A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we wi… - Timothy Snyder

The politics of inevitability is an intellectual coma we put ourselves in.

We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. Our own tradition demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny, and to consider the proper responses to it. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.

Without a sense of what should be, we cannot be clear about how what is could ever change.