Buddha said, “To give your cow or sheep a large, spacious meadow is the best way to control him.”

Why do tyrants who have the responsibility for managing large populations of people have such a hard time seeing the wisdom of giving good care to their subjects? Why didn’t Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak simply share with the people the resources they controlled? Why didn’t they know about the cow or sheep in a large, spacious meadow being happier and easier to manage? Syria is ruled by President Bashar al-Assad, who was born in Damascus in 1965, was described by his teachers as an exemplary student who became a medical doctor, and now as the middle-aged dictator of his country will likely not live to old age because he is almost certain to be overthrown in a revolution that is part of The Arab Spring, a freedom movement sweeping the Middle East. You can Google the men and find photographs of their families in happier times... But, what we will remember are the photographs of the haggard, pitiful old man that Saddam Hussein became before he was tried and executed in his country and a U-Tube video of Muammar Gaddafi being dragged from a culvert, stripped and beaten and sodomized by his countrymen. Hosni Mubarak is being tried in Egypt for his crimes against his people. Al-Assad’s regime will probably not last out the year. All of these dictators had more money than they could spent in a lifetime getting things just for themselves and for their families. There were happy times at the beginnings of their reigns when the majority of the hopeful, trusting people of their countries liked them and kept pictures of them in their homes and shops not because they were required to but because they loved them. What went wrong?

There is little doubt that Gaddafi could have grown old in his country as a beloved leader, much as Lee Kuan Yew is respected and loved in Singapore. With revenues from his oil rich nation, he could have eliminated poverty altogether, ensured health care, abundant food and respectable housing for every citizen. He could have made his country a paradise for his citizens and a wonderful holiday destination for people from all over the world. He obviously hadn’t heard; or if he had heard, he didn’t believe what the Buddha said about a large and spacious meadow.

Wow! Now that I think about it, some of the people we've elected to represent us in Congress don't seem to get it either.

Ed, Helen, Margaret, Jeremy, Patrick and I stopped so my little camera could, all by itself, take this picture of us after we'd been to a special show at the San Diego Museum of Art.