Western liberals clueless?

Really?

I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” Edmund Burke

“Cultures evolve at Glacial Speeds” Jacksonian Libertarian

The Arab Spring was never going to result in the instant evolution of the backward Islamic cultures of the middle-east into superior western cultures. It has how ever gotten cultural evolution going again from the frozen and stagnant condition most Islamic cultures have been in for centuries.

Francis Fukuyama on “Why Nations Fail” in AI provides related insight…

Well,D’uh. There was never any Arab Spring; that was always a fictional construct of the naive Western mind. It was what it always is in that part of the world, one group of vicious thugs fighting another for absolute power. It’s just that this time, the “out” thugs hid behind a tiny, but visible and highly attractive to the West, minority of liberals. Now that they are the “in” thugs, expect them to be as bad as or worse then the old “in” thugs. Despite the wishful thinking of Europeans and Americans, some people are just not capable of liberal democracy and the rule of law.

WRM: …twittering activists of Tahrir Square were incredibly out of touch with their own society—and that their Western cheerleaders were clueless as well.

I like that. Could we put it into the form of a general proposition for the liberal knee-jerk, i.e. twittering activists of ____________ [location] were incredibly out of touch with their own society—and that their _____________[liberal cohort] cheerleaders were clueless as well.

For example, twittering activists of Zucotti Park were incredibly out of touch with their own society—and that their MSM cheerleaders were clueless as well.

Imagine what a simple, idea-manipulable world this would be – why, we might NEVER have to deal with rich complex realities! – if the same intellectuals who are out of touch with what great masses of people WANT were similarly wrong about what those same masses actually need. We could not only ignore them in good conscience; we might even feel more than a little justified unleashing a few firing squads on them. Let us hope that the “twittering activists” not only misread the wishes of the majority of Egypt; let us also hope that they were totally

J R, Just because that’s the assumption that Mubarak operated on doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The Egyptians, whatever you might think they NEED, are who they are. And who they are are people who NEED a strongman of some sort kicking butt to keep them from slaughtering each other. Intellectuals and twittering activists may be smarter than reality, but my money will still be on reality 100% of the time.

The secular liberals forgot that democracy is trumped by a piece of bread. Huge numbers of people in Egypt are hovering close to starvation. They are illiterates and effectively unemployable even in a globalized unskilled-labor market.

Democracy can be imposed from without, but it can only survive if it takes root within. Expecting Egyptians to figure out democracy and religious tolerance when they can’t even figure out how to feed themselves is simply silly.

Egypt has no oil, no industry, no production of any sort. There is Western tourism, and there is Western aid, and that is all.

Mubarak knew that Egypt couldn’t survive without Western handouts. So he didn’t take the Syrian route of violent supression. Thus he lost power, and eventually his head as well.

So now that a middling dictator has been replaced by an Islamic theocracy, are we still going to feed the entire country ie do for the theocrats that hate us, what we wouldn’t do for Mubarak, who supported us? By freely giving aid to a country that violates our principles in thought, word, and deed…

In other words, are we going to essentially pay Egypt to be violently theocratic, supressing and/or murdering it’s minorities, while violating every Western Liberal value we hold dear? And if so, why?

Forget “humanitarian” pc blabbering. The whole country voted to go that way, the whole country is agreed on the murderous suppression of minorities. The whole country voted to elect representatives to write a constitution that outlaws invididual freedom. They have no right to ask for any “humanitarian” anything.

It’s time to cut off the aid, and let them suffer the consequences of their own actions. The sudden discovery that the inevitable result of running a nation on the values and rules of Medieval Islam is mass starvation may just possibly wake them up. Nothing short of that will….

Those same Western liberals will simply be hopping on the anti-Israel bandwagon as the Muslim Brotherhood starts lashing out. One thing about the Palestinians is that the only promise they make about democracy is that it means no Israel and no Jews.

The Saudi Arabianization of the Middle East continues…http://blog.allenmitchum.com/2012/02/arab-spring-and-saudi-arabianization-of.html

From http://blog.allenmitchum.com/2012/02/arab-spring-and-saudi-arabianization-of.html, courtesy of #22:

“The slow decline and regression of human and civil rights in the Islamic world in the mid 20th century coincided with Saudi Arabia’s ascension in the Muslim World. What began with religious zealots challenging the Saudi Royal Family’s religious credentials in the infamous Siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, ended with the Royal Family brandishing its religious credentials by embarking on a path of promoting, subsidizing and spreading its puritanical brand of Islam, Wahhabism. Previous Islamic-in-name-only populations throughout the world were slowly colonized by Imams and clerics trained in the ways of Wahhabism. Madrassas and Saudi designed cultural centers from Cairo to Jakarta to Islamabad were constructed throughout the globe to promote Saudi interests. Saudi agents and bagmen created fertile ground for the regression of human rights and culture wherever they traveled.”

Many heartfelt thanks for an extremely eloquent and pointed summary. And may I say, if THIS is more or less what’s been happening to Egyptian society over the past 30-odd years – and esp. to its politically more astute and articulate elements – then it explains a good deal of how even the best-intentioned revolutions can derail. Or even never get off the ground. As regards the points made by #14:

“J R, Just because that’s the assumption that Mubarak operated on doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The Egyptians, whatever you might think they NEED, are who they are. And who they are are people who NEED a strongman of some sort kicking butt to keep them from slaughtering each other. Intellectuals and twittering activists may be smarter than reality, but my money will still be on reality 100% of the time.”

Fred, I have little doubt that what you’ve described is a very accurate characterization of Egypt TODAY. And even – and mountingly so – of the (Saudified?) Egypt of the past 3 decades, if not well before the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Clearly the best kind of strongman is, as you say, one able to keep more or less ALL of his people from slaughtering each other. The worst – and least sustainable – is the kind that increasingly goes along with, encourages or facilitates the slaughter, terrorizing, bullying, etc, of some of his people by others (“I’m askeered of you guys, so why don’t I let you all beat up on them?”). Whether Mubarak belonged more nearly to the first or to the second category of strongman may not, I suspect, be apparent clearly to anyone for decades.

And frankly I have next to no idea what Egypt needs. But I’m sure you’ll agree, that doesn’t mean that what it DOES need is simple and obvious to somebody else merely because he’s Muslim. And that all that somebody has to do is scream and denounce and kill for it, while strong men wink at and appease him in various underhanded ways, for those needs to be met. I don’t know to what extent Mubarak was appeasing as well as repressing certain unappeasable elements. But I do get the sense that he was damming up a certain pressure bound to burst eventually. Perhaps even damming it up in ways that ensured that when the explosion finally came it was the most noxious gases that diffused most widely. Anyhow nothing could last forever, not even Mubarak. And the fact that the twitterati were premature – if not completely misguided – in precipitating his overthrow doesn’t mean they didn’t have their finger on a certain pulse that maybe just won’t go away. Or perhaps even their EYE on a certain bill that’s bound to come due? At least if Egypt is ever to become a viable and sustainable country? And maybe even if it doesn’t?

I’ll admit I have the weirdest suspicion about the future of that ever-dynamic country. (Or dynamic at least since Napoleon and Muhammad Ali, c. 1805.) It is that any future Egyptian leadership that wants a nation even remotely UP to the demands of the modern world (a recurrent theme of Professor Mead’s, if I’m not misreading him) – as opposed to a backwater that’s breezily inflamable and exploitable by foreign interests – is going to have to bite a certain bullet. A bullet it may have been postponing since as far back as Nasser and the military coup of 1952. What Egypt’s leaders may have to start doing is listening as CLOSELY as possible to ALL their country’s various voices. And not just to those that happen to be loudest, most anti-Western, most “tradition”*-bound, most easily offended and outraged, or most prepared and willing to blow people up. In short (if I may be permitted a really bad metaphor), the bloodiest wheel isn’t always the squeakiest. And sooner or later you’ve got to attend to all the wheels anyway, without letting one that’s defectively built to begin with (or much too BIG for the entire apparatus?) throw the entire vehicle off balance. God help us all if and when the Egyptian jalopy finally jumps the curb and starts plowing into pedestrians. And all because a certain wise (for his time) strongman – or junta – kept delaying the repair or replacement of certain key parts.

*BTW, I’m not sure what the great masses of Egyptian people would have understood by the word “tradition” c. 1930. But based on what I know of its history, my guess is it was something far less strident, angry, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, gynophobic, Salafic, militarized and URBANLY mobilizable than what many hot young bloods would mean by the term today.

By all means let us keep focused on reality. And all the more so since it IS constantly changing (though I keep getting the sense nothing ever quite DIES – it just somehow, I don’t know, resurfaces?). And consists of so many voices and needs. Best of all, thankfully it isn’t always the most strident and intolerant of those voices, or the ones most ready to take up arms to avenge some blasphemy, that have the best grasp of a country’s BEST future. Occasionally even that contemptible creature, a Middle Eastern secular liberal, has SOME degree of handle on what his country needs. And the softest, whiniest, most easily ignored (or repressed) murmur of one generation has been known to become the most insistent, demanding, not-to-be-ignored roar of the next.

“The Egyptian public has every right to pursue this course if they want.”

That is a carelessly illiberal sentiment.