“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

I have a number of friends who are writers, and a small number of those who are historians by profession. It’s no surprise, then, that they’ve been writing a lot lately about authoritarian movements and what we can learn from them. I’m always struck by how stunned they (and we) are to find ourselves at this turning point in the world’s best-known and most admired modern democracy. Yet with all the angst and gnashing of teeth, none of them seem to get past the questions about this new political construct and certainly offer no answers. I suppose it’s because we don’t know where we and our government are going. And I also suppose we’re not going to know that for quite a long time. Continue Reading