Defend institutions

The second lesson from Timothy Snyders’s twenty lessons on tyranny:

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.

- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

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