[Dumb_Ox]

On Chesterton: I think perhaps Orwell got close to home with that one for some people here. By comparing political Catholicism with Communism, he wasn't talking about how the two would actually rule, but the effects on the thought of British intellectuals at the time of his writing and earlier. It was on that point only, the nationalist loyalty transposed to a "unit" outside of England, and the use of thought as just a means to score points for that unit.

Indeed. This is the classic British post-Reformation Establishment description of the English Catholic, and has been used to smear every convert since Newman(if not Campion) with charges of divided loyalty and intellectual dishonesty. I am understandably wary of any article that repeats such a tired trope.

[A.J.Armitage]

I wouldn't know about that, since I'm not a member of the British post-Reformation establishment. If it is a trope, it's one Orwell almost had to use because it fit his analysis of other intellectuals(that the trope didn't apply to) so well.