day no. 16,271: because men moved too late

"The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. 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

The time to protest your own murder is before it happens. The time to protest voter fraud is before you lose your vote. You cannot object to your own murder after the fact or vote for reform after voting has been voted down.

It always seems too early to act until it is too late to act. There is always the option to reconsider up until there's nothing left to consider. There will always be an option for inaction up until there are no options left. "Too soon to know," and, "too early to act," are real. They do exist. But so do, "should know by now," and, "too late." To insist on certainty is to insist on servility. You will not be able to convince everyone without hindsight and even then you will only see what you should have done. The only way to remove the possibility of being mistaken is to be sure that you were wrong.