The only thing I would add here is that I think authoritarianism is more about people than it is about laws. For instance, the so-called 'Stalin's Constitution'

The only thing I would add here is that I think authoritarianism is more about people than it is about laws. For instance, the so-called 'Stalin's Constitution' guaranteed freedom of speech. But when political bodies begin to toss aside adherence to any sort of normalcy in law and law enforcement, then laws become mostly irrelevant relics of a past time. Obviously I'm referencing the giant orange elephant in the room here, but we can take far less divisive issues as well. For instance there's 0 chance the Founding Fathers would have felt that the current systems of mass surveillance ought be allowed under the 4th amendment. Yet here we are. It's not really laws that have been creeping further and further beyond the pale, but actions. And those actions grow only more extreme by the day. This is why, to me, I think we may have already crossed whatever 'border' there is into authoritarianism.