She died for something she called democracy, that nowadays its a mere masquerade to make people believe that they live in a free world, while politicians get the money the poor are dying for. Democracy is the utopia they paint everyday, and when someone tries to get power, according to their money/influences, they kill or get killed. Democracy is not possible as long as the human being keeps being a "human being".
Democracy means being informed in a way that listening to cable news broadcasts that barely cover meaningful news usually doesn't provide. It means keeping track of elections and voting. But it means so much more than that too. It means keeping an eye on the people you elect and holding them accountable, starting your own political movements, rallying petitions to get laws created, changed, or abolished or impeach someone. It means being willing to step up to the plate and run for office yourself. It means using your power of jury nullification when doing jury duty and telling the law to "fuck off" when the law is unjust.
And just what is freedom to you? To me, freedom means owning myself, and that means having the right to think or believe as I want, openly and securely. It means being able to create contracts with other free people and exchange goods or services, and it means being able to freely choose who I want to associate with and create whatever organizations I want. It means being able to own things without fear of them being taken from me. It means making my own choices in life without being limited by anything other than myself.
Beyond securing freedom, government has no rights. It does not exist to protect the individual's security or safety, but the individual's freedom.
The reason we have a democracy is so that every man, woman, and child can fight to keep government in check. When democracy dies, freedom dies, and every time you decide to put your money and time into pursuing mere entertainment or buying things you don't need, while the government's power is abused, you are ignoring your own democratic responsibility to hold government accountable for stepping beyond its rights. Democracy isn't a masquerade; people just don't realize how powerful they are, because most people are weak-willed.
So don't whine about democracy and freedom like it's some inevitable mess that nobody can do anything about, or like it's some utopian dream. As long as you can freely choose what to do with your life and truly call it your own decision, then you are free, and nobody can take that from you.
In an oppressed world, it takes a truly strong-willed person to live freely, and so it's the strong who have the greatest responsibility to help bring freedom to the weak. If that is how Benazir Bhutto lived, then her life can never be called a waste, and neither can the things she was working for when she died.
