People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late.
It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.
(G.K. Chesterton, 1922)