Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.
—Karel Capek

Most of the world for most of the time has lived under tyranny. Choice does not come into the matter. Years, centuries have to pass in order for people to be able to build the culture and supporting institutions of a democratic society—that is, one in which individuals have to be responsible for themselves and their choices. An highly complicated balance operates in a democracy between the myriad choices of individuals and the procedures of accountability they set up to adjudicate the moral, social, and political outcomes of their choices. There is no history, in Emerson’s shorthand for the hard-won primacy of the individual over tyranny, only biography.

To be autobiographical, then: among my earliest memories is the exodus from Paris in June 1940 to esc ...

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