BY STEVE JANOSKI
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
- Thomas Paine
Many times when you ask your typical apathetic American about politics, they'll offer one of two answers: "I don't really pay attention…it doesn't affect me" is the first, and "I'm only one person, what does it really matter what I do?" is the second.
But, as the flames of revolution tear across the Middle East's desert sands, we must remember that the firestorm that engulfs the region was lit by the sparks that blew off of one lone man's scorched body.
Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor who made his living selling vegetables. Everything changed for him one day in mid-December when, according to a recent TIME magazine article, a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed produce cart, slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his dead father.
Bouazizi went to the provincial headquarters to seek help from the local municipal officials- they ignored him.An hour later, he returned to the headquarters, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself ablaze in the ultimate form of protest. He died days later.
What even Bouazizi didn't know, however, was that his one strike of the match would ignite the rage of all of the oppressed who have long suffered under the harsh rule of their autocratic Middle Eastern dictators.
Tunisia fell first. Then, the protests began in Egypt - weeks later, their dictator of three decades, Hosni Mubarak, fled from Cairo.
Even more remarkably, the fervor has spread: protests have erupted in Libya and Yemen, Algeria and Bahrain, Syria and Iran, as the citizens take to the streets clamoring for the collapse of their governments.
Those governments, in response, have acted accordingly; as Jack London once wrote, "The Iron Heel is getting bold."The Black Hundreds have formed, and there are pitched battles on the boulevards as pro-government forces try to crush the rebellious with truncheon and tear gas, batons and bullets.
The New York Times reported on Friday that dozens have been killed in streetfights in Libya; in Bahrain, security forces launched an attack on sleeping protestors, on women and children, that left four dead and scores wounded.Still, the people chant, "You cannot keep us down!"
In Iran, the opposition figure who led the protests against the results of the 2009 "election", Mir Hussein Moussavi, has disappeared as protests reach a fevered pitch. Some fear he's been "detained," and there are hints that the nation may be on the eve of civil war.
For years I have scoffed at the idea that America could push democracy on another country. I've repeatedly quoted the old saying that if the idea of democracy is so good, you won't have to push it on people- they'll steal it.
However, it takes a steel spine to stand face-to-face with the point of a bayonet and demand it, and even I, ever the idealist, am shocked by the strength and passion being shown by these brave souls.
I have heard some say that the United States must be wary of these protests and their results because some of the outgoing regimes are friendly to America, and we don't know who will take over in the power vacuum.
While that may be true, that line of thinking is also why the rest of the world hates us so much- the fact that a brutal dictator was friendly to the United States doesn't mean that the blood of his murdered citizens washes off his hands any easier.
For once, Americans, look past the confines of our borders, and be, just for the moment, citizens of the world! Realize that what these people are doing is the very thing that our Founding Fathers, so revered by both left and right, did all those centuries ago: seizing power from the cruel and unjust and declaring that they'd rather die on their feet than live any longer on their knees.
Every soul that leaves a corpse on the glowering streets of any Middle Eastern capitol is joining the ranks of the greatest of the world's patriots, from those Frenchmen that stormed the Bastille in 1789 to the Germans who took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.
And with the living, the spirit of every American patriot, from Thomas Paine and Sam Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Washington himself, stands defiantly, called back to action once more.
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