Egypt: the Revolution Has It Backward

For the latest also check our links on Politeia Articles: "The Middle East Project" >>>

That regime change and elections aren't the answer in the Muslim world, has been made plain in the Gaza Strip, where the population voted in an Islamofascist regime, thus effectively killing the state of democracy faster than you can say Hamas.

The problem is that  for democracy to take hold, much more is required than just a ballot box and a pot of purple ink. Freedom is an inherent, universal value, but it requires a civil society and above all, respect for individual rights to take root. A certain stage of social development is needed as well as a mindset that has separated itself from the tribal collective.

The post "A Paradox of Values" on Hoosier Access by Brian Sikma make this plain:

(...) While all parties seem to agree that Mubarak must go, there is very little indication that these popular protests have as their goal the establishment of a Western-style democratic state. The opposition groups have attempted to use the language of freedom to build international support for their cause, but a recent piece in the Washington Examiner takes a look at some polling done in Egypt on popular views regarding the role of religion in society.

In the Middle-East with its strong Islamic culture, democracy as traditionally understood by the Western mind is frequently tempered by strongly held local beliefs about the importance and centrality of religion and its role in society and government. While the West draws its understanding of freedom from Judeo-Christian values, those religions believe that ultimately every human being is responsible to God for his or her actions and beliefs. Aberrations from this point have produced significant amounts of chaos and tragedy. (...) >>>

The West - particularly the clueless crypto Left with their 'democracy' fetish - must let go of their naive revolutionary romanticism when it comes to the Middle East. This is the wrong sequence of events. Civil societies must be built, individuals must emancipate and free themselves from the constraints of the tribal collective that knows no distinction from matters sacred and secular.

I hesitate to state the separation of Mosque and State, because that is often interpreted as French Laicite, or the banning of all things religious from the public domain. But it's originally a negative freedom for the state not to meddle in what is considered the realm of the Church. But what is required here is a mental dichotomy of moral and secular matters, something that is hard enough in the free West with Leftists constantly writing their particular morality into secular law.

Alexis De Tocqueville has written a worthy tome on the concept of true Liberty in 1835 and how it took root in the United States.

Notwithstanding, Europe and in its wake the rest of the world, stubbornly keep following the French route, which is rooted in Rousseau's faulty concept of the collective State. It doesn't lead to Liberty, but to subordination to a collective of one terrifying form or other: ethnic nationalist, theocratic, Socialist or fascist.

This is what is in the making in the heart of secular Arabia, Egypt and in the dominos that are falling in the wake of Tunisia's Socialist Revolution. The call for democracy and freedom is soon turning into a hate fest against the perceived outside enemies, Israel and the US, ironically the very sources of true freedom and democracy!

In Iran the 1979 revolution was started by far Left Socialists and communists, only to be hijacked at a later stage by Islamists. They have beaten the Left at their own game of using stooges to do their dirty work!

Obama has already lost Egypt. He has been reaching out to Islamist organizations, which in Cold War terms is like parley with the KGB and thinking the Polit Bureau will stay out of it. This is rather insidious, given that the aim of the Muslim Brotherhood is the destruction of Western civilization from within.

Much hay has been made of the Pew Surveys (PDF) in the Islamic world as to their loyalty to Islamist causes and radical organizations. The appalling figures speak for themselves and support this shocking analysis that the hive minds aren't ready for any form of democracy in the Middle East. They remain faithfully loyal to the collective, thus spurning any form of individual responsibility. This is not the mature mindset required for a healthy liberal democracy.

Civil order, the rule of law and emancipation come first. Once that has taken hold, the ballot box follows naturally.

Updates

• Pat Dollard has made a compilation of the battles today on Egypt's streets.

• Abbas Milani is the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. His new book The Shah was published a few weeks ago by Palgrave MacMillan. Michael J. Totten sat down with him in his office at the Hoover Institution to talk about what’s happening right now in Egypt -
  

PJM: "The Iranian Revolution Echoes in Egypt", by Michael J. Totten

• “Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey”. His latest news live from Cairo ... Michael J. Totten: Sandmonkey arrested and beaten, his site under attack ... report from sandmonkey what happened yesterday on CBS

The man who wrote those words – the witty and courageous Egyptian blogger “Sandmonkey” – is currently in hiding in his native city of Cairo, moving from one friend’s apartment to another, as supporters of Hosni Mubarak pursue him and other democracy demonstrators.

PJM: "Cairo Exclusive: Roger L. Simon’s Interview with ‘Sandmonkey’"

Related

- Jerusalem Post: "Our World: Clueless in Washington", by Caroline Glick
- American Power Blog: "Analytical Realism: Political Stability in Egypt is Cardinal Israeli Interest"

Earlier on this subject

- "Revolution on Motion" (I)
- "Postmodern Foreign Policy is Dead, Bring Back the Neocons!" (II)
- "The Nature of the Revolution Is Socialist, Stupid!" (III)

Related dossiers

- "The Economy and Monetary file"
- "The Middle East Project"
- "The Levant Intricate Intrigues"

Two Quotes on Capitalism

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated. (...) Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state. (...) “The time for enlightenment has come. (...)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 2009

- Caption: "Look to the West", by Nathan Struttman (Quent Cordair Fine Art, Napa) -

If one wishes to advocate a free society - that is, capitalism - one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights. If one wishes to uphold individual rights , one must realize that capitalism is the only system that can uphold and protect them. (...) Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. (...) It was with the destruction of individual rights that the destruction of freedom had to begin. A collective tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country's wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency - so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated "rights" that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these "printing-press rights" negate authentic rights.

Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights" from "The Virtue of Selfishness", reprinted in"Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal"

- Caption: Cover design of "The Virtue of Selfishness", by Nick Gaetano (Quent Cordair Fine Art, Napa) -

Progress Report (2): Plugging the Holes Against Reality

~ Continued from Part I: Progress Report: the Simple Truth ~

Ayn Rand's views on ethics - whatever we may think of the Objectivist philosophy as a whole - is a rational guideline in polarising times such as ours. In the current confusion it is easy to lose sight of the imperatives. However - when people are made subservient to ideology, and when playing dice with the existence of an entire nation of fellow humans is looked upon as throwing rabid fascists a bone, this should wake us up to the fact that something is seriously rotten at the core.

Striking a compromise between two ethically, mutually exclusive propositions, is siding with evil. This has nothing to do with a lack of nuance, or a black-and-white world view, but sound reasoning. In the choice between food or poison a compromise is death. The relativism prevalent today, that denies the existence of objective reality - and consequently of morality - that recognises only social constructs, but no right or wrong, no good or evil, is leading us up the path we all hoped to have left behind us for ever with the collapse of Communism (and National Socialism decades earlier).

In order to avoid lumping the innocents with the terrorists the political Left have reversed the logic, instead lumping the terrorists with the innocent. This perversion in reasoning is a two-edged sword. It provides the radicals with a free pass, while at the same time taking of a moral stance is abdicated. But moral neutrality is fiction! The above is a fine example of the distorted rationale as a result of relativist thought patterns. There's more.

This moral cowardice, that refuses to make a decisive choice for the good, has two more far-reaching consequences: they turn against and betray those who seek to protect Western civilization from the onslaughts of a culturally sterile Third World death cult that spells the end of liberal democracy as we knew it - to say nothing of human and civil rights. Or do they suppose that the basic right to life is well protected in the hands of Osama c.s. - one culture or religion being just as good as any other?!

They also fail to make a choice for supporting the moderate, innocent Muslims who increasingly find themselves isolated in fundamentalist ghettos. They don't stand a chance of standing up to wife molesters and honor murderers, let alone effectuating the only hope for moderate Muslims and the rest of the world to ever live together in peace, the reformation of Islam from within. On all counts, no moral choice turns out be a choice for evil.

Blog after blog is filled every day with frustrated updates on the inroads and trespasses of the Third Jihad on life in the West. I have meant to tell the global counter-jihad community for some time now that their energies and efforts are largely wasted if we don't at the same time convince the politically correct facilitators, appeasers, advocates and moral cowards at home that they are backing, aiding and abetting evil.

It is by their grace that Islamization is making the advances that it does. Their short term policies are driven by the expansion of the cohorts of 'victims', thus broadening the Leftist constituencies. The source of this blunt, cynical opportunism - coupled with the tear jerking sentimentalism - is once again the relativism on which the Leftist ideologies are based.

Our quarrel is not with Ali and Aisha next door! It is advocacy groups and legislators - specifically in the transnational entities of the UN and the (unelected) politically correct politicians in the European Union (national parliaments have been made fiefdoms that are allowed to wield the rubber stamp 'approved') - that see to it that democracies are turning into post democratic, neo feudal dictatorships - secular or under Sharia law is entirely equivalent to them.

Grassroots initiatives like "Stop the Islamization of Europe" are by now in serious peril of being declared criminal organizations, together with granny taking an offence at gay parades and clergy refusing to marry persons of 'the same sexual persuasion'. This is the result of the surrogate morality that is thought up to plug the ethical holes left behind when relativist thought is embraced.

Virulent Islam is in the process of being legally insulated by the collaborators in The Unholy Alliance in power in all tiers of Western government, from the local school governing boards and town councils, to national parliaments and supranational Quangos. Terrorists and bullies need to be told in no uncertain terms where it is exactly that they get off, but as long as there's a home force standing guard over their advances, most of the energy invested is going to waste, and what's more, is on the brink of being outlawed altogether as incompatible with the prevailing surrogate morality (read ideology)!

In the present and in the upcoming post I'll present two cases that make mince-meat of our basic rights and the rule of law. As we speak, an investigator into the West's home grown branch of Al Qaeda is intimidated into silence. It is an attempt to keep him from sitting on a forum and speaking out during an upcoming police convention. The ultimate aim is to muzzle him altogether by discrediting his reputation, in the process rendering the freedom of enquiry a dead letter.

