I have entered some spirited debates over the past week about whether the Egyptian revolution is a cause for optimism. Many revolutions overthrow autocrats only to give birth to more vile regimes. The results of the Russian and Iranian revolutions are testaments to that possibility, which is useful to countenance. Here is Edmund Burke, in the his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France:
I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have actually received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulation on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners.
All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and it not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints…liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people before they declare themselves will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience…
What Egypt will do with freedom, we cannot know. But we know freedom to be, a priori, good and just. Arguing against freedom for fear of Islamism is an argument for perpetual despotism, which we know for certain to be neither good nor just. If some despots yield to Islamists, so be it. All types of governments have their weaknesses. Democracy's weakness, as the Ancients knew well, is its susceptibility to demagoguery.
I remain hopeful, because people in the region are finally taking responsibility for their own destinies. This is key to the sustenance of liberty. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:
[T]o secure these rights [to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have actually received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulation on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners.
All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and it not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints…liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people before they declare themselves will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience…
What Egypt will do with freedom, we cannot know. But we know freedom to be, a priori, good and just. Arguing against freedom for fear of Islamism is an argument for perpetual despotism, which we know for certain to be neither good nor just. If some despots yield to Islamists, so be it. All types of governments have their weaknesses. Democracy's weakness, as the Ancients knew well, is its susceptibility to demagoguery.
I remain hopeful, because people in the region are finally taking responsibility for their own destinies. This is key to the sustenance of liberty. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:
[T]o secure these rights [to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
