March Like An Egyptian

It is often said, that "when the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny;" if it be true, then the entire region of the Middle East got a robust shipment of liberty today in the wake of the successful Egyptian Revolution. Truly, the despotic regimes of the Arabian Peninsula and Northern Africa, some supported by the United States, some vociferously opposed by us, have much to fear from their constituents- for following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo, the victorious European monarchies could exile him to Saint Helena and restore the Bourbon Dynasty to the throne of France, but they could not undo his abolition of serfdom, his rejection of theocracy, or his guarantee of due process and democracy, for the taste of liberty is sweet and addictive, and once a people have enjoyed the fruits of it they tend not to be hospitable to the concept of a return to their former servitude.

This is not to say that Revolutions are without their risks, however. Before Napoleon, there was Robespierre, and after him there was the Bourbon Restoration. Fledgling democratic revolutions are volatile and fragile, and require nourishment from those experienced in living with the dangers of democracy in order to avoid replacing an old despotism with a new one. As such, it is the moral obligation of the United States, as the firstborn child of liberty and its premiere spokesperson to the rest of the world, to do everything we can to assist the Egyptian people and any neighbors that may join them in the joys of Revolution in establishing free, democratic, and secular republics. Now some of my comrades on the left would have you believe that such "interference" would be a sign of arrogance on the part of the racist, paternalistic West to meddle in the affairs of a country with a different culture and set of customs than our own. To this, I reply that I can think of nothing so arrogant and paternalistic as the concept that it is an intrinsic aspect of one's culture to be told from birth how to live, worship, and think by the Saudi King, the Iranian Grand Ayatollah, or the Syrian President. Relativism has no right to ask for such a sacrifice on the part of the Middle Eastern people.

The United States has much to be ashamed of in our historic support for Middle Eastern dictators, there's no doubt about that- but such guilt does not absolve us from our obligation to the very people oppressed by such regimes to avoid the predicament of the Iranian people in 1979, who had their revolution hijacked by a theocracy that quickly outlived its welcome. The people of the Middle East and Northern Africa have every right to secular democracy that we have, and it is my sincere wish that in the coming weeks and months we will see all the oppressed populations of the Arab world rise up against their oppressors, and march like Egyptians.