Our precious freedoms

I'm glad that the members of the media are not taking the Trump Administration's assaults on freedom of the press lying down.  Good for them.

I read a long message on Facebook by Andras Corban-Arthen describing his experiences and recollections of living under a repressive dictatorship.  I am copying his last paragraphs here because I think his point is so important.  I have added the emphasis to the last sentence.

"Surely many people would say that it’s very far-fetched to think that what I have described could ever take place in this country. I fully realize that it’s certainly not what is happening here at the moment – that we’re by no means there yet, and that we may very well never get there. The U.S. is much too big and complex, with so many checks and balances that it would be extremely difficult for any one person to exercise complete control over all of it.

But getting there, however, can happen a lot more easily and quickly than one might think, especially since many of the factors that would speed up such a process have already been in place for quite some time. And the most insidious of those factors – and our greatest weakness – is the naiveté, the denial and the apathy implicit in the belief that such things could never happen here.

 We should never take for granted the precious freedoms which we still have, and preserve them at all costs while we still have them."