The people who killed civilians and attacked infrastructure in New York did in fact find out what the United States reaction would be – ask Osama bin Laden. But then the police in the USA don’t beat and torture children arrested for graffiti, nor shoot live ammunition into peaceful demonstrations. The American military won’t bomb and shell American cities because the they don’t like the president. If the American government did try any of that, then yes – the people of the United States would rise up in armed revolt. Read the 2nd amendment to the United States Constitution and the charter of the National Rifle Association if you have any doubts.

A few students spray-painted mild insults against Assad on the school wall. They were arrested, detained, and badly beaten while in custody. A small group of families of the children peacefully protested the abuse of the children, in front of the police station. They were met with automatic weapons fire, killing four and wounding dozens. Larger demonstrations protesting the carnage were met with mortars and artillery. The people’s anger spread, as did the government’s war against their own people. Today’s Syria is the result of the Assad’s reaction to some taunting from a handful of children. Assad already repeatedly refused to hold elections – let alone “open and internationally monitored elections” - before July 2014. But then his 1st election was “unopposed”, after the one-party legislature reduced the minimum age for president 6 years to Bashar’s age. His near unanimous 2nd election was universally accepted as a total sham. So much for “democracy” ... All of this was reported by RIA Novosti – an instrument of the Russian government.

Anyone who thinks the West is not democratic is either completely ignorant of the West, the United States, and of democracy, or has a mindless hatred of The West so intense it totally shorts out the speaker’s cognitive abilities. (Several such people post here.) Confusing a private policy institute like PNAC with the United States government would support either conclusion.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn always made clear that he admired the political liberty which was one of the enduring strengths of Western democratic societies. In a major speech at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein on 14 September 1993, Solzhenitsyn implored the West not to "lose sight of its own values, its historically unique stability of civic life under the rule of law—a hard-won stability which grants independence and space to every private citizen." Who would dare claim to know better than he?

Name-calling, on the other hand, is of course nothing more than the nattering of an autistic infant, whose moist output from both ends is about the same.