Friday, 1/16/16
When the Israelites told Samuel that they wanted to be like
other people. They were saying that instead of being just God’s people, they
wanted to be ruled by a king. To dissuade them from that, Samuel described the
many hardships that would come their way. The king would demand their complete service,
punishing them at will.
That could make you think about Saudi Arabia and Thailand,
two countries with kings in our times.
Two days ago our paper ran a report from Saudi Arabia about a blogger
who ran a story disrespectful of their royalty. They sentenced him to ten years in prison and they
subjected him to a thousand blows with a cane. Then, last week a man in
Thailand received a similar sentence for saying something their king saw as
insulting.
Those stories got me to thinking how much our democracy does
for us. Thanks to our street lighting and the well-marked roads, I drove here
for sixty-five years without getting run into or hurt. I have electric cooking,
cooling, wide-screen TV, all without being a wealthy man.
And, rather than anyone being punished for insulting the
head of our country, he’d be booed out of places around here for saying anything
nice about President Obama.
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