2020 will be remembered for many things: COVID-19, nationwide riots, a divisive election. But the rise of pandemic lockdowns will go down as the most momentous. Never before have the day-to-day lives of so much of humanity been so radically upended. And, outside of wartime, never before has there been such a widespread and extreme rollback of human freedom.

How did it all happen so fast? Why did people give in so quickly to such a sweeping assault on liberty, even in America, "the land of the free"?

In a word, they let their guard down. They stopped being vigilant.

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Thomas Jefferson never wrote those words exactly, but they are true nonetheless. Free people, to stay free, must forever be on their guard against would-be tyrants.