A Syrian blogger shares his fears and hopes for the future of his country and his people. The courage of the people in the Middle-East who yearn for freedom and are willing to risk their lives for it is astonishing. In an atmosphere of arrests and imprisonments this man makes it just too easy for the Baathist thugs to find him and his family. He fully identifies himself on his blog. It's hard to find words to express the depth of one's admiration for this kind of bravery.
Consider by contrast the number of times we've heard someone in this country, someone for whom there is no risk of anything except becoming rich and famous, called courageous merely for expressing a dissenting political opinion. People who, at no cost to themselves, buck the political powers that be are deemed brave, bold, and heroic for doing something which places them in no jeopardy whatsoever.
It took courage, we were informed, for Michael Moore to make Fahrenheit 9/11. It took courage, his supporters told us, for Ward Churchill to blame America for the 9/11 attacks. If Moore and Churchill are exemplars of courage then the word has become so debased as to mean nothing at all, and the genuine courage of those who live defiantly under real tyranny is trivialized.
Those who are complicit in this trivialization should be deeply ashamed and embarrassed.
