Which Path Will President Erdogan Follow: Vengeance or Enlightened?

President Erdogan Has Two Routes to Go; The vengeful or the Creative: Which Will he Take? The answer is all to obvious. The Coup failed. The mutiny has been quashed. The Erdogan forces are carrying out his will. Over 9,000 have been detained, with more to come. A warrant has been issued for one of the President’s military advisors. The government immediately dismissed prosecutors and judges, with about 200 arrested. The details of the coup’s planners and planning are still murky. It’s unknown who was behind it. What is clear is that Erdogan has had a list prepared of whom he wishes to purge in the judiciary, prosecutors office, and military. He blames the coup of Fethullah Gulen and his Hismet Movement. Gulen’s soft Islam emphasizes democracy, science, and interfaith dialogue. His secular, secular Islam has been very popular in Turkey’s secular class, especially among prosecutors, police officials and the officer ranks of the military. He has been purging these ranks for several years, replacing the ousted officials with more devout Islamicists. He now has the opportunity to fulfill his purge. That’s a foregone conclusion. The question is what will he do with the surviving coup leaders, the list of which seems to be growing. He spoke of vengeance the night of the coup. The prime minister vowed “They will pay a heavy price.” He and his prime minister have demanded, demanded – not requested - the extradition of Gulen from the United States. And he is willing to bring back the death penalty – the historical penalty for mutiny. He said in response to the chants of the Turkish mob after the coup failed: “Enough – Why should I keep them and feed them in prisons, for years to come.” A bullet or hangman’s noose is a lot quicker and cheaper. Everything in his past shows the propensity to become a typical dictator willing to use deadly force to perpetuate his power. Yet, there is an alternative in the history of Turkey. Ataturk won the Turkish War of Independence. The rule of the Sultans was a spent force. If Ataturk had followed the French and Russian Revolution, there would then have been regicide and mass executions. Instead, Ataturk first abolished the monarchy and then the Caliphate. The Ottoman Era was history. His solution was to expel the main members of the House of Osman. The one condition was that they had to sign over the properties of the Royal Family to the new Turkish Government. They were given passports with one year terms and had their citizenship revoked. Thus, they could leave Turkey, but never return. They were deported. Only in the past decades have their descendants been allowed to return and become Turkish citizens if they wish. President Erdogan could do that with the major coup leaders. Deport them. Strip them of their assets. Cut them off forever from the Turkey they love. Let them wander the world stateless: Men Without a Country. They are a spent force. They will do no harm in the future. President Erdogan could do that, but he won’t. He’s too vengeful. Ataturk was an inspired leader seeking the well-being of his people. Ataturk freed his people. What will history say of Erdogan? President Erdogan is increasingly corrupted and consumed by power. He is undoubtedly leading his country into an Islamic based, corrupt dictatorship.

Turkey's Coup in Progress. The Fate of Turkey and the Mideast Are At Stake as the Coup Seems to be Failing

