As the State grows, individual power diminishes. As the State does for you, you do less. As the State embodies and expresses power, you embody and express less, you do less, you are less.
Someone claimed that one of the goals of an aspiring global totalitarian was to get everyone implanted with microchips which contain everything about us. We can walk into a store, pick something up, and walk out, and the cost of that item is deducted from our account. There is no need for a cashier, since they know who I am. They know where to find me. And if I act up, my chip is emptied, and my movements can be controlled. They know who I talk to, where I go, even what I say.
But of course we have to agree to this. And all of these ideas demand, for their implementation, fear. Governments are grown because of fear: fear of war, fear of crime, fear of confusion. And what drives fear is a sense of helplessness.
Terrorism is a perfect vehicle for authoritarians because it is amorphous. It has no boundaries. It has no time. It is not a conventional war, and thus can be declared in perpetuity. I personally wonder if ISIS has not been built by our shadow government precisely BECAUSE we were winning the war on terror. Certainly, Obama armed and almost certainly trained what became ISIS, and it seems we are not attacking the oil trucks which deliver wealth to ISIS, and are not effectively targeting their leadership or propaganda centers. We seem in fact to still be arming people whose only allegiance to us is their claimed opposition to Assad.