Has 2006 Become "1984"? George Orwell's Grim View of the Future May Be Closer Than You Think

George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 paints a bleak portrait of the future, in which citizens of the nation “Oceania” are being watched every moment by “Big Brother.” In this nightmarish world, dissenting thought was treason and the only reason citizens were allowed to exist was to serve the party. Daily propaganda messages from the party leadership were sent via large “telescreens” for all to consume. This is a world where authoritarianism is absolute and the word liberty has been taken out of the dictionary.

With the enactment of legislation designed to vastly broaden the federal government’s power at the September 11th terrorist attacks and private industries collecting and sharing information about us on a daily basis, some are beginning to question whether or not George Orwell’s future has come true. This is not to say that our society has crumbled to that of absolute authoritarianism like that of “1984,” however there is little doubt we are traveling down that road.

There have been a number of laws that have pushed us several miles down the road of authoritarianism in recent years. The USA-PATRIOT Act of 2003 allows the government to sneak into your house and look around without even telling you for a criminal investigation, to view your library records and a number of other things.

We were informed that the executive branch unilaterally began monitoring phone calls domestically for purposes of security late last year. Additionally, the National Security Agency was allowed to create a massive database of information about telephone calls. Major telecommunications companies handed millions of telephone records to this program without objection. Under a declaration of emergency, the executive branch has been tapping into a vast database of financial records that were supposed to be confidential and they have been doing this for the last five years.