I've been reading Hannah Arendt's "Ideology and Terror." Mind boggling. From the beginning: "[Whenever a totalitarian government] "rose to power, it developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country...[It] started to operate according to a system of values so radically different from all others, that none of our traditional legal, moral, or common sense utilitarian categories could any longer come to terms with, or judge, or predict its course of action."

Written in 1953, and containing unbelievable insights into our current situation.