Rod Dreher is a writer, a journalist, and an author of three New York Times best-selling books,

The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming, The Benedict Option, and Live Not By Lies,

which has been translated into 10 languages, has sold over 200,000 copies worldwide,

and has just been published in paperback in the United States.

He's a senior editor at the American Conservative magazine

and a visiting fellow of the Danube Institute,

which is a think tank in Budapest Hungary.

Rod, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's great to be here, Kirk.

Thanks for having me.

Though it's dark over here in Budapest right now.

Yeah, yes, I see that. And I know you're so busy. I've,

I've seen you being interviewed by so many people. Jordan Peterson, a pastor friend of mine,

just had a long conversation with you at his church. And the topic is just riveting.

We're talking about this subject of totalitarianism. And for some people, that's a big, bad sounding

word. I wonder if you could help us understand what it means. The word total is at the beginning

and ism is at the end. What does totalitarianism actually mean? Well, totalitarianism was a political

ideology that came out of the 20th century, and it means a society

or a polity where everything is controlled by the state. When we think of totalitarianism,

we think of Nazi Germany, or we think of Soviet Russia, and where people couldn't exist outside of the state.

That's not what I'm talking about here, what we're facing now in America.

I think we're facing what I call soft totalitarianism.

...