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Jack S Moritz Essay

Life in America was always taught that rights came above all else, but now that times are changing there are many who think that safety should come in place of rights. Little Brother, a story by Corey Doctorow about a teenage hacker who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is captured by the DHS and when he is released, it becomes his mission to take down the government at all costs and free his nation again. However, George Orwell had a much more radical view of society in his book 1984, a book based in the future where everyone is spied upon and if people have views that are not in line with Big Brother, they are destroyed. Winston attempts to change the amount of governmental control by joining a resistance organization, but he ends up only causing himself problems and not changing anything. In both Little Brother by Corey Doctorow and 1984 by George Orwell, ideology that freedom must be given up in place of safety was taught to the reader, but didn’t teach how to stop the government from encroaching on their rights, but also was given a good starting place of how much people’s rights have been diminished.

In both books, there were ideas given to the reader that started them thinking about how the government has painted a picture that safety is the ultimate power and that in order to achieve it, people must give up constitutional rights. Marcus understands that rights and freedoms are much more important to Americans, “I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.” (Little Brother 118). He wants to have his rights back, and never wishes to be placed in that sort of interrogation situation again. But he took it a step farther, and instead of just wanting repentance for crimes against him, he attempts to get revenge by causing mayhem in the city. In 1984 the effects are even more apparent to Winston, where the government is supposed to help the people, but they are too busy fighting the war and changing people’s minds to actually save many lives. In Winston's "safe society", his government still fails to save lives "The bomb had demolished a group of houses two hundred meters up the street." (George Orwell 1984) He has absolutely no freedoms and yet deaths are still able to occur that the government couldn't stop. People enjoy the safety, and like the feeling that nothing can go wrong. However, the tables turn the instant that people are suspected of a crime, "Tragedy is if I get a paper cut... Comedy is if you fall in an open sewer and die." (Mel Brooks) and are interrogated they usually become very opposed to governmental control and cherish their rights that much more. Human beings are flawed in the aspect that they don't know what they have until it's gone, and when it is gone they complain quite vocally their position.

While I did learn that the government was encroaching on our rights and why I should care about it, I am still unaware of what steps should be taken in order to stem the tide of governmental control and loss. While I do know that there is no singular answer to the problems presented in these books concerning government getting out of hand, I had hoped that they would have given us a better way to change what is happening other than hacking the government or having an affair.