Do You Live in a Free State or a Fear State?

How you know the game you’re in ... rather than the one you have always known.

By Trygve Olson

Over years of work abroad, I learned there are two types of systems: free states and fear states. This distinction wasn’t theoretical. I learned it over years of work in countries where democracy was under siege — from Belarus to Ukraine, from Serbia to Georgia, from Cambodia to Venezuela. I sat with dissidents who had been jailed, traine…