My brother (you all know Bud) sent me this in an email. He said yesterday he will study the Bible to see if the Egypt revolution has been prophesied and is another sign of "End Times". I'm no where near an expert on Egypt or Israel but some of my readers might find this interesting. RZ at reality zone has a post up on Israel which you should also read. Thanks!
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Egypt: Is it the People's Fault?
Adar 4, 5771, 08 February 11 04:05
by by Daniel Greenfield
(Israelnationalnews.com)
A thousand talking heads and neo-conservative experts on the region
assure us that a bright future stretches out before Egypt like a magic
carpet. "Democracy," "Freedom", "Representative Government" are the
buzzwords that trickle wetly out of their printers. All cynicism is
disdained and skepticism swept into the dustbin. History is being made
here. But the tricky thing about history is that it isn't a point on a
map, but a continuous wave. Like the tide, history is made and remade
over and over again, formed and repeated, washed and beached on the
shores of time.
Mubarak is the problem, we are told. And he certainly is their problem. The pesky 82 year old air force officer standing in the way of their dreams of a new Egypt. If not for him, Egypt would be a liberal model for the region. Just like Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq. But is it the dictator or the people who are the problem? The protesters are unified by a desire to push out Mubarak. But what do they actually stand for, besides open elections.
59 percent of Egyptians want democracy and 95 percent want Islam to play a large part in politics. (As Egypt has approximately 5 percent of Christians that means 100 percent of Muslims want Islam to play a large part in politics.) 84 percent believe apostates should face the death penalty.
That is what Egyptian democracy will look like. A unanimous majority that wants an Islamic state and a bare majority that wants democracy. Which one do you think will win out? A democratic majority of the country supports murdering people in the name of Islam. Mubarak's government does not execute apostates or adulterers. But a democratic Egypt will. Why? Because it's the will of the people.
The liberal cheerleaders shaking their pom poms for Egyptian democracy don't seem to grasp that the outcome could be anything other than positive. It's an article of faith for them that freedom leads to freedom. That open elections give rise to human rights. That the problem can only be the dictator, not the people. Never the people. That is their ideology and they will stick to it.
Ever since World War II, we have been working off the "Hitler Paradigm". The "Hitler Paradigm" says that there are no bad nations, only bad governments. The people themselves are perfectly fine, but occasionally a tiny minority of extremists size power. This allows the liberally minded to reconcile the need for occasional wars with their faith in mankind. Instead of fighting wars against nations, they fight wars to liberate nations from their despotic regimes. And ever since we have been fighting these "Wars of Liberation."
We fought to free Korea and Vietnam from Communism, but we lacked one basic thing. Ground level support from the people we were fighting to protect. Today South Koreans like Kim Jong Il more than they like us. We fought to free the tyrants of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein. As a reward, they financed the terrorists who have been killing us ever since. We fought to free Iraq from Saddam, and the entire country imploded into armed camps.
Our "Victory in Iraq" came about because we cut a deal with the Baathists against the Shiites and Al Qaeda, essentially restoring a broken version of Saddam's old status quo. We fought to liberate Afghanistan, and now we find ourselves allied with some Muslim warlords who abuse women and rape little boys-- against the other Muslim warlords who abuse women and rape little boys.
Handing out democracy like candy does not fix existing cultural problems. It does not end bigotry, free women or stop murder in the name of Allah. Open elections are only as good as the people participating in them. And the 84 percent of Egyptians who want to murder apostates have issues that democracy will not solve. The problem with Egypt is not Mubarak-- but the Egyptians.
Let's take another example. In Jordan, the next target on the freedom tour, King Hussein passed a bill to criminalize the honor killings of women. And their democratically elected parliament voted 60 to 25 to strike the bill down. It took them only 3 minutes. That's what democracy would mean for the Jordanian girls murdered by their husbands, brothers and fathers. The right of the people and their duly elected representatives to legalize the murder of women.
