On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century

On Tyranny Timothy Snyder wrote a book called “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” mainly to inform Americans on how to withstand from the rise of tyranny in America today. He starts the book off with an opening line, “history does not repeat, but it does instruct” (Snyder 6). In reference to the opening line, readers will learn how to prevent the fall of democracy, along with overcoming the rise of tyranny through ‘twenty lessons’ based on the mistakes made in the twentieth century. These historical lessons are mostly taken from European’s history of fascism, communism, and Nazism. As an expert in European history, the author, Timothy Snyder uses examples based on the Soviet Union and the German Nazis to show how “history can familiarize, and it can warn” (Snyder 7). Not only is Timothy Snyder an author, but he is also “the Levin Professor of History at Yale University” (Snyder 98). As a professor at Yale University, he specializes in teaching modern European political history (“Timothy Snyder”). With his large background in these topics, Timothy Snyder warns Americans to be knowledgeable of Europeans history of both fascism and communism in order to make sure that America does not go down

They feared that someday an elected president would overthrow the democratic republic into tyranny. Tyranny is “the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit” (Snyder 6). In other words, tyranny is “a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control” (“Tyranny”). In order to conserve the democratic republic system while preventing the use of tyranny, our founding fathers established the rule of law as well as, a system of checks and balances (Snyder