From my inbox:
Sixty years ago this week, George Orwell’s most important work of political fiction, 1984, was published. Orwell’s novel warned of the centralization of political power and the lengths that a totalitarian regime, led by Big Brother, would go to maintain its control over society.
On this anniversary, the Competitive Enterprise Institute reminds those who value freedom of a more current threat – the crusade for global governance led by environmental activist groups in the name of combating global warming. With calls for limits on energy use, new global taxes and the regulation of individual behavior, the recent development of environmental policy has tended ever more toward greater government control and less personal freedom....
CEI’s 90-second video campaign dramatizes this threat. The video follows in the steps of Apple Computer’s 1984 Super Bowl ad and the 2007 anti-Hillary Clinton “Vote Different” parody. It shows – in place of Big Brother – Al Gore lecturing a captive audience on the need to crack down on energy use, economic growth and personal freedom.
[CEI General Counsel Sam] Kazman stated: “Orwell’s nightmarish society rested on a never-ending war fought on constantly shifting battlefronts. Nothing in our experience comes closer to that war than the current campaign to restrict humanity’s carbon footprint.”
Ohmigod, it's true! It's the Ministry of Plenty! (Not that anyone at CEI was sharp enough to make the comparison.) Don't miss the video, below, which essentially consists of cropping Al Gore's head into the fabled Apple ad, and oddly imagines that showing him quoting Orwell will make him appear to be Big Brother, rather than his opposite.
--Christopher Orr