New Year’s resolutions for every day
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n Wednesday’s print edition of The Citizen, an Associated Press story previewed the “resistance” books planned for 2018, the resistance being authors opposed to Donald Trump.
As our local story today shows, Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House is in huge demand, even here in Prince George, where the folks at Books & Company compared it to the last Harry Potter book.
Yet there was at least one author in that Associated Press story that shouldn’t have been included as an anti-Trump resistance writer.
Yale historian Timothy Snyder does have a new book coming out in 2018. The Road To Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America will follow up on 2017’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder is an award-winning author and an acclaimed academic, specializing in Eastern Europe and authoritarianism. To label his work as simply anti-Trump does it a horrible disservice.
Despite its fussy title, On Tyranny is a book for everyone. It’s literally small enough for a child to hold and it’s written in clear and plain language, so it could even be studied by a high school social studies class. The book is so short that most readers could draw themselves a hot bath, settle in the tub and finish it before the water got cold.
Snyder’s book could have been called 20 Ways You Can Protect Democracy As A Responsible Citizen (And What Could Happen If You Don’t).
An even better title would have been 20 New Year’s Resolutions For People Who Care About Freedom and Democracy.
This would have been a fitting title because every chapter name is a call to action – Do Not Obey In Advance, Believe In Truth, Make Eye Contact and Small Talk, Contribute To Good Causes, Listen For Dangerous Words and Be A Patriot.
Does Snyder target Trump?
Not by name because he’s uninterested in the man.
What alarms him is the office, its power and its potential for both great good and devastating harm, so when he criticizes Trump, which isn’t often, he only speaks of “the president.”
On Tyranny isn’t for Trump haters because it’s not an attack book, targeting the man and anyone who supports him.
Snyder is appealing to everyone – especially people who voted for Trump and still side with him – to simply be good, caring citizens.
His goal is to empower people to stand for freedom, not to demonize Trump and his apologists. For people who still find On Tyranny might take up too much of their precious time, they simply need to read the 20 chapter title pages.
Here is Chapter 2: Defend Institutions. “It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about – a court, a newspaper, a law, a labour union – and take its side.”
That’s not so much to ask of any voting aged adult in a healthy democracy, Snyder argues, whether they are a student, a senior or the president.
The book’s 20th chapter, Be As Courageous As You Can, simply reads: “if none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”
In other words, in our everyday lives as honourable, compassionate citizens, truth is worth defending and justice is worth fighting for.
And, when we must, freedom is worth dying for as the ultimate patriotic sacrifice for our families, our friends, our communities and our country.
Freedom isn’t free, the old saying goes. On Tyranny offers great words to live by for sensible citizens willing to accept the price and the individual responsibility that comes with living in a democratic society.
Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
As our local story today shows, Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House is in huge demand, even here in Prince George, where the folks at Books And Company compared it to the last Harry Potter book.