![]() This gem of a little book - only 126 pages, which I read in one sitting - paints that peril vividly, rather like the pamphleteers of colonial America.Īmericans are not a philosophic people, but Snyder chances the philosophic approach, that is, he discusses ideas - the ideas undergirding American Democracy and lying invisible behind our peril that, because they’ve become “normalized” (a term Snyder doesn’t use), we don’t recognize them. ![]() First step in saving ourselves is understanding our peril. Tyranny lies ahead, he holds - if we do not save ourselves. The author, Timothy Snyder, leads with “tyranny” for good reason: Alarmed at the deteriorating state of American democracy - he published this book, On Tyranny, in 2017, first year of the presidency of proto-tyrant Donald Trump - he wants to return us to first principles, including first terms. But this author, a historian, ratifies his use of the term by reaching back to America’s early history: The Founding Fathers themselves used the term “tyranny” - in reference to throwing off the rule of England’s King George, arguing the Federalist Papers, debating the U.S. ![]() “Tyranny” may, in a book’s title, seem “too much”: too grand, too archaic, too extreme. Fourth in an ongoing series, Books for Our Times ![]()
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