You might think the image was a fitting end to a miserable year. A vast crowd of North Koreans sobbing as the heavens wept snow and the funeral procession of their mass murdering tyrant rolled slowly toward his garish tomb. His well fed, not especially intelligent-looking son, somberly marching alongside his father’s hearse and toward his destiny as North Korea’s next mass-murdering tyrant. And with that sad spectacle, 2011 comes to a close.

It might not seem at first consideration to have been a year worth remembering fondly.

It was the year our national government seemed to exist in a state of perpetual dysfunction.

A year when the Republican presidential contest gave us one improbable and ill-suited front-runner after another; President Obama abandoned governing for the sake of his re-election; congressional Democrats manned the ramparts again to prevent any sensible reforms of entitlement programs; and the national debt reached the $16 trillion mark.

A dispiriting year of anemic economic growth and persistent joblessness; of jittery, erratic stock markets as Europe’s currency teetered on the precipice of collapse; of hopelessness overwhelming the restless confidence that has long been a feature of the American character.

A year when protesters in Syria were murdered by the thousands fighting for the most basic of freedoms while youthful protesters from the American middle class made a mess of our city parks because, among other complaints, they had to borrow money to finance their expensive educations. (I’m kidding about this last observation. A little.)

Of course not all the bad news, was, well, bad. Osama bin Laden received his due at the hands of a few brave and amazingly resourceful Americans. And the Libyan leader with the variously spelled last name went to hell too.

It was the year of the Arab Spring, when people we have long been told were culturally unsuited for freedom took control of their own destinies, and entrenched dictators were un-entrenched, and something that looked suspiciously like democratic processes were organized to elect their replacements.

Russians, who have often been accused of preferring autocracy to the messy inconveniences and uncertainties of democratic rule, seemed to have lately become exasperated with their once-popular autocrat, the kleptocracy he oversees, and his plan to rule by acclamation the state-controlled media for as long as he draws breath on this earth.

These surprising turns of events in Russia, Syria, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere might play out better or worse than current predictions. Vladimir Putin will probably assume Russia’s presidency again. And he might order more severe suppression of dissent. Islamic fundamentalists who fill the power vacuum left by departing dictators might extinguish the hope that liberty could at last be flourishing in the Middle East. China will certainly continue trying to eat its capitalist cake while keeping its Leninist politics. And North Korea will still have, for a time, a government that lets millions of its people starve to death so that its massive military can be well fed, and a threat to international peace.

But what these events have demonstrated is that even in lands once believed inhospitable to democratic values, with autocrats who have in the past enjoyed popular support, when people are deprived of widespread opportunities and hope for a better life, they will want to take command of their own lives. As Jose Marti once observed, “Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it.” Self-determination and all the rights that come with it are not the privilege of Western societies alone. They are the natural desire of the human conscience. No tyranny, no matter how entrenched or cruel its rule, can permanently wrench that desire from hearts of the oppressed, no matter how long accustomed they are to freedom’s absence.

Yes, it was a discouraging year in many respects. But it was also the year that saw William Faulkner’s confident assumption, offered in his inspirational address when accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, affirmed in the most unlikely places.

“I believe that man will not merely endure: He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

On further reflection, I think it might be a year worth remembering. And if the promise of humanity’s progress toward global freedom glimpsed this year is fulfilled in my lifetime, I will cherish the memory of 2011, and give thanks to have lived in it.