April 19, 1775

On this day in 1775 the American Revolution began in earnest. The militiamen, the ordinary citizen soldiers of Lexington and Concord, turned back the more organized and more highly trained British, harassing them all the way back to Charlestown outside of Boston. The Shot Heard Round the World had been fired. April 19, 1775 had secured its place in American and World history.

The significance of this event cannot be underscored enough. To date, it lit the lamp of almost surely the only large scale revolution which has had any modicum of positive success. Most new nations sink into anarchy, more terrible tyranny, or simply the same old same old with a new face after a known form of government falls.

To be sure, even our Revolution was subject to severe trials early on. It was no certainty that a civil government based on popular will would result from the breaking of age old ties. Yet somehow it did; I believe that it was American Exceptionalism through Divine Providence that our nation rose from those battles as it did.

I do not mean this as an insult towards other people and nations who have or are now seeking similar freedom and respect. I know that we aren't and never have been perfect, and that there are and have been other rightly proud and blessed peoples and countries. But the fact is that popular uprisings need more than simple change. They need enlightened leadership. They need more than mob mentality. Any dictator with charisma and organizational skills can turn crowds to their will quite readily.

The colonists had rational leadership. The colonist themselves were on the whole reasonable people. They were able to overcome the occasional rabble to form a stable, reasonably free nation. And that's exactly what makes April 19, 1775 so memorable. Our revolution is truly unique in history. It was essentially founded 251 years ago today.

Is the Arab Spring Waning?

Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi has taken Egypt upon himself. He has decreed new powers by which he claims he will be able to speed up the transition from the Mubarak regime into a democratic Egypt. Meanwhile, a civil war continues to rip apart Syria, and unrest threatens the peace in Gaza. All of this while the Middle East is still under the shadow of the vaunted Arab Spring which was supposed to move that area into the fold of supposedly enlighten democracies.

It's a dose of reality which, one would hope, might cause western liberals to rethink themselves and their positions. They simply don't want to accept that merely removing a dictator doesn't mean that better days are ahead. Indeed if history teaches us anything, it teaches that, far too often, it simply puts in place another dictator.

The supporters of the Arab Spring are little different than those who cheered the fall of the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s. But what was left in its wake? An Iran under a far greater tyranny which lasts until today. An Iran which, you may notice, was strangely unaffected by the protests within other Arabic nations.

So while there appears to have been some progress towards more democratic societies in the Middle East, the steps taken have been small and uncertain. And that's where there has been no widespread violence or upheaval. Only the richer nations seem to be weathering the storm well.

That says something, something the left and libertarians don't seem to recognize. There are two factors at play here. The first is that popular uprisings or popular movements generally only work out in the long run where there is a reasonably educated leadership. The transition from apartheid in South Africa to a reasonably stable democracy was fueled by a body politic which had leaders who respected the people and had some idea of how to lead and where to lead them. What they sought was accomplished over much time, and with the needed patience necessary to the long term health of the movement and its host nation as well. The second is that of prosperity. The Saudis and the Kuwaitis made reforms because, while the demand for change was extant, there was a corollary understanding that they were reasonably well off anyway. No one wanted to rock that boat too harshly, lest it list and eventually sink.

You can't just throw out a dictator without a solid alternative available. Even then, that alternative must be reasonable; can someone say Hitler? Far too many people have the idea that the solution to a dictator is merely his removal. We see in Egypt that that is nothing less than shortsighted. At worst, it will lead to a worse dictator, or even something worse than that. It could well lead to a civil war which will only put a nation light years behind attaining a true and good democracy.