The Hitler Paradigm says that all you have to do is take away the dictator and his staffers to usher in democracy, freedom and mutual amity. But what if the dictator is not the problem, but the symptom of a larger cultural problem?
Take the Cold War. We defeated Communism without a massive war. The Berlin Wall came down. Democracy came to Russia. Except here we are back to square one. The situation in the region has been reset back to before WW2, with a chaotic Eastern Europe and a predatory Russia. Economic liberalization and even the end of Communism did not change the underlying pattern. Despite a brief period of democracy, Russia reverted to a totalitarian regime with designs on the rest of the region.
And that should have shocked no one, because it is exactly what happened after the fall of the Czars culminating in the Bolshevik takeover. All the reforms and liberalization did not give the average Russian what he wanted most-- stability, order and a strong nation.
Freedom is culturally determined. It is not the same thing as democracy. Nor is democracy as ubiquitous and universal as its advocates would like us to believe. Like all forms of power, it can only be exercised by those who are ready for it. Much of the world is not ready for it, no more than 12th century Europe was ready for the Constitution. Given the power to choose, they will choose tyranny. They will choose the known over the unknown, the stable over the unstable, and order over freedom.
A society with a social hierarchy embedded in its culture will preserve that hierarchy even with democratic elections Such elections will not give women freedom or rights to religious minorities or freedom of expression to unpopular views. These are things which stem from legal guarantees such as the Constitution, they do not arise out of the natural course of open elections. And the pundits who are busy pretending that this is how it works in the columns of every major newspaper are playing the fool.
The United States has freedom due primarily to its culture. Those freedoms were an outgrowth of the rights of Englishmen and the Enlightenment. They cannot be exported to another country-- without also exporting the cultural assumptions that produced them.
Egypt's period of greatest liberalization was under British rule. Since then its cosmopolitan nightspots have been torched and it has drifted closer to Islamization. Even Egypt's current level of human rights under Mubarak is above that of most of its neighbors. And the reason for that is Mubarak's ties to America. The more democratic Egypt becomes, the more its civil rights will diminish. Its rulers will see social issues as an easy way to compromise with the Muslim Brotherhood. As Egypt's cultural ties to the West diminish, so will its freedoms.
The Islamists understand this far better than the neo-conservatives. That is why they campaign so ruthlessly against Western culture. They understand that it is cultural assumptions that dictate behavior, more than any law. While we try to export institutions to the Muslim world, they export Muslim culture to us. And they have had far more luck changing us, than we have had changing them. Institutions are shaped by culture, but cultures are not shaped by institutions. Export every aspect of American government to Egypt, and it will run along Egyptian lines, not American ones. And within a year, Egypt's government will run the same way it does today. Only the window dressing will be different.
Mubarak is one of the last of the Janissaries, the Western trained army officers who seized power across the Arab world in order to implement some twisted semblance of a modern system of government. When the army's grip on power fails, then Egypt will fall even further. The loss of power by the Turkish military meant a descent into Islamism and terrorism. It will mean the same thing in Egypt.
A people who do not believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will not be free no matter how many times they go to the polls. You can place voting booths outside every home and run elections every week, and it will still do no good. Freedom may be the birthright of every man, woman and child on earth-- but it cannot be theirs until they claim it. As long as they believe in the right of the majority to oppress the minority, in the value of order over liberty, and the supremacy of the mosque over any and all civil and legal rights-- then they will never be free. Never. Their elections will either give rise to chaos or tyranny. That is how it is in the Middle East. That is how it will always be until they claim their birthright by closing the Koran and opening their minds.
Mubarak is the problem, we are told. And he certainly is their problem. The pesky 82 year old air force officer standing in the way of their dreams of a new Egypt. If not for him, Egypt would be a liberal model for the region. Just like Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq. But is it the dictator or the people who are the problem? The protesters are unified by a desire to push out Mubarak. But what do they actually stand for, besides open elections.
