The thing that strikes me more and more -- and it strikes a lot of other people, too -- is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy in our time. I don't mean merely that controversies are acrimonious. They ought to be that when they are on serious subjects. I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point.
-- George Orwell (1903 - 1950), pen name of British novelist, essayist, and journalist Eric Arthur Blair, whose work is characterized by lucid prose, and awareness of social injustice, "As I Please," Tribune (8 December 1944)
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