It’s worth identifying at this point several (but by no means all; what follows is surely a small sample) of those who in 2011 reassured the world that Egyptians had nothing to fear if the Brotherhood and Islamists became dominant…
It’s worth identifying at this point several (but by no means all; what follows is surely a small sample) of those who in 2011 reassured the world that Egyptians had nothing to fear if the Brotherhood and Islamists became dominant…
Oh my. They forgot ET.And the Queerbecer.And LAS.
The West has a choice.
It can continue to support dictatorships and tribal political and economic modes (which are repressive and anti-democratic) under the theme of: ‘He’s a dictator but he’s MY Dictator’, or it can acknowledge that moving from tribal dictatorships to democratic freedom and capitalism isn’t a ‘flip of the light switch’ action.
It will take time and internal conflict, for centuries of dictatorships and tribalism can’t be rejected in a moment. Top-down governance provides ‘entitlement sustenance’ (similar to Obama’s America) and are less risky and more comfortably submissive than individual freedom and market competition.
The West can choose to openly criticize these new modes of ‘going back into the security of tribalism’ and can instead promote freedom and democracy.
Or, it can remain silent, and privately mutter and froth about the loss of Our Dictator and hope for a new ‘Our Dictator’.
This won’t help the West or the MENA, for they cannot continue to live within a tribal (two class) political and economic mode. There is no dictator, not even a Stalin, who can repress a population into a continuation of poverty as is the current economic situation in the MENA.
The USA has a choice as well. It can move into socialism and collapse its economy under Obama, or it can reject it and take back America.
Gosh, justthinkin, I haven’t forgotten myself. How could I do such a thing to you?
You are supporting dictatorships because your basic axiom is that ‘those people’ are too ignorant and/or too genetically backward, to live in any other mode than repressed within a dictatorship that controls their ‘evil impulses’.
Gosh, that sounds just like the verbiage of the religious and political Rulers of the West in the 15th and 16th centuries, who also insisted that ‘the people’ engaged in trade or working the farms are ‘too backwards’ to be entrusted with their own governance. They weren’t allowed to read, or own land, or certainly, not vote. They required Firm Control by Wiser Men. Hmmm.
I’m not into the verbiage. And I certainly reject differential group-based IQs. I consider only two variables: population and the economy. These variables are unaffected by ideology. They are material, ie, ‘real’. You ignore both.
Once a population reaches a critical size, for example, it can no longer sustain itself by hunting and gathering. It must either societally keep a no-growth population or move into an economic mode where it will raise its own food. That also will bring in a different political mode of relating to each others, with decisions made by a set of leaders.
Once a population reaches a critical size, it can no longer sustain itself within a distributive economic mode and must move into a market or individual capitalist economic mode. That will also bring in a different political mode to empower this new set of individuals, the middle class, with political power.
The ideology which supported the old ways will have to change; this takes time and internal conflicts. You don’t change your societal beliefs in a second.
But, since no society can reduce their population back to a previous mode, and no, wars and disease are temporary, then, change will have to come.
ET, I don’t see how population size is the determinant of subsequent actions.
Try this. Look at our problems through the lens of monetary policy. The bankers have been running the tables for ages. The Rothschilds financed both sides in wars, enriching themselves by sharing the booty of the victor. They, the bankers have been playing the zero sum game ever since. And we are the saps who pay and pay and pay.
Their fraudulent behaviour has become so egregious that it is about to become obvious to even the most died in the wool socialist. So they will bankrupt the entire system so that their frauds will never be exposed as the entire world will blame everyone but the perps.
ET, you consistently prate on about the muslims having to transition from a tribal mode to a civil mode, but you fail to see the elephant in the room: islam is nothing more than tribalism, codified. As long as the Egyptians adhere to islam, they cannot have a functioning democracy, because democracy is simply not part of the islamic world view.
They can, and do, go through the motions of democratic politics, but, as we have seen, it is “one man, one vote, once”.
There will never be true democracy anywhere in the islamic world until islam is gutted of about 99% of the crap that mohammed put in it.
Skweeker, you’ve reduced a societal structure (ie, its economic and political and ideological systems) to ONE variable. ‘The Bankers’.
You have elevated them to a powerful position where, seemingly, they control all that infrastructure of a nation. And you are then reducing this infrastructure to only one result: Wealth.
However, it seems to me that you are ignoring what PRODUCES this wealth.
