions in Washington, serving as Ronald Reagan’s White House chief of staff and Treasury secretary, and Bush’s secretary of state. For a generation, in fact, from the end of Watergate to the end of the Cold War, every Republican president relied on Baker to manage his campaign, his White House, his world. Baker brought them to office or helped them stay there, then steered them through the momentous events that followed. He was Washington’s indispensable man.
So how did he do it? Working on his biography these past few years, we found that was the question virtually everyone had about Baker, now 90. In today’s dysfunctional Washington, awe at Baker’s accomplishments is a rare bipartisan phenomenon, and we heard from players in both parties who wanted to know Baker’s secret, the clue to how an obscure corporate lawyer could come to the capital, their capital, and succeed at a series of the hardest, most consequential jobs in the world. It’s a question that seems all the more relevant today amid political discord so epic that Congress and the Trump White House cannot even agree on how to give money away to hurting Americans during a deadly pandemic and recession. Baker, a relentless competitor who hated to lose but still believed in having a Scotch after work with his adversaries, excelled at just the sort of deal-making that no longer seems possible — real deals of the world-changing kind, with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad.
10 Major DC ‘Consensus’ Lies President Trump Has Shattered Forever
With major institutions cutting against conservative values, exposing falsehoods has become a theme of the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump has shattered many things over the past four years, and many of them for the better, especially within Washington DC. Even the fact that a real estate mogul and government outsider swept the Republican primary then defeated his establishment Democrat opponent represents quite a political shakeup.
With every major social institution cutting against conservative values and the media waging a slanderous anti-Trump campaign since 2016, exposing falsehoods has also become a theme of this administration. Here’s 10 Washington lies Trump has shattered.
2020 US Election Cost Approaching Record $11 Billion
The 2020 U.S. election is likely to cost nearly $11 billion, making it by far the most expensive election in U.S. history, according to projections by a leading campaign finance watchdog.
In a report released Thursday, the Center for Responsive Politics projected the cost of the 2020 presidential and congressional races at $10.8 billion, or more than 50% costlier than the 2016 election when adjusted for inflation.
The CRP’s projection is based on spending so far this campaign cycle and additional spending that is likely to occur in the final month leading up to the November 3 election. Thus far, Democrats hold a huge spending edge over Republicans in both presidential and congressional races, accounting for 54% of total spending to Republicans’ 39%, according to the CRP.
“The 2018 election smashed fundraising records for midterms, and 2020 is going to absolutely crush anything we’ve ever seen — or imagined — before,” Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said in a statement.
The Stakes of American History
Who controls the past, controls the future.
In this matter of history, freedom is at stake, but also our humanity is at stake. America having been made for humans, the nation is at stake too.
In the novel 1984 (1949), the job of the protagonist Winston Smith is to rewrite history. He is one of thousands, likely millions, who rewrite every account of past things: every newspaper and magazine article; every book of every kind; anything written down they adjust to the changing desires of the regime. The new versions are reprinted in an endless stream.
These alterations concern big things like with whom the nation was at war, and little things like whether some middling official was a hero or a villain. Winston, secretly alienated from the regime, does not fully understand why he undertakes his work until the end of the novel. Here, in a series of conversations that are among the great contrivances of literature, a member of the inner party named O’Brien explains to Winston, as he tortures him, the purpose of these revisions: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Teaching philosophy by torture is characteristic of the regime.
This dark novel is only restating the theme that can be found in writing about despotism that goes back to the classics. It is in Book V of Aristotle’s Politics. It is in the grim and profound novel Darkness at Noon (1940). It is in the apparently happy world described in Brave New World (1932), where the classic books are kept locked in a safe for the private enjoyment exclusively of the world controller Mustapha Mond. The key to understanding the slogan of the regime in 1984 is that tyranny, to be complete, to be perfectly itself, must overturn nature or reality. Only then can the passion for power run free. The part of reality about which we can know the most is the past. The present is fleeting and constantly changing, and the future is not yet here. This gives rise to the great doctrine of Aristotle, repeated in Thomas Aquinas and in many great places: “This alone is denied even to God: to make what has been not to have been.” If there is any reality, the past is not malleable.