In 1985, as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Seventeen years later, in 2002, I took part in a political campaign to win votes for the conservative party in the Netherlands.
Those two experiences gave me some insights that I think are relevant to the current crisis in Egypt. They lead me to believe it is highly likely but not inevitable that the Muslim Brotherhood will win the elections to be held in Egypt this coming September.
Since the French Revolution in 1789, revolutions have shown common features that are directly relevant to what is happening in Egypt right now. Since the final outcome in Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster — a new regime — may be weeks, even months or years, away, it is worth pausing to take the long view.
Does access breed obsequiousness? One would be hard-pressed to come to another conclusion with regard to Sunday night’s chat-fest between Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and president Barack Obama. If that was an example of Mr. O’Reilly’s contention that his TV domain is a “no spin zone,” one might consider such a contention to be utterly laughable. Yet the exchange revealed something immensely troubling about the president which, once again, was ignored by the same mainstream media which has largely ignored the troubling revelation that this president sold out Britain to Russia to get the START treaty ratified. Who got sold out this time? Israel, and by extension, Jewish Americans as well.
Jamie Glazov’s new book, “Showdown with Evil: Our Struggle Against Tyranny and Terror,” is a fascinating collection of 29 interviews that he has conducted as editor of Frontpagemag.com. The interviewees are leading intellectuals and newsmakers who have devoted considerable brainpower to the issue of modern terrorism, including Victor Davis Hanson, Norman Podhoretz, Christopher Hitchens, Phyllis Chesler, Andrew McCarthy, Theodore Dalrymple, Kenneth Levin, Robert Spencer, Andrew Klavan, David Horowitz and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest of the world looks. And the history he sought to express was the unfolding witness to the expansion, refinement, and richer application of the principles of liberty.
A friend of mine in academia forwarded this email to me from an Egyptian student whose good sense he vouches for. He tells a story very different than that most of you are seeing on television or reading in your papers.
Unless the author gives me permission to reveal his identity, I am not at liberty to disclose it.
If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.
Willis Eschenbach’s recent guest post at Watts Up With That? on the current state of ‘Climate science’ should be made compulsory reading in every classroom, every university science department, every eco-charity, every environmental NGO and in every branch of government. They won’t like it up ‘em, that’s for sure.
What Eschenbach says is so pure and simple and obvious you’d need to be as dumb as Chris Huhne not to get it:
The cost of illuminating your home is about to go up significantly. Most Americans take for granted that when they flip a switch, darkness immediately gives way to a warm, natural light. That’s no longer possible in California, where a regulation that took effect Jan. 1 only allows the sale of harsh, cold compact fluorescents above a certain wattage. Unless the new Congress takes action, the same rules will apply to the rest of the country, beginning next year.
The prohibition on buying real light bulbs follows from the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law by then-President George W. Bush. The measure gave bureaucratic zealots in the Golden State permission to embark on their confiscatory policy a year early. Of course, in true Orwellian fashion, the California Energy Commission strongly denies it’s doing anything to prohibit consumers from buying the type of bulbs they prefer. “You can still buy any type of light bulb you like, the only difference is that the new bulbs will use less energy and cost less money to operate,” the commission’s website explains. Left unsaid is that it’s a crime to sell newly manufactured cheap bulbs that produce a pleasing, natural light of 100 watts or more.