Is it produced from a single resource, owned and controlled by the Statist Rulers? That’s the situation in the MENA, where wealth is produced from oil or Suez tolls.
Then, you are ignoring what this wealth must do; it must support a population. IF the population increases beyond the capacity of this wealth to support it, what happens?
In the MENA, this is exactly the situation. The resultant poverty is unrest, met by authoritarian repression, and then, movement into the purely cerebral, the ideology of utopian fundamentalism. Oh, and it helps to have an Evil Other (Israel and the US) for the lower peasantry to vent their anger against.
Back to what produces wealth. When your one-industry is not enough, the economy has to move into many industries. The way to do that is to allow private enterprise, ie, small business capitalism. The MENA is frightened of this because this also means that political power must move from the Dictator to…the people.
That’s what’s going on in the MENA. First the economy crumbles, then, the old political mode crumbles. Meanwhile, people start to question the old ideology. Slowly. A young girl asks, ‘why can’t I go to school?’ She is met with gunshots. And the result is an outpouring of local support for her…Slowly, the ideology crumbles.
It takes time. But The Bankers, in my view, play no role in this societal transformation. I’m afraid I don’t see your point.
gordonkneehill, it’s strange that you’ve missed my consistently pointing out that Islam is a tribal ideology.
I’ve said that repeatedly, that it has little to say about the metaphysical (religious) and takes most of it from the Judaic. It is essentially an economic and political mode that supports a tribal system, a pastoral nomadic socioeconomic mode.
I agree with you that Islam, as such, has to change. And I’ve outlined that this change will come, as change came in the West, when the economic and political modes are at a critical threshold and MUST change.
Then, we will see, as we are seeing in the MENA, that people start to question and do things differently from The Texts and the established ideology. The old guard will fight back, as they fought against heresy in the West, and issue their edicts and fatwas and etc. They’ll try to stop the Internet, try to stop meetings and discussions. It won’t work.
So, that young girl will say that she wants to go to school. Others will demonstrate in the streets that they want more freedom. Islam has to change, and they can say, all they want, that their texts are ‘inviolate’. The result will be to sideline those very same texts – and modernize.
They can’t remain tribal, ie, without a middle class economy, with that size of a population.
When you tacitly or directly support behaviour that is destructive, anti social and criminal are you any better than the freaks who light the fires and set off the bombs? The root cause of all ME violence is the teaching and practice of islam.
Anyone who thinks that there is anything BUT totalitarian rule under states where influence by islam rules is a complete idiot.
This is no intellectual exercise. It is a serious confrontation that will end in the destruction of either islam or the entire civilized world. And, there is NO middle ground, so quit clinging to the cowards fantasy that there is room to wiggle your sorry ass into a safe position.
Pick a side and be prepared to crush your enemies or be crushed by them.
ET, for the love of the Almighty, stop talking such complete and utter bollocks when grown men are having a serious conversation.
You, like the liberals, are still wondering how to best convince the Muslims to reform. You, like the liberals, clearly never bothered reading your Bible if you have to bother to ask. “A whip for a horse, a bridle for a donkey, a rod for a fool’s back.”
We could, if we were blessed with rulers who fear the Lord and not Muslim riffraff, correct them in an afternoon. The United States alone has enough atomic bombs to lay waste every cesspit that passes for a city in the Muslim world several times over. Then, maybe, the ones who by the grace of God survive the onslaught may be in the mood to repent, accept the God of Israel as their one God, make amends for their crimes against Him and His people. Then, they may finally take their place among the civilized nations of the world.
Yes, the Lord is merciful towards repentant sinners. First, though, the sinner has to repent. Until the sinner is humbled, he never does. Why should he?
ET, for the love of the Almighty, stop talking such complete and utter bollocks when grown men are having a serious conversation.
You, like the liberals, are still wondering how to best convince the Muslims to reform. You, like the liberals, clearly never bothered reading your Bible if you have to bother to ask. “A whip for a horse, a bridle for a donkey, a rod for a fool’s back.”
We could, if we were blessed with rulers who fear the Lord and not Muslim riffraff, correct them in an afternoon. The United States alone has enough atomic bombs to lay waste every cesspit that passes for a city in the Muslim world several times over. Then, maybe, the ones who by the grace of God survive the onslaught may be in the mood to repent, accept the God of Israel as their one God, make amends for their crimes against Him and His people. Then, they may finally take their place among the civilized nations of the world.