A coup is underway in Turkey, the outcome of which is uncertain as I write. Ironically, the military coup, if successful, will benefit the people of Turkey. If it fails, a vengeful President Erdogan will complete his path to a dictatorship. It appears that the coup is failing as I pen this blog. President Erdogan was elected Mayor of Istanbul in 1994 as a devout Islamist. The military overthrew him in 1998. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail. He was elected Prime Minister of Turkey in 2003, and promptly proceeded to fortify himself against any future military coup. He framed over 300 military leaders, who were convicted in Stalinist show trials in the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon cases. They were replaced by compliant officers. He also suppressed the media. More reporters are in prison in Turkey than anywhere else in the world. He seized control of the largest independent paper in Turkey, Today’s Zaman, on March 4, and then had its archives destroyed. President Erdogan has a very thin skin. He does not take criticism lightly. Turkish Police arrested 52 people, including businessmen and sons of ministers, in December 2013. Erdogan’s son, Bilal, was implicated in the corruption. His dad’s response was to arrest the police officers and prosecutors. He subsequently gained control of the judiciary. Bilal has since been accused of money laundering in Italy. President Oregon and Abdullah Gul created the islamic Justice and Democratic Party (AKP) In 1991. Its been in office 14 years now. Its primary plank at the beginning was "anti-corruption." It is very easy to be against corruption when you are out of office, but not as easy when the temptations are in your grasp. How ironic that the anti-corrupt Erdogan is now presiding over a corrupt government and family. Turkey has been a secular Islamist Republic since 1923. Ataturk won Turkey’s war for Independence and then transformed the country from a deeply religious Islamic caliphate to a secular republic. He and his fellow military leaders blamed the failing sultanate and overreliance on religion for the long term decline of the Ottoman Empire. He not only secularized he country, but also westernized it. He saw how the West had outstripped the Ottomans in economics, industry, and the military. He scrapped Sharia for civil law. The military had been sworn to protect the secular Turkey. His policy is known as Kemalism. (Atatutk’s birth name was Mustafa Kemal). Erdogan wants to break Kemalism. Turkey was a beacon of stability in the Islamic world for 90 years. It has been a reliable ally of the West and NATO for roughly 7 decades. President Erdogan has picked fights with the Syrians, tolerated ISIS and then somewhat turned on it, and has renewed hostility with the Kurds. The result has been bloodshed and terrorist attacks from both the Kurds and ISIS. He is fighting the Turkish Kurds and the Syrian Kurds, allies of the United States. He shot down a Russian jet. Tourism is dead. The economy is collapsing, but he has become emboldened. He’s trying to make peace with the Israelis. He has grandiose plans, some under construction: a third airport for Istanbul, the biggest mosque yet – this one on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosporus, a third bridge crossing the Bosporus, and faux-Ottoman barracks in Taksim Square. His biggest goal is to build a canal paralleling the Bosporus about 15-20 miles to the west. He has built a budget busting, off-the-books, President’s Palace in Ankara. President Erdogan worships Allah. He also yearns for the days of the Ottomans. His ego has been swelling in recent years. He has a messianic personality. He has turned on his initial supporters: Fethullah Gulen (in exile in Pennsylvania) and Abdullah Gul. Fethullah espouses a peaceful version of Islam, known as Hizmet. Erdogan has sought his extradition from the United States. President Oregon wants to read Hizmret. If he survives the coup attempt, he will drop any pretense of democracy. He will become a vengeful dictator. What's the Turkish wood for "purge?" The Parliament has already enacted legislation that will strip members; i.e, the Kurdish representatives, of their immunity. He will further purge the military, the police, prosecutors, and the judiciary. Don’t be surprised if he restores Sharia to Turkey. He believes women should stay at home, giving birth to children. Turkey currently has a large class of women professionals since Ataturk liberated women. President Erdogan has the support of the poor and religious. The mosques sent out a call for the people to turn out to support him in the coup. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he restores capital punishment. If he prevails, Turkey is headed backwards in time. The only remaining stable country in the Mideast will be Israel. Turkey is facing the abyss.