Even worse, the intimidation of investigative authorities constitutes an assault on the rule of law itself. Don't think that one isolated case of mob rule doesn't harm the principle! As explained above, 'a little pregnant' means defeat in moral cases. And if 'omerta' rules, who's to say this is indeed an isolated incident?

People like him (i.e. Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders to name but a few) are under threat and can only be protected via the official channels if we're not to stoop to paramilitarism. But what, if the official channels are concurrently threatening to clasp counter Jihad bloggers in irons the moment they set foot on home soil, back from 'self-imposed' exile? Read the case of Lionheart - Hat Tip 1389 Anti Jihadist Tech Blog. Debbie at Right Truth is apparently coordinating, is in touch with Lionheart by mail and has more links and information available on the dismal case.

In the next post, we'll give further details on the West's home grown branch of Al Qaeda, what it means for the investigative scholar in question, and what is the current state of liberal democracy.

~ To be continued in Part 3 of Progress Report: "the Assault of the Rule of Law" ~

- Filed on Articles in "Progress Report: Summary", cat. Balkans/E.Europe, GWOT, Moral Legislation, Neo Totalitarianism, Terrorism -

Freedom's Birth Certificate: sold to the gentleman in the back ...

Sotheby's New York today auctioned an original copy of the Magna Carta Libertatum, or The Great Charter of Freedoms. It was sold for well over twenty one million dollars (£10.6 million) to David Rubenstein, the founder of the Carlyle Group. More details here.

In sharp contrast to the recently signed "Treaty of Lisbon" - dubbed here "Leviathan's birth certificate" - the Magna Carta is known as the "birth certificate of freedom"*. From the Introduction:

"(...) It (the copy) comes from an issue, that of 1297, which for the first time accompanied demands that there be no taxation without representation: a momentous challenge to royal authority and the origin of much that it is of significance in later history, not least in the history of the American Revolution."

It is shocking to realise that a matter of basic right thought to have been settled by a political revolution in England in 1215 - the principle of "no taxation, without representation" - is actually An Issue in Europe Anno Domini 2007! Wait, it gets worse ...

"From the constitutional principles embodied in Magna Carta emerged the concept of the liberty of the individual citizen, a proper and permanent challenge to the feudal tyranny of England’s medieval kings, and the very origins of the common law." ... and ...

"(...) like the Declaration of Independence, it was nothing less than a public proclamation of a new political order, in this instance of negotiations conducted between the barons and King John of England* nearly eight hundred years ago."

Speaking of which, in today's England the trend is pointing in the opposite direction. EURSOC in a posting yesterday "Fighting Big Brother" detailed a discourse raging within the Left wing. Mouthpiece Al Guardian's journalist Henry Porter apparently had the misfortune to critique the way in which the current government has chipped away at liberties, and was heavily castigated!

His colleague Polly Toynbee reacted as might be expected from one thoroughly versed in the workings of the glorified victimhood of the Marxist dialectic:

"Worries about a nascent police state are, she wrote, "fashionable because it allows the middle classes to pretend to be victims, too. But it is decadence for mainly privileged people to obsess over imaginary Big Brother attacks on themselves, when others all around them are suffering badly from neglect by the state - or sometimes from real aggression by government. Indignation is
precious, not to be squandered on illusory threats, but saved for real injustices."

Tut tut ...! The erroneously aligned, liberty loving Porter may well react by speaking of "breathtaking dishonesty of her argument (...) to describe anyone who opposes Labour on these grounds as a being a right-winger" - Porter is still Leftist enough to consider such an insult - personally I shudder at the realisation that neototals like Toynbee represent today's intelligentsia, calling the shots in politics and in the corridors of power!

That we may long be neglected by the state, in the absence of which, I'd rather have the Middle Ages as a more enlightened period ... I wouldn't be surprised, if at some point in the near future we'd not all prefer the rule of John, an awful king as explained by Messrs Sellar and Yeatman in "1066 and all that, a memorable history of England" (Methuen & Co., 16th October 1930):

"When John came to the throne he lost his temper and flung himself on the floor, foaming at the mouth and biting the rushes. (...) John was so bad that the Pope decided to put the whole country under an Interdict, i.e. he gave orders that no one was to be born or die or marry (except in Church porches)."

* "There also happened in this reign the memorable Charta known as the Magna Charter (...) and was invented by the Barons on a desert island in the Thames called Ganymede. By congregating there, armed to the teeth, the Barons compelled John to sign the Magna Charter, which said:

- That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason - (except the Common People).

- That everyone should be free - (except the Common People).

- That everyone should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm - (except the Common People).

- That the Courts should be stationary, instead of following a very tiresome medieval official known as the King's Person all over the country.

- That 'no person should be fined to his utter ruin' - (except the King's Person).

- That the Barons should not be tried except by a special jury of other Barons who would understand.

Magna Charter was therefore the chief cause of Democracy in England and thus a Good Thing for everyone - (except the Common People).

- Filed on Articles in "The Post Democratic Preferences of the Neotots", cat. Neo Totalitarianism -