by J.B. Shurk, Lew Rockwell:

Totalitarianism is the warm bath in which civilization slits its wrists. It envelops the people with petty rules, strange dogmas, immoral duties, and forced sacrifices. It warms its victims with intoxicating promises of the government’s false love. It leaves the citizen naked — stripped first of his free will, then the thoughts in his head, and finally anything he once called his own. It slowly dispossesses each person of his personhood, until the population withers into frail, colorless facsimiles of the bleak, omnipresent State. Without the courage to act, the desire to think, the wisdom to pray, or the conscience to object, human purpose disappears. Society is exsanguinated of its vitality, creativity, spirituality, and mirth — until it slips beneath the water and stops breathing.