The Statue of Liberty is a universal symbol of freedom, democracy, hope and the end of slavery

From the On Tyranny series by Timothy Snyder, lesson #5 of twenty. Check here for a lesson every Monday or you can find them on YouTube.  They are all short videos, no ads. This is 9:48.

“Professional groups are a very important part of civil society. In every attempt to consolidate power what you find is that power is going to try to limit the number of opponents; it’s going to try to simplify the regime itself; it’s going to try to make sure there are few strong institutions between it and people and it will try to leave people as individuated, as isolated, as alienated as possible.

Civil society is that set of organizations which allows people to connect among themselves based upon the things that they do or think or believe. In the case of the professions people are coming together on the basis of what they do but hopefully also on the basis of what they believe. The question of whether lawyers or judges or military officers are just people with titles and uniforms or whether they have some kind of – let’s call it guild loyalty, some set of values which is not just a watered down version of whatever the regime is telling them, is a crucial question for the future of any democracy and of our democracy. ” – Timothy Snyder