At the risk of wearying the sage Mr. Kimball with my “cant,” I must insist that Ms. Bhutto is not only a hero, but a glorious hero. This fact is obvious to anyone who can actually grasp the meaning of the terms “hero” and “glory,” difficult as that may be lo now these 80 years and more since it became fashionable to “debunk” all heroes. She is a hero in spite of all those wise experts in modern “ethics” who have concluded they know with 100% certainty that she is guilty of all sorts of crimes and corruption because, after all, they read it in a couple of blogs. She is a hero in spite of the fact that the Internet’s legions of self-appointed geniuses have concluded she acted out of “self-interest.” (You know, just like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Davy Crockett, Dan’l Boone, and Johnny Appleseed.) She is a hero because she knowingly put her life at grave risk to stand up for democracy, women’s rights, the secular state and liberty against the religious fanatics, obscurantists, misogynists, and would-be dictators who, like the poor, ye have always with you. These facts are obvious. To experience such facts as “heroic” and “glorious,” of course, one cannot be purely and coldly logical. They are, after all, subjective terms. One must be capable of a certain susceptibility to human emotions to understand what is meant by such terms. Gratitude for example. I am grateful to Ms. Bhutto, because she has given her life to do something of value to me. There is nothing more complicated than that behind my perception of her as a hero. Of course, I realize how absurd, and, indeed, abject it must seem to many of the other commenters here that I am capable of perceiving heroism in an individual who is not absolutely righteous and morally pure according to the exacting standards of this highly ethical age, but there you have it. Some of us are born with certain intellectual and moral deficits, and we live with them as best we can.