All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Before the Wall Fell there was a resistance movement in communist Poland . Part of the resistance was a secret library. The most secret and precious book of the library was hidden in a separate location, wrapped in purple velvet and sealed in plastic. The Resistance felt that if the library was discovered it was most important that this book above all others be preserved since it expressed most clearly the falsity and monstrousness of the ruling ideology.

To see this book I was taken by a circuitous route to the hiding place. There I was met by the librarian and one other member of the Resistance in addition to my guide. With my eyes closed I was seated and then waited while the book was taken from its hiding place. Then they let me open my eyes so that I could see it.

The librarian handled the book with reverence. Everyone was silent. The plastic seal was undone, the purple velvet unfolded and the book was revealed. It was George Orwell's Animal farm. It was an edition of one with original hand-painted illustrations by a Polish artist plus samizdat printed pages of text.

I opened it and turned the pages looking at the beautiful illustrations. At one page I read aloud, but quietly, the caption of one of the illustrations: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." They nodded, they understood of course. They lived it every day.

With Sen. Ben Nelson's vote (the 60th vote meaning socialized health care), we have now turned the corner and begun to value government services more than our freedom. The new healthcare bureaucracy and its rules will create thousands of new government employees, each of them a little fat cat, "Herbert's" in Star Trek lore, all, along with their friends, more equal than others.

Read Animal Farm online, read about Animal Farm at Wikipedia, or check it out at your local library.