Lincoln on Power and Character

Abraham Lincoln once remarked that :

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

What we are now witnessing in the Arab world is the playing out of this truism.
Men who take power from others, even when the others were themselves tyrants, often become like the men they eliminated. This is so true that we often forget about it.
It is expedient to govern by force. There is no need for debate, no requirement to explain one's acts, no counterbalance of free thought and speech to place the people's desires on an equal footing with those of the ruler. Whether the ruler is called a king or a president or an ayatollah or a prime minister is not important. They all have one characteristic - despotism - which violates the natural laws that govern all human beings. We want and need to be free to form our preferred forms of society and to be governed by officials who are accountable to us for their acts. 
In dictatorships one person or small group decides what is best for it and then forces all of the citizens in its control to obey. When they refuse, violence and coercion are used to implement the will of the rulers. Secret police and quasi-public militia force obedience. We see this today in the basij militia in Iran, the revolutionary committees in Libya and the now-ousted secret police in Egypt. The names differ but the goal is always the same - force conformity by terrorist tactics. When this fails to silence the citizenry, the rulers turn to prison and torture.
It is small wonder, then, that the Arab people in North Africa and the Middle East have exploded in rage at their condition of social and political slavery. Human beings can take only so much of dictatorship and terror before they choose to die rather than to continue in servitude. Patrick Henry, the American revolutionary hero, said it best : "Give me liberty or give me death." This, finally, is the only choice left to human beings too long suppressed. Righteous indignation is its name.
The pitiful attempts of the Arab world's rulers to come before their people with promises of reform and, in the case of Qadhaffi, threats of civil war and foreign plunder of their country if they oust him, are the last refuge of these wickedly inhuman tyrants. They deserve nothing so much as to be forever shut out of the common society of humankind.