The United States of America was once a symbol of liberty and a gateway of opportunity for oppressed citizens of the world. Today this idea of "one nation under God" is slowly being torn away into a more intrusive government, taking away our Civil liberties and God-given rights. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, questions on safety and liberty have been bubbling to the surface. The people of America, though devastated by these attacks, seek refuge from terrorism but also from an all-knowing government. Recently the Bush administration has proposed a plan to rewrite surveillance laws depriving provisions so that reasonable persons can be presumed to know when they are breaking the law.
The administration's package is asking for laws to widen the time period that a suspect can be observed by wire-tapping and to do so without notification by the suspect. It is this proposal by Bush's administration that shows how their rights are being violated. Congress seems to be forgetting that numerous laws like Due Process and the Fourth Amendment protect civilians. The due process of law states that the courts of justice use established and sanctioned legal procedures to investigate with safeguards for the protection of individual rights. Clearly with these new proposals there is wrongdoing in the protection of the people.
This idea of an "all knowing" government leads many to reflect on literature that, in a way, reveals the fate of society, such as George Orwell's novel 1984. Mr. Orwell's novel became a touchstone of our culture in the way that it functions as a warning, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." Orwell's picture of the future describes the boot and its stamping of a human face in all the detail necessary to frighten everyone from the pessimistic misanthropes to the idealistic optimists. The book could only be written from the most profound conviction that such a future could indeed happen, a conviction motivated by societies where "Big Brother" already existed in large parts of the world when Orwell wrote the book.