Yes, the Lord is merciful towards repentant sinners. First, though, the sinner has to repent. Until the sinner is humbled, he never does. Why should he?
Yep I concur with Gord…..no resolution as long as Islam exists…..it is tribalism/despotism codified.
There is no “wiggle room”….it is all or nothing.
The Soviet Union collapsed, discredited but despite the Russians sophistocation, education and modern industrial base…..movement to a democratic society has been difficult and by no means sure.
For the people of MENA…a primitive, largely illiterate, tribal feudal society….in the grip of Islam….difficult and possibly impossible.
Yeah we know what they gotta do but they don’t.
Look at the US political scene….I would like to believe the yanks are light years ahead of the Russians but I dunno…I just dunno.
Dick Slater says the adults are having a conversation and then goes on to call for the nuclear annihilation of a billion people in the name of his old testament god.
Hey Dick! There’s a whole other testament about this guy named Jesus and he’s not so big on mass killings. In fact, I suspect that were he to comment on your post he’d ask just how you see yourself as different from the Muslims you hate. Still, how wonderful would it be for Jesus to have that chat with you and then embrace the Pope. Your brain would explode!
Dick Slater, heh, so you are having a ‘grown man’ serious conversation? And your solution is ‘obliterate the heathens with nuclear bombs’. Hmm, sounds rather similar to the Islamists. They too insist on destruction followed by our submission. Hmm.
Now, on to serious conversation. I am not ‘wondering how to best convince the Muslims to reform’. I am saying that societal infrastructural pressures – that’s population size and economic capacity, in case you don’t understand this – will impel them to reform. No convincing needed, and certainly, they have to do the reforms themselves.
Just as the West reformed in the 13th through 17th centuries. Ever read de Troyes ‘Perceval’? Remember the function of questioning? Ever read Abelard’s focus on ‘dubitando’?
Oh, and I’m an atheist. (I can hear your rage already!). So, I don’t consider that your ‘love they neighbour’ solution of first, obliterating all and everyone with nuclear bombs, and then, forcing submission to a different ideology, a different metaphysical power, is the answer. But, it’s your answer and I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy.
Wow, the pitiful brainwashed christian nuts are out in full force today, eh Dick? You have that typical christian mentality, if they don’t believe in our version of the fairy tale, we should just nuke ’em.
Like I have said before, religion is the root of all evil.
Slater, what a pile of crap you write. How condescending, grown men having a serious conversation. You couldn’t carry ET’s lunch bag yet you have the nerve to belittle her extremely valuable contribution to this blog.
Your all-powerful, all knowing god hasn’t done much to protect its Christian and Jewish adherents in the muslim world. Tell me, oh enlightened one, what would happen to Israel and its Jewish inhabitants if they put down their weapons and trusted in your god to protect them. I think we all know the answer to that one.
It’s sad/funny how so many academics,including our own well-respected ET, claim that due to population growth and the emergence of the middle class, the MS Countries MUST eventually have democracy,yet ignore the fact that democracy is slipping into oblivion to be replaced by something darker in much of the civilized world.
Take the political movements in the EU,the U.S.,and add to the mix the agenda of the UN,and we certainly don’t have a movement toward “government of the people,for the people,and by the people”,but rather,the agenda to form what I have little hope are benevolent dictatorships.
Democracy was a great theory,but the people who hunger for power have tried to subvert that theory ever since it was first enacted as a form of government, including right here in our little backwater,Canader.
ET, sometimes I believe you are hidebound by your own higher education. You seem to find it impossible to accept that democracy isn’t necessarily the end game. Democracy is surely in sad shape all over the democratic world, being replaced by psuedo-democracy at every turn.
Elect the candidate of your choice,and he’ll soon buy into the agenda of the ruling elite,and represent you only peripherally.
Is the greatest democracy in history,the USA, not quietly slipping away from that mode of governance, to a dictatorship by the ruling elite?
“The MENA is frightened of this because this also means that political power must move from the Dictator to…the people.”
Or,in the hand s of a clever dictator,or group of rulers such as a political Party (Democrats anyone?) he can give the IMPRESSION of democracy,with votes and competing candidates galore. While HE counts the votes.
Dick Slater, perhaps you should sprinkle a bit more ritalin on your cornflakes in the morning.
Yup. Super disappointing. BUT it doesn’t change the fact that democracy is still what we want these societies to shoot for, and clearly there are lots of people continuing that fight. Just because some twits are willing to sign it away again doesn’t mean we shouldn’t root for the reformers in these societies.
