It's Thursday, December 1st, 2022.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from

the Christian world view.

Politics comes with consequences, political systems come with consequences, and that's

particularly true when you look at a dictatorship at an autocracy.

And most fundamentally, when you look at the rise of totalitarianism, especially in

the 20th century, continuing into the 21st century.

And here's where we need to notice that when you're talking about totalitarianism, it

is actually far easier to imagine totalitarianism in the 20th century than say in the 19th.

And did you look at the 21st?

Well, just look to China.

It is even more totalitarian than the Soviet Union was during the 20th century.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let's just remind ourselves of what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.

It is the word total.

What does that mean?

What's the ideology?

The ideology behind the totalitarian state is that the state is everything.

The total state, the state is the totality.

When it comes to say a Western understanding of a constitutional form of government, something

that includes democratic practices like voting, one of the things you have to note is that

there is a clear distinction between the public and the private.

...