Jan Smuts (1870-1950): The Great, Forgotten Statesman of the 20th century

We were in Cape Town, South Africa a few weeks ago and saw a large statute of Jan Smuts in downtown near the Parliament. It triggered my memory from decades ago. I vaguely remembered that Jan Smuts led a contingent of the Boers in the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and then ended up a Field Marshall in the British Army during World War II. That’s quite a transformation! Forget Wikipedia, I found a 2015 biography of General Smuts, Richard Steyn, “Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness” in a Cape Town bookstore. He truly was amazing! A trivia question would be: Who is the only signatory of both the League of Nations and the United Nations? The answer is Jan Smuts. That’s amazing! Another trivia question would be: Who was the President of the United Nations General Assembly in San Francisco? The answer is again Jan Smuts. Such was his international renown. He also signed both the World War I and World War II peace treaties. He was the son of Afrikaner farmers in the Cape Colony and attended Cambridge. He returned to South Africa to practice law, but was not suited by dint of personality to the private practice. He rose quickly in government circles. He led a contingent of Boer commandos during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The British forces never defeated him, but the British relentlessly wore down the Boer forces through superior resources and a scorched earth policy. The British placed Boer women and children in concentration camps, in which over 20,000 perished. The British also destroyed the Boer farms and facilities. Smuts led the peace negotiations, in which the British were surprisingly magnanimous. They basically treated the defeated Boers with the same respect General Grant extended to the defeated General Lee and the confederate forces at Appomattox Court House. Indeed, one of the British officials, not Lord Milner, told the Boers it wouldn’t be long before the Boers could practice self-independence. The two British (Cape Town and Natal) and Boer provinces (Republic of South Africa and the Orange Free State) were merged together as the Union of South Africa in 1910. They received nominal self-governance in 1909 and complete independence in 1931 under the Statute of Westminster. Jan Smuts decided South Africa needed to remain in the British Empire as a unified country. He became an Anglophile. He and Louis Botha led the South African forces against the Germans in German Southwest Africa (now Namibia) in World War I. He was then dispatched to fight the Germans in German East Africa (now Ruanda, Zambia and Tanzania). He was less successful. The South African forces could never corner the wily German General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck and his 15,000 soldiers, but the Germans never posed a risk to the British African colonies. General Smuts was called to England in 1917 to serve in the Imperial War Council. He created the framework for the Royal Air Force. He served as Prime Minister of South Africa from 1919-1924 and 1939-1948. He again served in the British Imperial War cabinet in World War II and was named a Field Marshall in the British Army in 1 941. General Smuts had witnessed the carnage of war first hand. He hoped to avoid more war by adopting the League of Nations and then a stronger United Nations after the Second World War. The League of Nations reflected his vision. He also unsuccessfully opposed the draconian reparations placed on Germany after World War I. He feared for the future if Germany was treated harshly. It was his idea to transform the British Empire into the British Commonwealth of Nations. His legacy to the world was not just the United Nations in general, but the preamble, which he mostly wrote. He provided the phrase which has become a critical foundation of modern international law: “We declare our belief in basic human rights.” On a different note, he wrote a treatise on “Holism” and gave us the word “holistic.” He was though, as befits a man of his time and his background, a segregationist. He did not believe in equal rights for the blacks and his administrations did not advance their rights. He was not though as racist as Cecil Rhodes or the Afrikaners who imposed Apartheid in 1948. His many honors included being named Rector of St. Andrews University in 1931 and the first non-British Chancellor of Cambridge, serving from 1948 to his death in 1950. Jan Smuts by all measure was brilliant in almost everything except politics. He called for elections in South Africa at a bad time. Just as the British threw out Winston Churchill in 1945, the South Africans Afrikaners’ National Party won the 1948 election. His party actually won a majority of the votes, but apportionment favored the opposition’s districts. The National Party ran on a platform of Apartheid. They enacted a series of Apartheid statutes three months after being elected. The National Party remained in power until 1994. His international fame has been replaced by that of Nelson Mandela.

Five Police Officers Dead in Dallas, Five Dead in Dallas; When Will President Obama Stop the Preaching Against "Police Brutality?

