Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, in an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

In her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt,

documented the rise of the Nazis within Germany and the Stalinists within the Soviet Union.

Her analysis included identifying

preconditions that make the rise of totalitarianism possible. And her analysis is as helpful today as

when she wrote it. For example, the breakdown of traditional social institutions, especially the family,

communities, and churches, churches proceed totalitarian control.

The void left, when people are rootless and disconnected from one another, is often filled by bad ideas and authoritarian leaders, leaders that promise to fix everything.

And today, radical individualism is often confused as the American way of life and accelerated

by both the collapse of these essential institutions

and the siloing effect of digital technology. So the idealized, rugged American individualism

has now devolved into what's more accurately called expressive individualism, in which our

identity is determined in active rejection of any outside influences and responsibility.

In this view, autonomy is confused with dignity and a rejection of the inherent relational

realities of God's design. Smartphones and social media provide daily liturgies for us

by which to define ourselves, but they can never build a void of

connection that so many have. As a result, we now have become a nation of activist in which

people attach to online causes or embrace social contagions. And that kind of conformity is what

is required for totalitarianism. Now, second prerequisite of totalitarianism is the

spread of ideology, often through propaganda. Now, to be clear, an ideology that offers an all-encompassing

vision of the world and demands our absolute loyalty and is presented by fearful propaganda

...