If ever we feel any doubts about how fortunate we are to live where we do, we have only to look at the news. There but for the grace of geography.... In the civilized West where democratic rule of law and order, guarantees of human rights and freedoms and equality under the law order our every day we are protected from the excesses of cruelty to which tyrannical dictatorships are a given for those who experience persecutions on a daily basis.

It is hard to fathom when you have lived all your life in an environment whose protection of society and the individual has grown exponentially over all the years of your life, if you are advanced in age, to imagine how horribly miserable it would be to live in a society whose government doesn't hesitate to name critics of its abysmal social/political record as a police state, as "terrorists", according them the same military reaction usually reserved for terrorists or foreign invasions.

The plight of ordinary citizens who have been plunged from the comfort of an ordinary life into the hellstorm of regime siege, experiencing the bombing of their schools, mosques, hospitals and apartment buildings, with deadly artillery fire directed on civilian gatherings such as bread line-ups or briefly perfunctory funerals is unimaginable to those of us whose most frightful nightmares could not begin to conjure up the existential threats that these poor unfortunates face.

We, on the other hand, live our pleasantly routine lives, enjoying the experiences of daily going about our business and though we do indeed appreciate our good fortune, a style of life so unlike what others in the news are experiencing that it boggles our mind to read of the atrocities that nations considering themselves well-ordered and civilized are capable of perpetrating upon the defenceless, claiming they are merely protecting their version of law and order but throwing in the vicissitudes related to radical ideologies, sectarian religious animosities and political gain.

We have the right and the freedom to criticize our government. That freedom extends to selecting the political candidates we feel best exemplify at any given time our values, who will extend themselves on behalf of advancing those values during their allotted time in public office. Those who fail to prove their worth, who inspire ridicule or loathing or simply disappointment can be removed with the ease of the ballot box.