May 9, 2022
Bob Rae is a Canadian
diplomat, lawyer, former Premier of Ontario, and former interim
Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A Rhodes Scholar and
graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, he is
currently Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations. He has been
elected to federal and provincial parliaments 11 times (between
1978 and 2013), and reveres the English novelist, essayist,
journalist and critic George Orwell.
Because of this I invited him to engage
in a conversation with me about Orwell's essay "Politics
and the English Language." Politicians have always
abused language. Current political tensions have only ratcheted
this up, here in Canada and around the world. It needs to be
called-out, because, as Orwell reminds us, getting rid of bad
habits in the use of language encourages clearer thinking, and to
think clearly is a necessary first step toward political
regeneration, something that we need big-time in
2022.
During our conversation we discuss:
stale imagery, lack of precision, meaningless words, quotes from
Alan Sandison's book George Orwell: After 1984, the use of
cliche, Orwell's contradictions, the word "totalitarian,"
ramifications of using the term "genocide," U.N.-speak, the
definition of "recent," and much more, on this, the most recent
installment of The Biblio File Book
Club.