Jonah Goldberg: Civil libertarians up in arms re the NSA, but what about ObamaCare and health records?

Orwell vs Huxley?

Worrying about NSA abuse is cast as high-minded while worrying about ObamaCare or the IRS is seen as paranoid. Why?

It's just fashionable.

Part of the answer surely stems from the fact the progressive dream of government-guaranteed health care is fashionable, while opposition to it is perceived by liberal elites as backward or villainous.

But it goes deeper than that. There are basically two visions of oppressive government, the Orwellian and the Huxleyan. In George Orwell's 1984, the dystopia is a totalitarian police state, where everyone is snooped on and bullied. In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, most people are happy because the government takes care of them.

Culturally, Americans of all stripes recoil at anything that seems like a step on the slippery slope toward the Orwellian state. But we lack the same reflexive response against things that smack of the Huxleyan.