The Family and the New Totalitarianism

"The human community is never more endangered than when totalitarianism appears to be benevolent. The new totalitarian’s idealism, his “humanitarianism,” his public image, may all communicate to us many good things, and thus our imagination is captured to the detriment of real discernment. We soon find ourselves succumbing to a magnetic attraction, and voting for leaders whose agendas mix admirable elements and fatal flaws. We then discover that we have elevated to positions of maximum influence men who would sacrifice human lives for the sake of “peace” or a thriving economy or some other value. Our guilt is denied, our sense of personal responsibility is numbed, to the degree that we perceive the sacrificed lives as statistical abstractions and our personal comforts as more real. By such choices we are revealed to ourselves. Where our treasure is, there is our heart. By and large, in the once-Christian democracies of the West we have been measured in the scales and found wanting."

-Excerpt from The Family and the New Totalitarianism