Of course… you guys would vote to put Rob Ford right back in office, so you’re not exactly ones to judge Egyptians, since you’re cut from the same cloth.
dmorris, I agree that ‘the power of the people’ is weak in so many if not most of the West. But I think it’s an error to assume that once we move into democracy that we can sit back and say, ‘Now, we’ve done it; let’s relax’.
That would be to ignore a basic component of our species, which is that we function both as individuals and as members of a collective. The latter, the reality of the societal collective, is due to the fact that our knowledge base is not innate but must be learned from the collective.
And in order to interact with each other, even as individuals, we must do so within a collective format; we share a language, interact within common patterns of interaction and so on.
Furthermore, our economic reality operates as a collective, where we produce and market and trade and so on.
This ‘push towards being a collective’ meets up with the Other Reality; that we exist also as a unique individual. Our species has the capacity of individual reason; we can question, dissent, explore, innovate.
These two basic forces: the communal and the individual, are opposite and yet, both must exist within our species. We waver and wander between privileging the one or the other; it’s hard to balance them!
So, we will move into the security of collectivism when the economy wavers and can get trapped there. We’ll move into the freedom of individualism when the economy is strong enough that we lose our individual fears.
My point is that democracy, which is the political mode that privileges the middle class entrepreneur, must always be fought for to be retained.
Democracy only emerges when the population base is so large that it requires a Growth-Economy, one which is always coming up with new products and services and so, can employ more people and produce more wealth. Small No-Growth populations such as found in the pre-industrial era don’t need that type of Growth Economy.
John >
“Yup. Super disappointing. BUT……..”
Yea, you socialist morons support the killing of tens of thousands of people and get to sit back and say “Super disappointing”.
Super disappointing is that you idiots have any say in anyone’s national affairs, foreign or domestic. You’re not proper citizens your lunatics that would have been homeless beggars, hung, or locked up in mental institutions back in days of old.
ET >
Not to interject into another long closed loop debate on this subject but – The proof is in the pudding.
What is happening in the MENA is exactly what everyone argued with you and the above mentioned leftist trolls over the last year.
It’s more than a little silly to view the train wreck everyone warned you about and continually try to defend your position of “full steam ahead” after the fact.
At least socialist nuts like “John” can callously stand on the dead bodies and {“let this one go until next time”}, you should do the same.
Such harsh words from so many posters today!!
To get a learned opinion on the future of Islam in general and Egypt in particular, take time to read
“How Civilizations Die” by David P Goldman, aka “Spengler”. It may perk you up. It certainly did me.
And may the Deity Of Your Choice bless you all.
In support of ET’s position, the geographical, economic and cultural barriers that isolated the Middle East (and Africa, and Asia, and indigenous populations) and perpetuated tribalism are all melting, and the instruments and institutions that once sustained distinct, unique, long-lived cultures in their isolation are disappearing with them. And that includes the virulent and xenophobic extremes of religion that exclude practitioners from participation in global cultures and economies.
Radical Islamists will seek to exploit any change in the political landscape, including popular anger against “our dictators”; and the Muslim Brotherhood has an established infrastructure and political network. But less organized secular forces, unions, students, academics and others were all part of the revolution(s) as well.
Democratization is going to be a long-drawn out, conflicted mess, and in the process governments will be formed that are hostile to “our” interests.
Knight 99, if you recall, I did not say that the transformation would be easy. I constantly used terms such as ‘tectonic shift’; I contantly outlined that it was an infrastructural transformation and not just a switch in political parties.
And I suggested that the various groups would fight each other for power. And that it would take a decade or more of such conflict.
BUT, in difference to you and others, I did say that this shift should go ‘full steam ahead’. That there was no choice but to move out of a tribal two-class structure and enable the development of a free middle class economy and its political system. I’ll stand by that.
Do you seriously suggest that retaining ‘Our Dictator’ is the best solution? Do you feel that these people are utterly incapable of any kind of governance other than a dictatorship? Are they incapable of capitalism?
And I constantly said that the variables that I use are population size and economic mode. The population is too large for a tribal political mode and a statist distributionist one-resource economy. Do you consider that they should retain the tribal mode?
Balbulican >
Yes, we keep hearing about melting cultural barriers, but if you roll down your window and look around it’s our western cultures that are melting. It’s our democracies that are in trouble.
