Art imitates life. It’s one of the reasons why teaching great works of literature is vital in a high school education.

One title that is read and taught in many high school English I classes in North Carolina is Animal Farm.

Animal Farm is an allegorical fable that Eric Blair (George Orwell was his pen name) uses to comment on the rise of the Soviet brand of communism and the absolute corruption that comes over those who grab power. In it animals take over a farm from their human owner, Mr. Jones, and immediately set up a utopian society in which all animals are equal. They even come up with a list of commandment for all to abide by.

They read as follows:

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.

Idealistic, but human (“pig”) greed gets in the way. As a few pigs consolidate control of the farm, abuses of power occur. Think of it as redistricting of sorts. Maybe gerrymandering. Maybe even the restructuring of the judicial system to gain a certain ideological bent on most benches.

What happens throughout the book is a rewriting of the commandments. Those who retain power get to write the rules. They also get to rewrite the rules. Think of all of Voter ID Acts or that HB2 bill from years ago that targeted the LGBT community among other things. Think of the special sessions and the way that past state budgets were formulated and passed within committee instead of open debate.

Think of the fact that North Carolina is the only state in the nation that has not passed a new state budget for this year.

In Animal Farm, the rules get rewritten so that those in power can get more power. Eventually toward the end of the book the seven commandments read as such:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed – WITH SHEETS.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol – TO EXCESS.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal – WITHOUT CAUSE.
7. All animals are equal – BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

These rules and “revisions” of four of those rules are made in secret and through an undemocratic process. Sound familiar?

Concentrate on that last commandment – “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

That brings to mind the very recent expansion of vouchers to all people in North Carolina. Next, vouchers in most states and especially in North Carolina are not transparently monitored for effectiveness. It is deliberately hard to see if a private school is “underperforming” because they are not required to share data from standardized tests that public schools have to administer. To measure the effectiveness of a voucher would require a lot more oversight that those on West Jones Street are not willing to give.

It’s saying that some are more equal than others.