“What worries me is not the cry of the wicked. It is the silence of the good.” (Martin Luther King)

“What worries me is not the cry of the wicked. It is the silence of the good.” (Martin Luther King) These are strange times in which we live, in which perceptions are increasingly distant from reality. If a lie repeated many times has the ambition of becoming a “truth”, fueled by “perverse actors” of a collective tragedy that is beginning to take shape, what can we do? As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said: “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” Perhaps the time has come for reflection in which we think that it will be enough to remain faithful to our principles and values, repudiating the false moral superiority of those who construct the illusions of chaos, collapse, and a civilizational downfall? Or is it time to return to the fight to defend the rights that we have hard-won and that are now under fierce attack by legions of lies, intellectual fraud, and the most shameless populism? As Bob Marley (Jamaican singer and songwriter) said: “No one but ourselves can free our minds.” In a world or country where hatred is rampant, where intolerance is raised, where some even resort to physical violence to assert their thoughts, if we continue to consider hate speech and incitement to violence as extreme uses of freedom of expression, protected within the scope of that same freedom, it is a path to chaos. “No one claims that democracy is perfect or flawless. It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.” (Winston Churchill) Whether we like it or not, people will always tend to judge us according to their own standards and conscience. Some will even try to change us, tell us that “it doesn’t look good for us to be like this”, “that we will be misunderstood”. We should never let the judgment of others stop us from being who we are. We are unique, we were not born to be a copy of anyone! As Nietzsche said: “Don’t worry about what others think; worry about what you think of yourself.” Before you set yourselves up as (false) patriots, how about getting to know a little bit about the history of our Portugal? Knowing what it means to be Portuguese. Knowing our civilizing heritage. Being proud of our openness to other peoples, cultures and religions. As the writer Paulo Coelho said: “Those who don’t know how to listen don’t heed the advice that life gives us.” We must not forget that one day it will be on our doorstep or in our home. That the victims will be us or our own. This has happened so many times. We cannot allow it to happen again. As the philosopher Hegel said when reflecting on his “Philosophy of History”, he wrote that “nations and governments have never learned anything from history and have never acted in accordance with the lessons they could have learned from it.” The example that is happening in our country is there to demonstrate, today, once again, that the best way to repeat past mistakes is simply to not know History.