Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

On Tyranny

Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
Jan 06, 2020katiedennisgunnerson rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I believe this book is more relevant now, in January 2020, than ever. I know some are of the opinion that it is an overreaction to compare our current nationalist Western leaders to Hitler, but I think what Snyder is trying to show us is how quickly, what we assume to be a perfect and ever-lasting democracy, can devolve into an authoritarian led government and that we shouldn't take anything for granted. These are lessons from the 20th century, not comparisons based on political ideology. The argument that these lessons are irrelevant because China, North Korea, or Russia are worse, is a red herring. The point is these countries are worse off because they failed to learn lessons from our collective past. It can happen there and it did. It can happen here, in the US, and we shouldn't ignore the warning signs. The U.S. is not perfect, it never was and never will be, we have to be vigilant. "Does the history of tyranny apply to the United States? Certainly the early Americans who spoke of 'eternal vigilance' would have thought so. The logic of the system they devised was to mitigate the consequences of our real imperfections, not to celebrate our imaginary perfection."