59 percent of Egyptians want democracy and 95 percent want Islam to play a large part in politics. (As Egypt has approximately 5 percent of Christians that means 100 percent of Muslims want Islam to play a large part in politics.) 84 percent believe apostates should face the death penalty.
That is what Egyptian democracy will look like. A unanimous majority that wants an Islamic state and a bare majority that wants democracy. Which one do you think will win out? A democratic majority of the country supports murdering people in the name of Islam. Mubarak's government does not execute apostates or adulterers. But a democratic Egypt will. Why? Because it's the will of the people.
The liberal cheerleaders shaking their pom poms for Egyptian democracy don't seem to grasp that the outcome could be anything other than positive. It's an article of faith for them that freedom leads to freedom. That open elections give rise to human rights. That the problem can only be the dictator, not the people. Never the people. That is their ideology and they will stick to it.
Ever since World War II, we have been working off the "Hitler Paradigm". The "Hitler Paradigm" says that there are no bad nations, only bad governments. The people themselves are perfectly fine, but occasionally a tiny minority of extremists size power. This allows the liberally minded to reconcile the need for occasional wars with their faith in mankind. Instead of fighting wars against nations, they fight wars to liberate nations from their despotic regimes. And ever since we have been fighting these "Wars of Liberation."
We fought to free Korea and Vietnam from Communism, but we lacked one basic thing. Ground level support from the people we were fighting to protect. Today South Koreans like Kim Jong Il more than they like us. We fought to free the tyrants of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein. As a reward, they financed the terrorists who have been killing us ever since. We fought to free Iraq from Saddam, and the entire country imploded into armed camps.
Our "Victory in Iraq" came about because we cut a deal with the Baathists against the Shiites and Al Qaeda, essentially restoring a broken version of Saddam's old status quo. We fought to liberate Afghanistan, and now we find ourselves allied with some Muslim warlords who abuse women and rape little boys-- against the other Muslim warlords who abuse women and rape little boys.
Handing out democracy like candy does not fix existing cultural problems. It does not end bigotry, free women or stop murder in the name of Allah. Open elections are only as good as the people participating in them. And the 84 percent of Egyptians who want to murder apostates have issues that democracy will not solve. The problem with Egypt is not Mubarak-- but the Egyptians.
Let's take another example. In Jordan, the next target on the freedom tour, King Hussein passed a bill to criminalize the honor killings of women. And their democratically elected parliament voted 60 to 25 to strike the bill down. It took them only 3 minutes. That's what democracy would mean for the Jordanian girls murdered by their husbands, brothers and fathers. The right of the people and their duly elected representatives to legalize the murder of women.
The Hitler Paradigm says that all you have to do is take away the dictator and his staffers to usher in democracy, freedom and mutual amity. But what if the dictator is not the problem, but the symptom of a larger cultural problem?
Take the Cold War. We defeated Communism without a massive war. The Berlin Wall came down. Democracy came to Russia. Except here we are back to square one. The situation in the region has been reset back to before WW2, with a chaotic Eastern Europe and a predatory Russia. Economic liberalization and even the end of Communism did not change the underlying pattern. Despite a brief period of democracy, Russia reverted to a totalitarian regime with designs on the rest of the region.
And that should have shocked no one, because it is exactly what happened after the fall of the Czars culminating in the Bolshevik takeover. All the reforms and liberalization did not give the average Russian what he wanted most-- stability, order and a strong nation.
Freedom is culturally determined. It is not the same thing as democracy. Nor is democracy as ubiquitous and universal as its advocates would like us to believe. Like all forms of power, it can only be exercised by those who are ready for it. Much of the world is not ready for it, no more than 12th century Europe was ready for the Constitution. Given the power to choose, they will choose tyranny. They will choose the known over the unknown, the stable over the unstable, and order over freedom.
