acroyear | What science and history would teach us...or Rio Rancho, NM...

Here [the Library of Alexandria] clearly were the seeds of the modern world. What prevented them from taking root and flourishing? Why instead did the West slumber through a thousand years of darkness until Columbus and Copernicus and their contemporaries rediscovered the work done at Alexandria?

I can not give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no record, in the entire history of the Library, that any of its illustriuous scientists and scholars ever seriously challenged the political, economic, and religious assumptions of their society. The permanence of the stars was questioned; the justice of slavery was not.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos Chapter 13

Consider that. As long as our leaders lead us down the right path, or give us the impression they do so, things may seem fine. But they aren't, or at least they won't be for long. The right to question. The right to say, no, that's not how it should be. The right to say this war or that tax is wrong. The right to say my own decision to my body, my mind, my life, is not something that can be taken away.

The right to question is absolutely essential. As is the right to a straight answer.

Without it, we are inevitably, inescapably doomed.

"so when the mob came to finally burn [the library] down, there was nobody who would stand to stop them."