Thinking about…

South Korea and America

First of all, we have to take in a very basic reality: that attempts to establish military dictatorships have been made in democracies, and will be made in other democracies –including, very possibly, in the American one.

Those instincts led South Koreans, en masse, to ignore the declaration of martial law, and to do the very things that their president tried to forbid them to do: speak, gather, resist.

Would Americans take a similar stand? Thanks to South Koreans in the last hours, and thanks to many other examples around the world, contemporary and historical, we can know the danger signs, and we can make preparations. Others have given us time to think, and have set for us good examples. We will have no excuses.