Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Full Bridgit Moon<\/p>\n
Uprisings for democracy in the Middle East.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Apportioning power is never as easy as standing in the way of the powerful.\u00a0 It requires a different lens, a different attitude, because it entails accountability for policy and follow-through.\u00a0 Most reforms and revolutions fail at this point, the psychology of wielding power a radical turn away from undermining it.\u00a0 This is the sense in which conservatives have it right.\u00a0 Order is easy to upend and difficult at best to restore.<\/p>\n
Disorder can damage lives and nations.\u00a0 Order, even order held in place by authoritarian regimes, can provide stability for day-to-day lives.\u00a0 Thus, the conservative says, better the dictator you know than the one you don’t.<\/p>\n
Their argument has merit, too.\u00a0 Trade and peace flourishes when a powerful government maintains order and enforces laws.\u00a0 Genghis Khan, for example, opened up trade over vast parts of the East, including the vast grasslands from which he came.\u00a0 The Pax Romana encouraged a network of trade, scholarship and immigration that enriched the Mediterranean and European regions.\u00a0 The Pax Britannica created a global network of trade as its empire waxed across the earth.<\/p>\n
There is no need to deny the positive elements of imperial power.\u00a0 They exist and any one with a sense of history knows something about them.<\/p>\n
At the same time, though, there is no possibility of avoiding the negative elements either.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This bargain may even convince people in regions torn by internecine conflict, ethnic rebellions or war lords.\u00a0 A chaotic past exchanged for a less free but orderly community may appear fair.\u00a0 At first.<\/p>\n
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The problem comes later, when the stability brings commerce, education, time for reflection.\u00a0 Then.\u00a0 When matters have calmed, the effect of the state on my children and my grandchildren may become central to my thinking.\u00a0 I was willing to give up some options in return for having a calm and peaceful state, but my children?\u00a0 My grandchildren?\u00a0 They have made no such pact.\u00a0 They deserve a chance to live as free men and women, in a state they can influence and shape.<\/p>\n
When these yearnings receive abrupt dismissal, even entail punishment, perhaps death, the desire, the need for freedom ignites and burns within the heart.\u00a0 The American revolutionaries felt it when they wanted to throw off the yoke of imperial Britain.\u00a0 So did India.\u00a0 So did native America nations here and in Canada.\u00a0 China’s boxers fought against colonial powers.\u00a0 The velvet revolution in Hungary.\u00a0 The French revolution.\u00a0 The reformation.\u00a0 The list is a long one and will only grow.<\/p>\n
As you can tell from this brief list of examples, these movements do not always end well.\u00a0 The boxers lost their struggle as did the velvet revolutionaries and most native American nations.\u00a0 History, though, takes the long view and the boxers rose up in spirit with Mao.\u00a0 The Hungarians have gained their freedom.\u00a0 Many of the native American nations have begun to recuperate from the devastations of the 19th and 20th centuries.<\/p>\n
The struggles in the mid-east are, in part, responses to ill-formed nations, to places where boundaries were drawn by imperial powers, boundaries, like those in Africa, that did not respect history and ethnic settlements.\u00a0 They are also responses to US supported autocrats like Mubarak.\u00a0 But in their essence these struggle are nothing more and nothing less than people’s yearning to breathe free.\u00a0 And in that we need to give them every advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Full Bridgit Moon Uprisings for democracy in the Middle East.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Apportioning power is never as easy as standing in the way of the powerful.\u00a0 It … Continue reading Struggle<\/span>