On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Totalitarianism is religious science, or scientific religion. Notalitarianism is bottomlessly agnostic about both values and facts. Totalitarians give us one truth that seems to hold everything together. They merge what is with what ought to be, making both meaningless, leaving the power to custodians who explain why the rest are creatures of how. When the one truth slips away, notalitarians arrive to give us the one truth that there are no truths. Freedom begins with the recognition of the difference between the is and the ought. Free people operate in the space between, in a borderland of unpredictability. Totalitarianism claims to close the gap between what is and what should be permanently and for everyone. A notalitarian shrugs and says that the problem does not exist: Who knows what (if anything) exists, and who knows what (if anything) should be? Totalitarianism takes all the oxygen from the room; notalitarianism fills the space with laughing gas.