by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The fall of Muammar Gaddafi is making some in the West giddy with the usual “Arab Spring” wishful visions of democracy and freedom flourishing throughout the Muslim Middle East, even as the last binge of democratic intoxication, the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, has left the hangover of …
by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society Apart from celebratory statements applauding what looks like to us democratic “people’s revolutions” against tyrannous autocrats, the uprisings sweeping across the Muslim Middle East have created great uncertainty for policy-makers as they try to calculate a response. Share This
Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The outbreak of protests and rebellion throughout the Middle East have quickly generated an orthodox narrative: When people suffering under brutal autocrats and dictators have finally risen up to satisfy the innate human longing for freedom and democracy, we should support these aspirations on moral grounds. Share This
by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The dubious received wisdom rationalizing our current intervention in Libya was crystallized in Senator John Kerry’s recent essay for The Wall Street Journal. For Kerry, the rebels in Libya are the same as those in Egypt, “peacefully demanding freedom and dignity.” Share This
by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The current military intervention in Libya by the West has been marketed with the claim that its purpose, as French President Sarkozy put it, is “to protect the civilian population from the murderous madness of a regime that has forfeited all claim to legitimacy.” Behind this humanitarian …
Exactly what will the people of the Middle East do? by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner By summertime, we will begin to see a new clarity in the Middle East. The old narratives — that American support for authoritarians undermined democratic awakenings; that Iraq was a catastrophe; that we need to reach out to totalitarian …