Previous
Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Tyranny, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Collapse of American Democracy
Tyranny and the Consolidation of Power
Political Action and Civic Responsibility
History and Memory
Summary
Analysis
“If none of us is prepared to die for freedom,” Snyder says simply, “then all of us will die under tyranny.”
Democracy is worth defending because it gives the people who comprise it the power to shape society. But the reverse is also true: the people in a democratic society also have the ultimate responsibility to protect their democracy. Powerful people and institutions usually benefit from tyrants’ concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands, so they cannot be trusted to defend the interests of the majority against the minority. Citizens stand to lose from this concentration of power, and only this collective truly has an incentive to defend democracy. This means that each citizen is as responsible as every other, and all must be willing to put themselves on the line in order to protect the collective.
Themes
