A quote from Tacitus

The Culture
#1

Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet.

Translation: It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.

Just a reminder how rare, indeed, is freedom of thought and speech in human history. Brief flashes of light in Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, and the Age of Reason. We are experiencing the all too common misfortune in these days where one may no longer think what one likes nor say what one thinks.

My life spanned the golden age of political and intellectual freedom. That enlightened age is crumbling to dust now. A new Dark Age is imminent. Being in my senescence, I fear not for myself, but for my children and grandchildren.

2 Likes
#2

Yes, I never realized just how rare the freedom we’ve had in our lifetimes has been until now, when we can see it disintegrating around us.

1 Like
#3

It is a ghastly spectacle, and, I fear, irreversible.

2 Likes
#4

Will there be civil war? Or secession?

Or will nothing at all be done by the GOP or The People or Big Technology to attempt the resuscitation of the free constitutional Republic?

1 Like
#5

The COVID years demonstrated to me that Americans are as likely to behave as sheep as any other nation. It may be civil war, or secession, or the American experiment just may end not with a bang but a whimper.

2 Likes