Is This America’s Reichstag Moment?

The freedom of speech in the US is being erased

The burning of the Reichstag in Berlin, 1933 — Source: Wikimedia

We are living in dangerous times. Historically speaking, this is nothing new. The past is full of strife, chaos, tyranny, and war. Yet, somehow it feels new, even unthinkable.

We had thought we had gotten passed that. We were supposed to be living the “End of History” as Francis Fukuyama had said.

He had written those words in 1989, and for a while it rang true. It seemed to be the time of Thomas Friedman’s “Lexus and the Olive Tree”, an era when no two countries that had a McDonald’s would ever attack each other.

It had been a time of optimism. Despite a few setbacks, the world appeared to be moving in a freer, more prosperous direction. One where we were realizing we were all interdependent.

Freedom was supposed to be the default setting. Somehow, we had thought it couldn’t happen here.

Even the so-called War on Terror could still be termed as a classic struggle against the enemies of freedom, an external “them” who didn’t value the things our society was built on. Freedom. Free speech. Democracy. Rule of law. Respect for the other.

That all began to unravel in the 2010’s. The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The first election of Donald Trump as…