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  • Struggle

    Imbolc                                                      Full Bridgit Moon

    Uprisings for democracy in the Middle East.  I’m still a fan and await with some eagerness the next chapter in the story as these people’s movement try to make the difficult transition from protest to governance.  Apportioning power is never as easy as standing in the way of the powerful.  It requires a different lens, a different attitude, because it entails accountability for policy and follow-through.  Most reforms and revolutions fail at this point, the psychology of wielding power a radical turn away from undermining it.  This is the sense in which conservatives have it right.  Order is easy to upend and difficult at best to restore.

    Disorder can damage lives and nations.  Order, even order held in place by authoritarian regimes, can provide stability for day-to-day lives.  Thus, the conservative says, better the dictator you know than the one you don’t.

    Their argument has merit, too.  Trade and peace flourishes when a powerful government maintains order and enforces laws.  Genghis Khan, for example, opened up trade over vast parts of the East, including the vast grasslands from which he came.  The Pax Romana encouraged a network of trade, scholarship and immigration that enriched the Mediterranean and European regions.  The Pax Britannica created a global network of trade as its empire waxed across the earth.

    There is no need to deny the positive elements of imperial power.  They exist and any one with a sense of history knows something about them.

    At the same time, though, there is no possibility of avoiding the negative elements either.  A loss of personal and national autonomy defines the nature of imperial or autocratic rule, so there is a bargain made or enforced, our stability and trade for your freedom as individuals and as a nation.  This bargain may even convince people in regions torn by internecine conflict, ethnic rebellions or war lords.  A chaotic past exchanged for a less free but orderly community may appear fair.  At first.

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