Many pilgrims say they will not be cowed.

And those who, when an oppressive wrong is inflicted on them, (are not cowed but) help and defend themselves.

And those who, when an oppressive wrong is inflicted on them, (are not cowed but) help and defend themselves.

The Tunisian people, led by a frustrated middle class that refused to be cowed, thus provide a healthy reminder of the steady and compelling forces driving the behavior of individuals and nations nowadays. They illustrate the catalytic effect of digital connectivity (clearly visible, too, among China s twittering classes ).

Candidate Romney was so cowed by his party s obsession with low taxes that he never put forth a budget that added up. It was left to his spinners to explain, as The Economist put it, that this was necessary rubbish, concocted to persuade the fanatics who vote in the Republican primaries.

But, while history is replete with murderous regimes applauded by cowed and deceived masses, the greater risk for democratic nations is that their citizens withdraw into apathy and short term thinking for immediate gratification. The past despite rituals that seek to commemorate historic moments is obliterated by an addiction to the now and the new.

While we cannot know the future for the girls still in captivity, 15 of the 57 girls who escaped their kidnappers are now back at school, braving Boko Haram s threats to return and abduct more students. Hundreds of thousands of other girls in northern Nigeria are now too afraid to go to school, but these girls refuse to be cowed.