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.
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.
The secret to instant wealth is to spot a mass delusion and bet against it. The Tulip Craze. Florida swamp land.
Getting the timing right is tricky, but we are blessed with an overload of mass delusions. You can pick your own favorite. Delusional bubbles have to pop at some point, because the people who are paying for them eventually figure out that they’ve been had.
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson’s quietly chilling article, “Two Californias,” in National Review Online, ought to be read by every American who is concerned about where this country is headed. California is leading the way, but what is happening in California is happening elsewhere– and is a slow poison that is being largely ignored.
Professor Hanson grew up on a farm in California’s predominantly agricultural Central Valley. Now, as he tours that area, many years later, he finds a world as foreign to the world he knew as it is from the rest of California today– and very different from the rest of America, either past or present.
Religious liberty and a thriving religious culture are defining attributes of the United States, characterizing the American order as much as its political system and market economy.[1] From the earliest settlements of the 17th century to the great social reform causes led by religious congregations in the late 19th century and again in the 20th century, religion has been a dominant theme of American life.
Finally, here is an edition of Road to Serfdom that does justice to its monumental status in the history of liberty. It contains a foreword by the editor of the Hayek Collected Works, Bruce Caldwell. Caldwell has added helpful explanatory notes and citation corrections, among other improvements. For this reason, the publisher decided to call this “the definitive edition.” It truly is.
Recently the Turkish ambassador in Austria Ecvet Tezcan gave an interview in which he told the Austrian home secretary to “stop intervening in the integration process.” He then claimed that Turks were treated like a virus and blamed the Austrians for all the problems surrounding the non-integration of Turks.