America was a relatively free country back then. Not so much these days.
George Orwell wasn't wrong, he was just off by a couple of decades. The political will towards totalitarianism has always existed, it's just that before about 2000 or so, the technology to make it stick didn't really exist.
Between the "war on drugs", the "war on terrorism", fear of lawsuits changing the way we live and the way corporations operate, and all the BS laws thought up by idiot soccer moms, this country is anything but free today.