A Historic Day

It does not matter whether you hate George W. Bush or you hate Michael Moore. It does not matter whether you think the Iraq war was a good idea or a bad idea. It does not even matter if you are a Calvinist or an Arminian. Today was a historic day.

The purple finger held high has now become synonymous with Arabs who have long been silenced, whose voice is now being heard, even if only very faintly, in this imperfect election. Middle Eastern tyrranies are trembling at the ramifications of this election. Democracy targets the very building blocks upon which their throne is settled; minorities who hold tight reign over their nations are now facing the dilemma–change or be changed.

Natan Sharansky, in his book A Case for Democracy, unashamedly proclaims freedom as the antidote for terror. Sharansky, a former Soviet dissenter jailed for his protests against the Soviet government, compares the autocratic, petroliarchs of the Middle East to Soviet dictators. The battle cry of his book is “no appeasement for tyranny,” and Sunday’s election shook from palace to mosque with the first few notes of that symphony.

Sadly enough, moveon.org mentioned nothing of it and michaelmoore.com had this as their headline: “British Troops Killed in Plane Crash Near Baghdad”–in small print beneath that: “US Predicts More Violence After ‘Great Day’.” What a shame that these self-proclaimed truth-seekers cannot see through their own jaded perceptions to a moment that, depite your left or right leaning, marks the beggining of freedom in an area long imprisoned.