Yes, we should know the benefits ourselves, and everybody respects our time-proven, honored, and self-instilled rights--there are more patriotic, true, born-and-bred, Americans living now, than ever before, and more indeed who have actually fought for, sacrificed for, and known those who have died for those rights.
So, in its simplest form, its a two-way street, with some dangers involved.
First, there were more Americans living in Lybia, than ever, even before the long-overdue rebellion against Mohamar Khadafi which began two weeks ago. American journalists certainly began popping up on camera all over the area, many of whom had just left Cairo after the Egyptian uprising. This event seemed to be moving forward quicker than Egypt's, and Khadafi's own public statements and actions have made it appear that the area is soon to be overtaken by someone, and another dictator would be just that, which nobody needs.
The Egyptian political overthrow was a huge struggle, too--not many of us can deny that we could almost feel the hierarchy's vain, dying breaths--even though, afterward, we found out on our own public news media that the Egyptian event had been almost entirely engineered by a Google Marketing Executive.
That's right--in his many public interviews on Egyptian television and our own, Wael Ghonim almost seemed cocky in his relating the tale, told in the immediacy of the moment, of how he'd done it via Google's own social networking skill and power. It was almost like an intensely-scripted live reality TV show made on a grand scale...but for the 'net. Any 'older' viewers at home may not even 'get it'--a whole country freed from subjection, and taken through an entire national revolution, in just over 3 weeks.
Now, just as quickly, we are seeing many reports on our major news networks that things aren't really going well in Egypt at all. Many Egyptians who participated in their revolution, only days old, were reporting that none of the idealism thrown about during the fray was there afterward. Scenes in Egyptian courtrooms showed their own journalists being 'escorted' out by large, heavily-armed governmental thugs, after having committed the crime of asking about the new regime, and the current state of affairs.
These weren't nationalistic crazies, or fringe-element student journalists. These were people who only days before were reporting both sides of the affair, as truly as journalists should. These were journalists who asked the 'wrong' questions--people who put Nancy Grace to shame on a daily basis.
Catholic Herald article: "Cardinal Defends Release of Lockerbie Bomber"
The cardinal said that given the “steady rate” of executions in the United States, American lawmakers should “turn their gaze inwards, rather than scrutinising the working of the Scottish justice system”.later, in his same statement released to his affects, he went on to criticize the American justice system more directly. As the article went on to say...
Then, accusing the United States of adopting a “conveyor belt” approach to capital punishment, he added: “I would rather live in a country where justice is tempered by mercy than exist in one where vengeance and retribution are the norm.”
“Perhaps it is time for them to ‘cast out the beam from their own eye before seeking the mote in their brothers,’ ” he said.
