The usual suspects in the establishment media throw these terms around like they are identical. They’re not.

An authoritarian is someone who would love to have total control over your life. So this kind of person is virtually every politician above the level of county commissioner. But an authoritarian only worries about your outward submission. So this kind of person wants you to outwardly conform but – and here’s the crucial difference – doesn’t really care what you think or do on your own time or if you badmouth them over dinner with your family.

The 20th century brought in a new animal. It happened mostly because they could. That’s when we started to get totalitarians. Totalitarians want control over everything about your life. They want you to conform outwardly, mentally, privately – in every sphere of your life. The classic warning to us about this was the 1947 novel ‘1984’ in which the government tried to make every mental difference an impossibility, even changing language in service of the state.

We should beware of both. A free people have no need for control and the beauty of freedom is that free individuals can make and do wonderful things when they are left alone.

But there’s a crucial difference. I don’t like either of them but I can live with an authoritarian. They want me to outwardly conform? Well, good luck with that. Americans have shown over the past two years how tricky that can be. But the scary thing about the past two years has been that it bordered on totalitarianism with people demanding a lockstep mental regime, a conformity that was not only outward but inward and mental as well.

So beware of governmental controls. Virtually anything the government does can be done better, more efficiently, and cheaper by the private sector, and that should be our starting way of thinking about life. Unfortunately, we’ve developed a not small segment of the population that views bureaucratic controls as the first – rather than the absolute, dead last – means of taking care of a problem. Cultivate in your own life and in those spheres of influence you have an attitude that people will take care of things that come up. Give people the chance to take care of our problems, and the results are amazing.