Five Dead in Dallas: When Will President Obama Stop Preaching Against Police Brutality Four Dallas Police Officers dead. 11 shot in all as I write this blog. Two snipers are suspected with the picture of one suspect, an African America. The police were protecting a peaceful protest when the snipers shot the protective police. President Obama pontificated earlier today, (is harangued a better word?) on Black Lives Matter with the recent tragic shootings in Baton Rouge and St. Paul. He gets strongly emotional when white police officers shoot blacks. He publicly proclaims his outrage without knowing the facts. The fatal shootings may be justified. They may not be. He doesn’t wait for the facts to express his outrage. He doesn’t wait for justice to run its course because his mind has been made up. The officer is always wrong and the victim right. It actually started with a non-shooting when Sgt. Crowley of the Cambridge Police arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates at the Professor’s house. A neighbor phoned the police saying someone was breaking into the Gates’ house. A tired Professor Gates refused to identify himself to the officer, whereupon the officer detained him. President Obama quickly attacked the Cambridge Police. He later apologized and called it a teachable moment. He asked the protagonists to the White House for a “beer summit.” He didn’t learn from his own teachable moment. The tone was set. He would quickly attack the police without learning the facts. President Obama is highly vociferous when white officers kill black victims. President Obama is highly reticent when blacks kill, sometimes from ambush, police officers, white or otherwise. He’s silent on the scores of homicides in Baltimore and Chicago, his home. President Obama is highly reticent when illegal immigrants murder or rape innocent victims. President Obama is highly reticent when blacks murder, rape, and steal from blacks; i.e. black on black crime, even in his home of Chicago. President Obama consistently, and almost reflexively, takes the side of the victim. Ferguson and the shooting of Michael Brown triggered riots, lootings and arsons from a false narrative. “Burn, Baby, Burn.” The President was reticent, Baltimore burned. Burn, Baby, Burn, as the President was highly silent. FBI Director Comey says there is a Ferguson effect on police officers. Officers hesitate to arrest. His Justice Department denies it. He has unleashed the Justice Department on police departments all over the country. He has said that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” (a needless tragedy, but not a police shooting). President Obama has consistently sided with the Black community. President Obama has used the Bully Pulpit to fuel the flames of racism. Five police dead in Dallas and he pleads again by rote for gun control. Reap where ye have sown. The public notices.

Alan Paton, "Cry, the Beloved Country" A Very Slow Read on My Part

Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” was one of several books on the summer reading list for an English High School course over five decades ago. You remember those lists, don’t you? Ours had Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and 1 or 2 other seemingly 1,000 page Dostoevsky’s tomes), Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Kafka’s The Trial, Flaubert’s Madam Bovary, and I can’t remember the rest – maybe George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, because I know we all read them. We can be slow readers at times. Cry, the Beloved Country was a very slow read – 53 years in fact. That’s about as slow as it gets. Even a sloth reads faster. I got to around page 50 that summer and put it down. I just couldn’t go any farther. It made no sense. It was boring. I did Dostoevsky; what more could the teacher ask of me? Where were the Clift Notes when we needed them? Of course, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic- an immediate, and continued best seller. Alan Paton was writing about the rabid segregationist polices of South Africa and the impoverishment of the black majority. He writes about the poverty, the leaking roof of the black church, the hopelessness, pathos and despair of the people. He writes about the 1943 Alexandra/Johannesburg Bus Strike, where the poor blacks, young, old, healthy, infirm would walk up to nine miles each way in protest of a one penny fare increase. One cent, twice a day, several times weekly, was a substantial portion of their earnings He talks about the young blacks going to Johannesburg, only to disappear in the city. The book was globally viewed as an outcry against Apartheid. It opened the world’s eyes against the sordid treatment of South African blacks. Ironically, Alan Paton started writing the book in Norway in 1946 and published it in 1948 four months before the National Party gained control of Parliament and enacted Apartheid. Alan Paton wrote about pre-Apartheid South Africa, analogous to the plight of the emancipated former slaves in Dixie after the Civil War. America’s blacks had one major option. They could join the Great Migration out of Dixie. The streets of Detroit may not have been paved with gold, but Detroit, of the automobile industry, offered good employment to thousands of African Americans. So too with Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and the other growing areas of America. Their children had a greater opportunity to get an education and a job outside the South. The blacks in South Africa had little opportunity for advancement. Apartheid shut the doors on them. They were trapped in Apartheid. Alan Paton knew what he was writing about. He started as a teacher and then served as Superintendent of the Diepkloof Reformatory (for blacks) from 1933 to the success of his book. He saw the pathos of the young black generation in South Africa. He was the global voice of opposition to Apartheid prior to Nelson Mandela. Indeed, the government lifted his passport from 1960 to 1970. He served as President of the small Liberal Party from 1953 until its disbandment in 1968, when a new Apartheid statute forbade the existence of political parties with mixed races. So here I am, over 5 decades later, when I passed a large bookstore in the V & A Waterfront Mall in Cape Town. A siren voice called to me. It said “Cry, the Beloved Country;” You must. An overpowering force field pulled me in. Miss Brash or Mr. Englander, or whoever the English teacher was, would be proud. There was a copy of Cry, the Beloved Country in plain view, with seemingly my name on it in flashing lights. The time had come. I finished the book, starting back on page 1. This time it was an easy read – no putting it down. Here’s the quick plot in 241 words: Stephan Kumalo, an elderly Zulu Minister, gets a letter from a minister in Johannesburg, asking him to come to find his sister Gertrud who is ailing. Kumalo also seeks his son, Absalom, who also vanished in the milieu of the big city. The long trek begins as lead after lead is pursued in seeking Absalom. The son is arrested with two accomplishes for killing Arthur Jarvis, a young, rising lawyer opposed to the segregationist policies of South Africa. Absalom admits to pulling the trigger, but with no intent to kill. He is convicted, sentenced to death, and reconciles with his father. In addition, prior to his execution, he is allowed to marry the young girl who is bearing his child. Stephan has also found Gertrude, who has a young child and agrees to return home with the minister. She had sunk into working as an alcohol serving prostitute. She seeks the light and does not return. Instead, she becomes a nun, or so we are led to believe. Reverent Kumalo returns home with the child and his pregnant daughter in law. He has temporarily lost faith, but returns to the fold. Arthur Jarvis is the son of James Jarvis, a successful farmer in Reverend Kumalo’s village. Arthur’s young son comes crosses paths with Stephan Kumalo and wants to learn Swahili. James Jarvis has an epiphany and provides needed help to the community during the bad drought and to Kumalo’s church. The title “Cry, the Beloved Country” is used four times in the story. The most memorable is: “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply … for fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.”

