As I reflect with gratitude and count blessings in my life this holiday season—among them family, friends, faith, football, and freedom—I keep returning to the debt we owe to the “otherwise minded.”

Allow me to explain.

A few years ago, I traveled to Lithuania to collaborate with free market leaders from the U.S. and Europe in our mutual quest to increase liberty and prosperity in our respective countries. While there, I took time to visit the capital city’s Museum of Genocide Victims, which was housed in the old KGB headquarters—a prison of sorts. The museum vividly chronicles the violent intimidation and brutal tactics carried out against the Lithuanian people by the Soviets—spying, arrests, deportations, torture, and murder. The exhibits are not for the faint of heart.

In the basement, the tour ends abruptly in a small room where chunks of the brick walls remain broken off by executioners’ bullets. The bleakness and the missing pieces silently testify on behalf of the victims and their suffering in that same chamber.

As you enter the museum, a plaque explains that the targets of the KGB’s special attention were those dubbed to be “otherwise minded.” These courageous otherwise minded Lithuanians were the men and women who questioned government authority, resisted Soviet oppression, and stood up for the rule of law and human dignity.

The otherwise minded have been some of the world’s most admirable freedom fighters. They fought for freedom of speech. For freedom of association. For property rights. For freedom of religion. These brave and dignified heroes established a line across which they would not bear government intrusion, and they honored that boundary with their lives.

Over time, the ranks of the otherwise minded grew. On August 23, 1989, approximately two million people peacefully joined hands to create a single chain of human solidarity that stretched the 419 miles spanning the Baltic capitals from Vilnius (Lithuania) to Riga (Latvia) to Tallinn (Estonia)—see image below. Later that same year, of course, the Berlin Wall would fall—the otherwise minded having toppled the first domino.

We are fortunate to enjoy a country full of freedoms that too many otherwise minded have died to achieve and which the founders of our own great nation fervently sought to protect for the generations to come through our founding document—the Constitution. Nonetheless, there remains a temptation to enforce politically correct speech, compliant behavior, and use other tactics to intimidate the otherwise minded today.

There are those who remain threatened by the ideas of liberty, including the freedoms of speech, religion, and association that we will not renounce. We fight on undeterred.

I am profoundly thankful for those who boldly resisted the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century and also to all of you who are steady in your resolve to push back in this 21st century against the subtle but steady erosion of our precious rights.

May you—the otherwise minded—along with your families continue to enjoy the enduring and hard-fought principles of peace, prosperity, and liberty this holiday season and always.

A version of this piece originally appeared in The American Mind, a publication of the Claremont Institute.