http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/06/28/hitlers-rise-it-can-happen-here/

«In their different ways, Mayer, Haffner, and Jarausch show how habituation, confusion, distraction, self-interest, fear, rationalization, and a sense of personal powerlessness make terrible things possible. They call attention to the importance of individual actions of conscience both small and large, by people who never make it into the history books. Nearly two centuries ago, James Madison warned: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.” Haffner offered something like a corollary, which is that the ultimate safeguard against aspiring authoritarians, and wolves of all kinds, lies in individual conscience: in “decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large.”»

Got this from one of my friends on Facebook. Of course, when I went back to FB after reading, it refreshed and the post was lost, like a twig on a stream, carried out of sight by Father’s Day.