AP Photo

To observe the democratic awakenings happening in places like Egypt, Syria and Russia is to travel with a glow in your heart and a pit in your stomach.

The glow comes from watching people lose their fear and be willing to take enormous risks to assert, not a particular ideology, but the most human of emotions: the quest for dignity, justice and the right to shape one’s own future. I was in Moscow on Saturday morning — just as the demonstrations against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were gathering.