A society with a social hierarchy embedded in its culture will preserve that hierarchy even with democratic elections Such elections will not give women freedom or rights to religious minorities or freedom of expression to unpopular views. These are things which stem from legal guarantees such as the Constitution, they do not arise out of the natural course of open elections. And the pundits who are busy pretending that this is how it works in the columns of every major newspaper are playing the fool.
The United States has freedom due primarily to its culture. Those freedoms were an outgrowth of the rights of Englishmen and the Enlightenment. They cannot be exported to another country-- without also exporting the cultural assumptions that produced them.
Egypt's period of greatest liberalization was under British rule. Since then its cosmopolitan nightspots have been torched and it has drifted closer to Islamization. Even Egypt's current level of human rights under Mubarak is above that of most of its neighbors. And the reason for that is Mubarak's ties to America. The more democratic Egypt becomes, the more its civil rights will diminish. Its rulers will see social issues as an easy way to compromise with the Muslim Brotherhood. As Egypt's cultural ties to the West diminish, so will its freedoms.
The Islamists understand this far better than the neo-conservatives. That is why they campaign so ruthlessly against Western culture. They understand that it is cultural assumptions that dictate behavior, more than any law. While we try to export institutions to the Muslim world, they export Muslim culture to us. And they have had far more luck changing us, than we have had changing them. Institutions are shaped by culture, but cultures are not shaped by institutions. Export every aspect of American government to Egypt, and it will run along Egyptian lines, not American ones. And within a year, Egypt's government will run the same way it does today. Only the window dressing will be different.
Mubarak is one of the last of the Janissaries, the Western trained army officers who seized power across the Arab world in order to implement some twisted semblance of a modern system of government. When the army's grip on power fails, then Egypt will fall even further. The loss of power by the Turkish military meant a descent into Islamism and terrorism. It will mean the same thing in Egypt.
A people who do not believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will not be free no matter how many times they go to the polls. You can place voting booths outside every home and run elections every week, and it will still do no good. Freedom may be the birthright of every man, woman and child on earth-- but it cannot be theirs until they claim it. As long as they believe in the right of the majority to oppress the minority, in the value of order over liberty, and the supremacy of the mosque over any and all civil and legal rights-- then they will never be free. Never. Their elections will either give rise to chaos or tyranny. That is how it is in the Middle East. That is how it will always be until they claim their birthright by closing the Koran and opening their minds.
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12 comments:
The author is very confused. To note just a few obvious factual errors:
- Every serious analyst of the situation in Egypt has considered the risk of an Islamist take-over. One would have to be very naïve to think that the path to democracy will be easy.
- I have never heard anyone claim that Mubarak is the only obstacle to Egypt being a liberal democracy.
- Only 15% of Egyptians approve of the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt's main Islamist organization) and barely 1% say they would vote for a Brotherhood candidate for President (source). Only 27% support annulling the peace treaty with Israel. The whole wave of rebellions sweeping the Arab world has a secular character -- astonishing given the history of the region, but nevertheless true.
- The Christian population of Egypt is not 5% but at least 10% (the official figure) and perhaps as high as 25%.
The person who wrote this doesn't know what he's talking about.
The Islamic world does have tremendous cultural problems (honor killings, clitorectomy in some countries, and others), but the behavior of most Egyptians during the uprising shows that their society has evolved. Democracy, if it can be achieved, will encourage further steps toward modernity.
The author is looking at a worst case scenario....and we all know what that would resemble (ie, our friends in Tehran).
A best case could be the fledgling Islamic democracy in Indonesia, which was a dictatorship for decades.
The bottomline is....it's much too early to tell what will happen in Egypt and throughout the Mideast, but if anyone does know, stop wasting your time in the comments section and tell me what the winning Powerball numbers will be on Saturday. Then head to DC and get a job in the State Department- you might be helpful.
This "author" is a radical far right Zionist.
He runs a blog named Sultan Knish.
He is regularly published on a rag called the [Canada Free Press]
I admit that I am a devout ANTI-Zionist. Just so you know. LOL
Even center right Jews in Israel are not in favor of this clown and his Islamophopic paranoia.
