'Animal Farm'

My friend Rajesh and I had a discussion after I watched the 1951 animated feature "Animal Farm" as to how children would interpret the cartoon reproduction of socialist novelist George Orwell.

"Animal Farm," of course, is a thinly-veiled allegory of communism and inherent flaws within the system (we assume, the USSR) once leadership is poisoned with power and lose the vision of Karl Marx and socialism.

My three-year-old daughter would watch it and be entertained by the talking animals. On a very basic level, she would understand that Napoleon the pig was bad and, generally, the other animals were good.

We also determined that a nine-year-old kid would watch it and not necessarily connect the dots to communist Russia, but realize that the farmer mistreated the animals and this is not right. And that the animals taking over and making everything equal is good. Then the pigs making everything unequal was just as bad as the farmer, the power the animals ousted in order to makes things equal in the first place.

Without really knowing it, the nine year old would be a socialist (if, say, socialism was wholly practical not only on paper or in cartoons).

Furthermore, we concluded that as a kid, you're inherently a socialist because you go (mostly) to public schools where you're taught to share and that every is equal and good. And that there is no such thing as a dumb question. Bad kids are put in timeout: a less harsh version of iberian gulags.

Then in college these kids become real socialist. Then they turn 40 and they become Republicans.