The Cycle As I ran toward cover, I could feel the .50 caliber bullets whizzing by at jet-fighter speeds and impacting everything behind me. Two seconds of frantic running and dodging later, I dove behind the concrete wall of the next building, joining my comrades. They were yelling at each other, talking about the war, how much ammo we still had, and whether or not anyone had any crackers. It was surprising how quickly the fight had escalated. Just a few minutes ago, we were having a nice time in our camps talking about the progress of our revolution, and then out of nowhere, we were being attacked by a tank and thirty troops. It happened so fast that people were shot while trying to run to the armory with food still in our mouths. Thankfully, I had finished early and was already in the armory cleaning equipment. While I was remembering what started all of this mayhem, our little group of fighters was hit with an RPG. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it was really close. The explosion knocked us all over the place and instantly killed about three of us (there were eight of us behind the wall). I was thrown six feet into the air and straight into the adjacent wall. My head hit the wall, and I was instantly knocked out. All I remember though was the sound of trumpets and fireworks. In the flashback, was 1979, thirty years before a revolution was even thought of. The people of the country were in joyous celebration, for a new President had been elected. He was the first democratically elected President to be elected in the nation’s history. He was a relief, an escape from the civil war that had been going on for a decade. After the fighting had ended, the people decided to try this democracy. The result was a President who had won on promises to fix the economic and social problems caused by the civil war and bring back the country’s prosperity. As I got older, I began to understand the true ramifications of these promises. However, I was only an infant. So, instead of going into deep psychoanalysis and going over the facts of his election, I chose to chew on toys and get my parents up at ungodly hours of the morning. Our family was relatively wealthy. One important result of this was that I could go to school and learn to be a member of the international community. As I progressed through my years of schooling, I learned more and more about previous dictatorships of our country, the cycles of revolution and freedom, and how revolution relates to, but not always creates, freedom. I began to see patterns of how revolutions occur, (sometimes) freedom follows, and then freedom is taken again, starting the whole cycle again. I realized that, however long or hard the revolution is, no revolution can change how human nature works, can change how humans strive for power and control, and how humans never change. I saw that, even if a regime or government starts out as benevolent and well-meaning, human nature always kicks in, and freedom is taken. I found that two scenarios can happen that lead to a revoking of freedom. One scenario that can happen is that the government slowly starts to enact programs that limit free expansion, trade, and thus the economy. These programs, initially enacted to combat some economic happening or just to keep things going, start to hurt, not help, the economy. As things go downhill and the masses begin to lose hope, some magical-seeming group or person comes along and promises change, prosperity, and national strength. Of course, the public immediately latches on to these groups, even though they are proposing extreme ideas and solutions. In the end though, this group or person is brought to power (peacefully) and his true intentions are revealed to be not-so altruistic. The other scenario is basically the same, but much more forced and (possibly) violent. In this scenario, there is a government that is doing okay. They aren’t perfect, but they aren’t doing too much wrong. After a while though, extremists