Watching Egypt

From what I can make out, in Egypt and elsewhere, the people on the streets are the “accredited” — the bourgeoisie. They are the ones who could most benefit from western-style constitutional government and would suffer most if the government falls into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are, in terms of “class,” the same people who have revolted in Iran — haplessly against the Islamist regime of the ayatollahs.

We’d like to think they are simply “the people,” and I should admit that on a couple of occasions I have fallen into this conceit myself. The rhetoric of the Bush administration took them in this way, fondly hoping that with the passage of time, “modern” attitudes would keep spreading, as they once did in Europe, and have done more recently in countries of the Pacific Rim. The “neo-conservatives” sincerely believed that once constitutional democracy is implanted, it will grow, until it can be sustained by habit. India, “the world’s largest democracy,” is the standard example of this sort of miracle.

By contrast, the Obama administration has no idea what is happening or what it is doing, and Hillary Clinton is actually overrated as a secretary of state.