MikeLigalig.com

by Jay Ambrose
Published Wednesday, March 23, 2011





It was a time of uplift and uprisings. Yearning to be free of despots, find opportunity and have a voice in their own affairs in distinct places across a vast region, inspirited people rebelled, both a rising middle class and poor workers. Bad times had helped instigate their fury, which was further directed by a popular, relatively new form of mass communication.

This is not the Middle East in 2011 we're talking about, but Europe in 1848. Revolutionary encounters occurred first in France and then in Italian and German states, Ireland, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Belgium and other monarchies as thousands sought to end repression.

There were striking similarities to accounts of what has been happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan. While historical analogies are never even close to perfect, you wonder whether these similarities just might be to some extent instructive.

Unsurprisingly, hard times seem to play a role in revolution, even or maybe especially if the hard times were sometimes proceeded by years of relatively good times. In Europe 163 years ago, shifting populations and disappointing harvests contributed to famines and anger at wealthy, unsympathetic landowners, much as rising food prices in Egypt are said to have made corruption as usual seem intolerable to the poor. The middle class in Europe wanted more rights to match their climb in wealth, and one of the most striking features of the Middle East uprisings has been the anger of the educated at suddenly increased joblessness and the leadership of young, opportunity-seeking professionals in outwitting the powers that be.

A striking comparison is on the technological front. Europe in 1848 had relatively recent printing presses propelled by steam, and from that, a popular press telling people about freedom's possibilities; the Middle East in 2011 benefits from digital developments giving people Twitter and Facebook and protesters using these social media to communicate ideas and make plans to bring everyone together for action.

But wait: Freedom, eagerly sought in 1848 in Europe, is a goal Middle Eastern folk don't pursue, right? That's been the thesis of many who ridiculed President George W. Bush's arguments for spreading democracy in the Middle East, saying the populations there just didn't have the cultural history required to foster aspirations of the kind found in the West. Begging to differ with them are current events as well as Michael Novak, a Washington scholar who authored "The Universal Hunger for Liberty," an amazingly prophetic book published in 2004.

In it and a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Novak argued that it is the God-given nature of people everywhere to want freedom. He specifically talked about the followers of Islam, pointing out that this faith of reward and punishment implies belief in free will. The book's subtitle is "Why the Clash of Civilizations Is Not Inevitable."

So as 1848 went, 2011 will go? We ought to hope not, for while the European revolutions did effect some positive changes and helped establish a path for the future, they were largely a flop. The reasons are as varied as the places the revolutions were tried, but a major one almost everywhere was that they do not call entrenched powers entrenched for nothing. The forces for change were not equal to the forces for maintaining the status quo.

To be sure, much could go wrong in the Middle East; in some places, it is hard to imagine victory for freedom, and even in Egypt it remains possible that we will get some horror worse than what used to be. It nevertheless seems something more than an utterly forlorn hope that we will see some significant improvements soon in some countries and in all of them over the long haul.


Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at [email protected].


http://m.reporternews.com/


Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=39494.0