On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

The logic of the system they devised was to mitigate the consequences of our real imperfections, not to celebrate our imaginary perfection.

We must ask ourselves why we have so easily lost faith in the engines of progress that got us where we are today—in the democratic efforts to outlaw slavery, end child labor, limit the workday, keep drugs safe, protect collective bargaining, create public schools, battle the Great Depression, electrify rural America, weave a nation together by road

We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy. After communism in eastern Europe