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Values, Standards

8/31/2020

A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well--and wishing that it would do better.

19 Be a patriot, from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder

Contemplate Others

8/30/2020

A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, "although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge," wrote Orwell, tends to be "uninterested in what happens in the real world. Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the nationalist Danilo Kis put it, nationalism "has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical."

19 Be a patriot, from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder

When The Unthinkable Arrives

8/29/2020

The sudden disaster that requires the ends of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

18 Be calm when the unthinkable arrives, from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder

Listen

8/28/2020

Extremism certainly sounds bad, and governments often try to make it sound worse by using the word terrorism in the same sentence. But the word has little meaning. There is no doctrine called extremism. When tyrants speak of extremists, they just mean people who are not in the mainstream--as the tyrants themselves are defining that mainstream at that particular moment.

17 Listen for dangerous words (Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception.) from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder

Observe and Listen

8/27/2020

Since so much of what is happening now is familiar to the rest of the world or from recent history, we must observe and listen.

16 Learn from peers in other countries, (And no country is going to find a solution by itself.) from Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder

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Values, Standards

Contemplate Others

When The Unthinkable Arrives

Listen

Observe and Listen

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