If your brother is listening to this jibberish. Then he needs immediate mental help.
There is not one shred of sanity in what he writes. Especially pertaining to Egypt. They now want the Muslim Brotherhood to be the new boogey man.
When in fact they have renounced violence.
The U.S. foreign policy and their "Special Relationship" with Israel is the main problem in the M/E.
Your brother should first watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNf-P_5u_Hw
Zeitgeist-Religion. :-)
Before he falls further into the rabbit hole.
Religion is for those who fear hell.
Spirituality is for those who have been to hell and back.
"A unanimous majority that wants an Islamic state"
The interesting part of that phrase is that the author seems not to understand that democracy can exist in an Islamic state--see Turkey. And he disregards the fact that there are people who wish to make the US into a Christianist state--they're called Dominionists.
democracy can exist in an Islamic state--see Turkey.
Strictly speaking, there is a distinction here. Turkey is not an Islamic state, it's a secular state in which most people are Muslims, just as the US is a secular state in which most people are Christians.
An example of an Islamic state analogous to the Dominionists' hoped-for Christianist state would be Iran under its present theocracy.
If Egypt were to become an Islamic state, that would be grounds for serious worry, but as I note above, most Egyptians do not want that.
The tract is extremely assumptive and lacks even the slightest amount of rudimentary fact checking,as Infidel points out. Just a cursory check on Wikipedia (authenticate other sources if you wish) reveals that 1) Christianity comprises between 5 and 10 percent of the population while 80% identify themselves as Muslim. Of those who consider themselves Muslim, there are major sects, Sunni, Sufi and Shi'a and multiple minor sects. The writer then gets assumptive in that all Muslims believe the same politically, which we know must be false based onour own experience with Christians in the US. Further, over 50% of the population of Egypt live in the major urban cities on the Delta; Alexandria, Cairo and are the most secular members of the nation's citizens. Further...the Egyptian constitution recognizes all Abrahamic faiths,Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and proscribes any political party with a religious agenda. The whole tract is a piece of shit. I have heard better rants on street corners.
Tell your brother that if he is going to go to the bible to foresee the future, ask him to find out if the Green Bay Packers will repeat in the Super Bowl. I need to get my bet in soon.
As a bible scholar myself, this wonderful interest in scripture is indeed heartening. But honestly, I wouldn't go to the bible looking for a sign of the latter days somehow being linked to the fate of Egypt. Yes, there is a reference in Isaiah, but don't make too much of it. The Hebrews, understandably, were none too fond of Egypt. Funny how nothing changes much in 4,000 years. If it were all up to us, I think Jesus was fairly descriptive in his prediction on his way to Golgotha.
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
He was undoubtedly very depressed at that time. God loves his children. Here is a nice snapshot of how he feels about us from the prophet Isaiah.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him when he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it”
thanks for reading and for the comments. Bud said something on my FB page about Isaiah FJ. He also left me a Dickless Morris link to read about how Obama is destroying America...:-)
I appreciate the expert analysis from all of you, it's way too deep for me I have to admit...
"Dickless Morris link to read about how Obama is destroying America...:-)"
Isn't he the toe-sucking pervert that had a prostitute listen in on a conversation he had with President Clinton? And in 2007 he was named as a patron of the DC madam.
Apparently he's so irresistable that he has to pay for women to, uh, "be" with him.
Why would your brother, a Christian man, listen to Morris? Oh I do believe people can be redeemed and turn their lives around, but the conservatives, except when it comes to other conservatives, do not. See Ted Kennedy for example.
But Morris is admired by conservatives?
Shaw all I know about him is he a boot-lickin FUX guy, that's all I need to know to call him Dickless! LOL.
Bud claims to not listen to man, just reads and followers the word of God, but this week he admitted he watches and trusts FUX NEWS!!!
Another thing that I've learned about Mr. Morris - his mouth, it moves like Clutch Cargo's.
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