Joe

“One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

“On October 20, 2011, the rebels overran Qaddafi’s last stronghold, found him hiding in a drainpipe, sodomized him with a bayonet, and killed him, capturing his last moments on video. Putin watched that tape over and over again, probably thinking that this was what happened when America wanted to change a regime—Milošević dead in a prison cell, Saddam with a noose around his neck, Qaddafi on the wrong end of a spear.”
― Tim Weiner, The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020

“The moral values and integrity of our nation, and the long, difficult, fraught history of our efforts to uphold them at home and abroad, are the test of every American generation. Will we act in this world with respect for our founding conviction that all people have equal dignity in the eyes of God and should be accorded the same respect by the laws and governments of men? That is the most important question history ever asks of us.”
― John McCain, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations

“Memory requires active engagement with the complexities of the past. It is not an unthinking or passive process, like breathing or (for most people) sleeping. I have found that good memory, like good history, requires disciplined and focused attention, an honest effort to overcome one's perceptual and cognitive biases, and sustained effort.”
― Jamie Raskin, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy