The writings of George Orwell made the news last week when, without advance warning, Amazon erased electronic versions of some of his novels from people's Kindles [see, for example, this by Phil Miller]. That incident brought to mind Orwell's comments about Charlie Chaplin [h/t to BenS]:
Speaking of Chaplin in his role of The Great Dictator, George Orwell asks “What is Chaplin’s peculiar gift?” It is his power to stand for a sort of concentrated essence of the common man, for the ineradicable belief in decency that exists in the hearts of ordinary people, at any rate in the West. We live in a period in which democracy is almost everywhere in retreat, supermen in control of three-quarters of the world, liberty explained away by sleek professors, Jew-baiting defended by pacifists. And yet everywhere, the common man sticks obstinately to the beliefs that he derives from the Christian culture.”
--Film Review, The Great Dictator in Time & Tide, Dec 21, 1940. Reprinted in All Art is Propaganda, Critical Essays by George Orwell (Harcourt, Inc.) 2008
I would happily change "Christian culture" to "Judeo-Christian traditions", but otherwise I like the observation.