Independence Day...in Egypt...

The news from Egypt has been interesting and sometimes downright exciting over the past few days.  Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, was leading Egypt down a path toward an Iran-like fundamentalist Islamic republic – and the people of Egypt said (rather loudly) “No!”  If we are to believe the pronouncements of the Egyptian military that enabled Morsi's removal (and their actions are so far consistent), Egypt will get another bite at the apple – they get a “redo” on their constitution, and new elections.  It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next six months to a year.

While reading this news, I caught myself having an odd reaction, and it took me a while to figure out what it was.  It was envy, plain and simple.  I'm envious of the chance the Egyptian people have now to rework their government into something more to their liking.

Today is Independence Day here in the U.S., ordinarily a day I would enthusiastically celebrate.  Overeating and too much alcohol might be involved.  I don't feel much like celebrating this year.  The country whose independence I'd celebrate is slipping away, bit by bit.  Another slip happened this week: Obama, acting like the dictator he clearly would like to be, arbitrarily decided to delay enforce a law – he delayed the implementation of Obamacare for large companies.  He is exercising a power that our Constitution does not give him.  Under the Constitution, a president doesn't have the power to simply override a law passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.  Obama is doing it anyway, precisely as any tyrannical dictator would do.  Now perhaps there will be a lawsuit filed to prevent him from actually pulling this off, but in these days of complicity by both political parties, I'm not confident that such a thing will happen.

Why would Obama do this?  A reasonable question, and this one has a clear answer.  It's not the excuse that Obama is giving; that's just political cover.  The real reason is that his fellow Democrats are afraid of getting creamed in the 2014 election cycle – because they're afraid of the electorate's backlash when they find out what Obamacare will cost them once it's implemented.  This is especially true of some key Democratic constituencies: young people and minorities.  When these groups have to start writing the checks to pay for Obamacare, they're not going to be happy campers. 

So Obama waves his magical, tyrannical wand...and kicks the problem down the road another two years.

I'm envious of the chance the Egyptians have to adjust their government to something better.  We Americans need that chance.  We need a second Independence Day.  That's an Independence Day I would love to celebrate!

Hope and Change in Foreign Policy...

Our Secretary of State visited Egypt this weekend, where she was greeted by crowds chanting “Monica, Monica”, and tossing rotten tomatoes.  The so-called Arab Spring has resulted in a freely-elected Islamist government, unresolved tension between the elected government and the corruptocratic military government, and now ... open mocking of our official government representatives.  I'm not arguing that the mocking isn't richly deserved, mind you.  Just noting that the government of hope and change has indeed brought us change – though not of a particularly hopeful looking variety...

Niall Ferguson on TV...

Niall Ferguson is one of my favorite authors, with a series of non-fiction books covering a variety of topics in history and economics (often blending the two).  They're uniformly excellent, very readable, and I recommend them often to my friends.

I had no idea that Mr. Ferguson appeared as a pundit on TV (since I rarely watch TV!), but yesterday I happened across this clip yesterday.  In it, Mr. Ferguson (apparently an invited guest on MSNBC) eviscerates the rather obvious pro-Obama position of the talking heads.  He brooks no nonsense, avoids anything resembling platitudes, and absolutely nails them with those pesky things called facts.  Highly entertaining!  I'd really like to see more like this, but I suspect that Mr. Ferguson's career on MSNBC has come to a screeching halt, for he ran completely off the approved narrative rails...

Egypt...

I have so much hope for the people of the Middle East, and at the same time I'm very worried about the bazillion ways this could go horribly wrong...

Peggy Noonan, apparently fully recovered from her Obama spell, has some interesting thoughts.  One paragraph:

And youth trumps age. Egypt is a young nation, median age 24, with high youth unemployment. All revolutions, in the end, are about the young versus the old, because the young are driven by hope and the old by experience. The men who massed in Tahrir Square the first week looked to be aged roughly 16 to 35. A few days into the revolution, I received an email from a friend just back from Cairo. He told me, he'd seen a young man run out of his suburban Cairo house. He was off to the demonstrations, to take part in history. Running after him was his grandmother, who literally grabbed him by the ear and tried to drag him back inside.

Heh. I can easily visualize that grandmother!

The always-interesting Fouad Ajami has a great column, also at WSJ, which concludes:

Umm al-Dunya, the mother of the world, Egyptians and other Arabs call the fabled city of Cairo. It had been there, in that city founded a millennium ago, that Islam fashioned a civilization, made its peace with the world, outwitted and outwaited conquerors.

Egyptians know that this Arab revolution of 2011—and the upheaval has earned that name—had not begun in their metropolis, that it had travelled eastward from Tunisia. When that revolt arrived in Cairo, it found a stage worthy of its ambitions. For decades now, Egypt has been the lens through which Arabs see their history. This is the case today. A new Arab politics has spawned in Liberation Square, a movement of a piece with the modern ways of protest and reform.

It will be said that the great, enduring dilemmas of Egypt—a huge country that has lost out in the game of nations—will still be there. There will be accounts to settle, a struggle between those who were sullied by the dictatorship and those who weren't. The Egyptians will be tested again as to their fidelity to democratic ways. But if this standoff that ended in the demise of the dictator is any guide, the Egyptians may give us a consoling tale of an Islamic people who rose to proclaim their fidelity to liberty, and who provided us with a reminder that tyranny is not fated for the Arabs.

Our fingers are crossed and our thumbs are pressed (as my German friends would say), reflecting our fervent hope for a good outcome from all this turmoil.  We're also hoping that this revolutionary wind keeps right on traveling, across all the thugocracies in the region...

Doing Their Bit...

...to help the folks in Egypt.  Good for Google!