I'm surprised, based on your closing statement, that you would speak of Athens as a successful endeavor as if you were a live in the fifth century to witness it. We can't know that, nor can we know whether the so-called primitive democracies that developed in ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia proved to be successful.

I refuse to believe that every dictatorship was evil. I know they say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, yet I think to entertain the belief that every man that ever held a position of great authority was corrupted by that powers, is to give up on humanity.

Qaddafi for me, speaks to me of the integrity that one can retain even with complete power of a nation, and a lot of pull over a continent. Sure, he was a bit of a narcissist, but he loved his people and he died for them in the end.

I try not to be insensitive here, but are you certain of how your grandfather and his family died, and who was directly responsible for it? I ask only because I would trust a reliable witness testimony a lot more than I would that of something printed in a book, so this would be a good piece of information for me.

I do not know what you mean by my post is so apologetic that you don't know if I believe what I have written. I think it was portrayed clearly within the post that I didn't believe a lot of what I was writing for sure, because it was--in my opinion--not completely trustworthy information.

Thanks for the message.