Yet we keep interfering in other cultures and their governing systems that have lasted thousands of years while ours slowly evaporates, why is that?
Why are our “best friends” in the Middle East the most brutal regimes like Saudi Arabia?
They brutally repress their people, are open slavers, actively fund and spread violent Wahabbi Islamism to the west. Yet the Liberal Left is concerned with these small secular fairly “well to do” Arab nations like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Syria.
ALL the benevolent dictators – or – modern tribal chieftains if you will of these small nations fought, killed, and jailed Islamic extremists to protect their citizens and economies from them.
I’ve been to them all, having lived in Algeria and Libya for many years, the people who supported these “Arab Springs” are speaking from their asses. They have lent their voices and support for the murders and pain which generations of Arab children will suffer.
The Liberal Progressive useful idiots have wittingly or unwittingly supported crony capitalist endeavours, European socialist foreign interests, Arab Monarchal regional disputes, and Islamic extremists. Nice.
ET >
“Do you seriously suggest that retaining ‘Our Dictator’ is the best solution? Do you feel that these people are utterly incapable of any kind of governance other than a dictatorship? Are they incapable of capitalism?” – ET
I’m seriously suggesting that we start minding our own business!
Do you feel that “these people are utterly incapable of any kind of governance other than a dictatorship” without our nosy uninformed interference?
“Are they incapable of capitalism?”, well are they?
Please tell me what the personal and corporate income tax rates were before the Liberal Progressive slaughter of these nations. I know myself, they were much better than ours, but it may be a good educational exercise for those that don’t quite understand that the people worked, owned businesses, and paid very reasonable tax’s on their returns beforehand.
I pity the fools who presume Islam will shed it’s backward medieval shackles and embrace democracy, the very founding tenet of Islam is slavery of it’s followers. When men willingly become slaves of Islam in the 21st century there is no hope for democracy. Islam is the 21st century Neo Nazism, and it’s not localized in Europe it’s cancer is in every country on this planet.
Knight 99, you raise a few too many points to respond to in a single post. I’m not a historian or political scientist. But there seem to be a couple of fundamentals that are hard to disagree with.
– You note yourself that the drive for democracy emerged in the “small, secular, fairly well to do nations”. That would seem to support ET’s point that the drive for democracy is a stage of political, cultural and economic evolution.
– It seems difficult NOT to support that drive, especially when the west sought to impose “democracy” on other regimes.
As for the transformation of our culture – well, there are no more Albanias anymore.
Balbulican >
“You note yourself that the drive for democracy emerged in the “small, secular, fairly well to do nations”. That would seem to support ET’s point……”
It would seem to support ET but it does not, the clear difference is that ET supports our physical intrusion into already viable working nations and I support letting people self determine and then fight for their own freedom and democracy when they think they need it.
A few disgruntled Islamic fundamentalists with ties to Islamic terrorist organizations are not what we should be supporting, and that is precisely who all of these Liberal Progressive hacks have been supporting throughout this “Arab Spring”.
My bigger point is that we are not intruding on the lives of sub-Saharan warlords murdering tens of thousands, nor are we actively fighting or supporting a North Korean democracy movement. We are not fighting for the Tibetan people and other Chinese brutalities, and we actively support brutal Middle Eastern regimes like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
People need to stop and take a serious breath for a moment and start asking themselves why all of this Liberal Progressive war mongering attention in all the wrong places?
I agree with your broader point about direct military intervention in national wars of whatever (don’t know what the right word is. If you like the rebels, it’s a war of liberation: if you don’t like them, it’s a radical rebellion.) I’m still not sure what should happen in the case of a Rwanda.
But there was more to the Arab Spring than just “a few disgruntled Islamic fundamentalists”. I don’t like the prominence of the Muslim Brotherhood in these emerging democracies any more than I liked seeing China support liberation movements in Africa and Central America in the seventies and eighties. But they’re not creating the urge away from dictatorship, although they’re exploiting it.
Knight99, stop putting words in my mouth.
I don’t support ‘our physical intrusion’ into these other nations but what YOU are ignoring is that isolation is no longer a reality.
We live in a global network; a network, not just a collection of separate nation-states. We are networked together. Economically and informationally.
So, the oil that WE developed in the ME is shipped to the West and other places. In return, they import out technology such as their ever present cell phones, cars and yes, guns, and so on.
