Christopher Hitchens misunderstands totalitarianism

From here:

I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.

I think Hitchens is correct in defining totalitarianism as the enemy – although, “political enemy” would be more accurate. Where he misses the mark is identifying God as the supreme totalitarian.

In practice, the most evil totalitarians have been godless individuals who, without the restraints that fear of the Divine engenders, cavalierly visited murder and mayhem on their own people.

If the Triune God exists, as I believe he does, far from being a celestial tyrant, he is the creator of human freedom, a freedom which allowed humanity the choice of rebelling against its Creator to the cost of God himself in his atoning sacrifice on the cross.

If God does not exist, if the natural is all there is, the true tyrant is our genetic makeup and the molecules in our brains: they guarantee that no choice we make can ever be free of what they compel us to do.