Leah Libresco has a fascinating post…

…celebrating one of the greatest heroes in human history–and a guy you’ve never heard of: Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov

I cannot help but wonder how many of our kill crazy trigger happy pre-emptive warriors in comboxes or on Talk Radio these days would demonstrate the steely restraint that man did in refusing to panic and push the button.

Over at the Register comboxes, one of the devotees of the theory that John Paul II and the Church are in a Vast Conspiracy against Our Lady of Fatima is complaining that because all wars everywhere have not magically stopped that means Russia was not consecrated and the Church is apostate, blah blah, etc. etc. Prescinding from the fact that Sr. Lucia certainly said John Paul did as our Lady asked, I am struck by stories like Leah’s (and by the fact that a system founded on as much blood and iron as Eurocommunism fell without a shot being fired) and have to say, “Have you eyes? Do you know how many bullets we dodged? Where is your sense of gratitude?”

Thanks be to God and to our Lady for all the silent miracles we have been granted that we don’t even know about.