Two Arguably Legitimate Explanations for Why FBI Director Comey Insulted the Intelligence of the American People Today on the Clinton Emails

Only two legitimate explanations can perhaps justify FBI Director James Comey’s Falling on his sword for Hillary Clinton FBI Director James Comey again proved today that the Clintons live by different rules. He found “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges in a case like this. Where is the surprise? The fix was in for months. President Obama months ago said he believed in the innocence of Secretary Clinton because he believed she did not act intentionally to harm the United States. The statute provides liability for intentionally or gross negligence, but no matter! President Obama routinely ignores the Constitution and the gun. FBI Director Comey did his best imitation of Chief Justice Roberts in rewriting the Obamacare statute to sustain it. President Obama and Secretary Clinton flew together on Air Force One to a campaign rally in North Carolina today as Comey was acting. I don’t always believe in coincidences. The President expressly passed the baton, not a subpoena or indictment, to Secretary Clinton at the rally. Former President Bill Clinton talked with Attorney General Loretta Lynch last week. Hillary Clinton is rumored to have said that she would retain the Attorney General in her new administration. No matter! It may be unseemly, but there’s no smoking gun. James Comey understood all along what his job was. He groveled for the appointment as FBI Director by President Obama in 1913. It’s like the Godfather. Comey knew at some point he would have to return the favor. She palpably, grossly, constantly, lied to the American public, but that’s not indictable. She proved, yet again, that she is a compulsive or pathological liar (take your pick), but no matter. Why anyone will believe any of her campaign promises and rhetoric is a great mystery. She committed obstruction of justice by destroying tens of thousands of emails, but the FBI Director ignored that. She was undoubtedly entered into a conspiracy with her aides to obstruct justice. If she were a Republican candidate, he would have thrown the book at her and her aides. No matter. President Clinton proved an expert at obstruction of justice, He got away with it. Why shouldn’t she? And yet we can posit two arguably justifiable justifications for the decision. The first is cold reality. The odds that any jury in Washington, D.C. could convict a Clinton of anything are about the same as winning the Power Ball. The second reason is that it is unwise public policy to indict officials of preceding administrations for criminal acts short of horrific crimes. Such behavior is dangerous to the survival of our democracy. However, an independent prosecutor with the cheer leading of Democrats and the media had no problem indicting members of the Nixon Administration for Watergate. Only a Presidential Pardon by President Ford prevented an indictment of President Nixon. Democrats cheered on Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in trying to indict Vice President Chaney or Presidential aide Karl Rove in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity in the CIA. Fitzgerald continued the investigation long after the identity of the discloser was discovered. Neither explanation was given. Instead FBI Director Comey insulted the intelligence of the American people today.

Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, Segregation, Earl Warren, LBJ, et al

The Black Justice League at Princeton staged a 32 hour sit-in in the President’s Office last fall. Their demands included the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from programs and buildings at Princeton. Wilson was a rabid segregationist, even as President. We associate him with Princeton, but Woodrow Wilson as a child of the South, the defeated, broken, dispirited South, the South of the Lost Cause. President Wilson was born in 1856 in Staunton, Virginia and raised in Georgia and South Carolina. His parents were ardent supporters of the Confederacy. Woodrow Wilson is of the South, the South, whose political leaders were rabid segregationists well into the second half of the 20th Century. Even President Johnson was a member of the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party, until he became President and was in a position to end segregation through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Wilson grew up in the South which repressed the freed slaves almost as soon as the Civil War ended, and whom the North soon turned its back on. He is of the South where a young Alabama attorney joined the KKK, and became known to history as Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. We honor Justice Black for his service to the country. Two aircraft carriers, the Carl Vinson and John Stennis, are named for ardent segregationist Southern politicians. We honor them because of their Congressional service to the nation’s military. Princeton honors Woodrow Wilson not only for his Presidency of the United States, but also for his Presidency of Princeton. A history of Princeton shows that his changes and reorganization at Princeton set it on its road to greatness over the past century. Princeton rejected the demand of the Black Justice League to remove President Wilson’s name from the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Woodrow Wilson Residential College. FDR’s Administration was known for anti-Semitism and turning its back on Jewish refugees. The Roosevelt Administration also made a Faustian bargain with the Southern Segregationist Senators and Representatives to keep them as a critical component of the Roosevelt coalition. Anti-Semitism is spreading rapidly through the progressive, some would say, radical left in Europe and the United States. Let’s take this clearly racist statement: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. That I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, not to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together in terms of social or political equality. And insomuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” Quite a racist statement by today’s standards! Who uttered these racist remarks? None other than the Great Emancipator himself, Abraham Lincoln on September 18, 1858 in Charleston, Illinois during the fourth of the famous Lincoln-Douglass Debates. His comments received no criticism at the time because they reflected the times. Abraham Lincoln abhorred slavery, but didn’t think much of the black people. We remember President Lincoln, as we should, by his great deeds, not these racist comments. The Ivies practiced racism and anti-Semitism in their admissions practices until recently. One can argue that they still discriminate against Asian American applicants. An activist minority, often the same voices seeking safe zones and trigger warnings, are seeking to remove all indicia of the Confederacy and slave owners from our historical record: place names, flags, monuments from states to small towns. So far, only Stone Mountain seems exempt. They want to rewrite history. I’ve said many times Chief Justice Earl Warren, leader of the activist Warren Court, in his earlier career as Attorney General of California was one of the two most responsible officials for the internment of our Japanese citizens in concentration camps during World war II. His name remains on the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Justice at the University of California Berkeley, one of the nation’s most progressive universities. Attorney General Warren was not acting as a great civil libertarian in the internment of the Japanese Americans, but as an ambitious politician playing to the biases of the California voters, who practiced a century of anti-Asian discrimination against the “Yellow Peril.”. We honor him because of his contributions to social justice in the United States. The list goes on: the crest of Harvard Law School, Calhoun College at Yale, General Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee College, the Brown in Brown University How about colleges and universities named for Robber Barons: Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Drew, Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon? How about tobacco money behind Duke University? Rewriting history, excising the unseemly by today’s standards, produces ignorance, dangerous ignorance. Shades of George Orwell’s 1984. We all read 1984 and Animal Farm in high school. I wonder how many students read those books today.