We economically intrude. We informationally intrude. Isolation is no longer a reality when the White House can watch, in real time, as they sit in their comfortable seminar room, how the jihadists slaughter our administrators.
There’s no such thing as total self-determination.
ET >
I’ll make it short and simple because this is all rehashed arguments that we already know go nowhere.
Nay Isolationism – Yea Non-Interventionism
As I said you can make up whatever logic or arguments that you wish – “the proof is in the pudding”. Your assessments have been proven wrong – well at least for the next 30 – 100 years of bloodshed or whatever you’ve calculated before they’re supposed to work.
Why not get back to us then and gloat if you’re eventually proven right.
ET #2 >
As far as putting “words in your mouth”, similar to LAS and some others you seem to have a disconnect between your support for the “Arab Spring” and the fact that the UN and the US on behalf of several foreign and domestic interests have been helping facilitate the “rebels” to overthrow said “evil” regimes.
You are in effect supporting a physical intrusion that is destabilizing otherwise stable Arab countries in favor of radical Islamic totalitarian ones. Israel who knows this better than anyone else has voiced this loudly and clearly – yet you won’t stop with your support.
Look, if it wasn’t for our support of the Muslim Brotherhood, one can be assured that Huma would NOT be touching Hillary with that 10-foot vibrating pole. And proving yet once again that there are indeed SOME jobs that REAL Americans just won’t do…
Knight99 – you must be kidding. The Islamic nations were stable????
They were falling apart, entirely on their own, because economically their statist distributionist economy can’t support their population.
Do you think that they were stable and doing just fine..and that things fell apart only because the US intervened? Why did it intervene? Because it wanted, oh, democracy to spread there? For no reason other than Just Because?
The facts are that the Islamic nations have been economically in a near crisis mode for decades. They have managed to hold on, by virtue of US and other western technology, petrolium development and basic funding (the US gives Egypt billions per year), and have inhibited dissent by moving into fundamentalist religious modes, by military repression of the people, by internal tribal repression – and by red herring diversions of their own people’s anger to the West and Israel.
I suggest you read Wright’s book The Looming Tower on the rise of Islamic fascism amidst the impoverished people of the MENA.
I totally disagree with your view that ‘everything was just fine’ until the US and UN and West moved in to destabilize the regions. My view is that they were already on the cliff because their statist economy couldn’t support their population.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. You haven’t convinced me and I certainly haven’t convinced you. Cheers.
ET >
“The facts are that the Islamic nations have been economically in a near crisis mode for decades.”
Which Islamic Nations are you referring to now?
The facts are North African Arab/ Islamic nations had the highest standard of living than they’ve had in 5000 years.
Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Algeria were essentially secular governments fighting Islamic extremism within their borders. Women were not required to wear a burka and were allowed to drive a car in all of these nations.
All of these nations allowed women the vote and to hold political office including Syria.
The Islamic extremists murdered these people who chose a western lifestyle whenever they could, and the Arab governments including Gaddafi’s protected them and Christians from the Islamic extremists.
Not so good for them now though huh? Where’s the economic bliss today?
Oh right, it’ll take several decades and a few generations to get back everything they lost.
“It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.”
Richard Feynman
I’ll take any ‘sufficient’ explanations of the world and its turnings with a pinch of salt, thank you kindly.
dmorris @ 1:07, “yet ignore the fact that democracy is slipping into oblivion to be replaced by something darker in much of the civilized world.”
This statement ranks with “truer words were never spoken”. This is exactly what is happening, month by month with ever more regulation for the “good of the people” and election by election with the bread and circuses purchase of votes with non existent funds, that will ultimately end with the return to serfdom.
I do not pretend to be as articulate as others, and so will just give my thoughts.
The EU is controlled by bureaucrats and the people have nothing to say. The UN is fast becoming a copy of that with the thugs and tin pot dictators controlling the agenda. The political and economic control in the US is going down the same road with the administration circumventing the people with the use of bureaucratic departments.
While the west is busy loosing freedoms at home, one at a time, it is stumbling around the ME trying to bring freedom to people who do not have the slightest clue what it is and by all appearances do not want it.
gordinkneehill @ 11:18 has it right, “There will never be true democracy anywhere in the Islamic world until Islam is gutted of about 99% of the crap that Mohammed put in it.”
What we accomplished in 800 years, and are now loosing, the ME will not accomplish in a few decades.
Ken (Kulak) >
That’s it in a nutshell.