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Roaring Patriotism Helps America Unite

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In the year 1824, Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, "When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." Emerson describes that when a nation has such great enthusiasm the people want to join in the euphoria and band together as a nation. A great example is the Miracle on Ice hockey game during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The US hockey team won in an incredible upset of the Soviet Union. The game was set during the Cold War and was a great rallying point for many Americans. In George Orwell's 1984, the citizens display their patriotism in an entirely opposite way. The citizens of Oceania or London, are “forced” to display their patriotism toward the government and their war effort. Oceania’s citizens wouldn’t even have heard of the Miracle on Ice because the government burned all books and re-wrote all the history books and taught that their world was the only one to have exist. By controlling the past, the Party can justify all of its actions in the present and appear as the “good guys”. If one examines the world of Oceania closely, alarming connections can be made to real-world government actions in the United States and the cruel world within Orwell's book. They aren’t allowed to express their minds, the government controls everything with the Thought Police, hidden cameras and the slogan “Big Brother is Watching You”. Orwell’s state controls every aspect of human life to

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