Watch the US government’s reaction to Hobby Lobby very closely. It would not be surprising to me if the fines against Hobby Lobby were increased into the millions and millions of dollars. It would also not be suprising to me that if Hobby Lobby continues its defiance of Obamacare in the years to come, the US Justice Department will move to imprison company officials

Hollywood film director Oliver Stone is no ideological conservative. He is probably one of the more ideological liberals in Hollywood. Yet, in an interview yesterday with historian Peter Kusnick, Oliver Stone declares that “the United States has become an Orwellian state.” For those unfamiliar with George Orwell’s classic work 1984, an Orwellian state can be characterised by a government that is involved in:

(1). The invasion of personal privacy, either directly or physically, or indirectly through surveillance.

(2). State mandated laws designed to control the citizens’ daily life, from infancy to death.

(3). The official adoption of laws and policies designed to disentegrate the family.

(4). The development of cult status for state leaders and their Party.

(5). The promotion of “doublespeak,” so that the citizens learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent. Examples of doublespeak would be “giving up liberty for freedom.” Orwell himself defined doublespeak as “the defence of the indefensible… Political language that consists largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms”

(6). The revision of history in the favor of the State’s interpretation of it.

(7). A dystopian future where the individual within the State is dehumanized and the State is exalted and promoted along with a totaliterian view of society. The State rules; not the people.

(8). The use of euphemisms in the naming of State branches of government. The department that wages war on other countries is called The Department of Defense. The department that imprisons the conscientious objector who protests the actions of the State is called The Department of Justice. The formerly named Peace Officer becomes a Police Officer called upon to enforce Political Laws (police and politics come from the same word).

The Hollywood film director backs up his claim that the US has become (notice the past tense) an Orwellian state by giving various facts in the interview. The Obama administration has issued one million Top Security clearances to assist in the surveillance and surreptitious spying on US citizens. The US government has imprisoned more American citizens for espionage in the last four years than any previous administration. The US government now intercepts over 1.7 billion private, daily communications of its citizens. The US is codifying thousands and thousands of new, political laws that compel citizens to lives according to the State’s desires. Oliver Stone summarizes his concerns with the following statement:

I think under the disguise of sheep’s clothing President Obama has been a wolf. Because of the nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him, people forgave him a lot. He was a great hope for change. The color of his skin, the upbringing, the internationalism, the globalism, seemed all evident. And he is an intelligent man. He has taken all the Bush changes and basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them. That is what is sad. So we are going into the second administration that is living outside the law and does not respect the law and foundations of our system and he is a constitutional lawyer, you know. Without the law, it is the law of the jungle. Nuremburg (sic) existed for a reason and there was a reason to have trials, there is a reason for due process – ‘habeas corpus’ as they call it in the United States.

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[Editor’s note: Some of the original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid, so the links have been removed.]