The Deputy Prime Minster of the United Kingdom, Mr Nick Clegg has been reported as saying that Muammar Gaddafi’s death has sent a signal to dictators in the region in which Gaddafi dictated. This signal concerns their sins catching up with them. For added clarification he mentioned that this signal was huge and concerned grotesque dictators. Are good looking dictators then exempt from this huge signal as are other dictators outside the region?

Mr Clegg, , is basically reported as saying that if you are dictating, grotesque and live relatively near to where Gaddafi did, then woe betide you - because God will punish you; he apparently used the term sins, not crimes or actions, hence the justice of God is permissible to allude to.

Now Mr Clegg might very well be a nice man and meant nothing like what I have interpreted from the reports of what he said. Like the vast majority of high profile politicians he is merely a mass-media character to me and therefore it would be impudent and imprudent of me to pass judgement on him or discern his internal machinations. Presuming however that he is really real, I hope that as with any human being he is happy and is allowed to speak freely about anything he wishes. It is a great gift to speak freely and well worth protecting. History does indeed show the higher you fly the bigger the crater you create when your delusionary wings fail. So Mr Clegg is not really saying anything new or that contributes to one’s understanding of life’s patterns.

Having said that, words are powerful and their effect can be far reaching. Sticks and stones might break our bones but words can result in nuclear weapons being fired, so are not to be brushed away as being harmless.

If we are going to populate our utterances with words such as huge, grotesque and sin, then we must take responsibility for their effect. The immediate effect of words such as huge, grotesque and sin is the evocation images of satanic beasties roaming the desert until God strikes them down. The initial responsibility to be taken therefore is for the creation of visual images which invoke fear and terror and God distributed justice.

As I understand it there is a war on terror going on, therefore the creation of visual images which invoke fear and terror seem peculiar, unless I have missed something and it has been shown that terror neutralises terror?

The last time I remember looking at this issue was during a discussion on Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD); has there ever been a better acronym?

My point is this. Words are powerful. They are boomerangs which can shred on the way out and on the way back to the throat of the vocalist. Our own tongues can cut our throats faster than a razor wielded by another; grotesque or lovely to look at.

Free speech is worth protecting, but the responsibility for what we create is prior to this. It is beneficial to think before we speak.

Of course that is what we are most afraid of. If it is taken as read that we thought before we spoke, then what we utter is evidence of calculation or miscalculation. Our words reveal our otherwise hidden state, and those words contain the seeds of our personal justice. That partly included a fear of being seen as cleverly -calculating or discernibly stupid. That humans can speak is not just a blessing; it is a potential cause for judgement upon us. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".