“He gave me a lesson in democracy and said: ‘We see the democracy the United States spearheaded in Iran and with Hamas, in Gaza, and that’s the fate of the Middle East,'” Ben-Eliezer said. “‘They may be talking about democracy but they don’t know what they’re talking about and the result will be extremism and radical Islam,'” he quoted Mubarak as saying. — Mubarak slammed U.S. in phone call with Israeli MK before resignation
WASHINGTON — Conservatism didn’t inspire the Egyptian people, it was liberalism.
Control is the central tenet of conservatism. That’s what the Egyptian people were fighting against, the control of the regime in all facets of their lives.
Control is also what 20th century leaders and thinkers desperately try to hold on to in the wake of a multi-platform media explosion, which obliterates the notion you can control anything anymore.
What Mubarak warns against may happen, but eventually liberalism will win there too, even if in the confines of a religious society, a conservative construct forwarded from ancient times.
Algeria is shutting down the internet and Facebook as protests mount.
Freedom cannot be stopped. It can only be delayed.
Liberalism is what broke out in Iran during the Green uprising.
Liberalism is what kept France from accepting the burqa.
Liberalism is what sparked the uprising in Tunisia. The basic human desire to live life freely is something worth dying for, because without freedom there is no essential life.
Liberalism is what inspired Egyptians to rise up to demand freedom.
In fact, freedom itself is a liberal notion.
Women in the Mideast demanding respect are invoking liberalism, while the conservatives who prop up old rules want to inhibit their freedoms.
Gays fighting to stay alive in Muslim countries are fighting conservatism. In America, they’re fighting for the basic equality of life, which conservatives believe should be denied.
Women in America are fighting to be as free as men.
Conservatives and leading Republicans like Sarah Palin are fighting to stop that basic human right from manifesting against the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Conservatives in both political parties have made religion more important than the individual life being lived. Religion itself a conservative notion, which aims to control, unless you get beyond the organized into the self-spiritualized experience, which conservative society mocks.
Wherever liberalism is missing there is angst, anger and unrest.
Liberalism reaches out in support of our fellow man and woman, while conservatism demands up from your own boot straps mentality in a system rigged against the poor.
The Taliban and the Islamic extremists we’re fighting are all conservatives. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and many other countries are all conservative nations fighting against the freedom of people.
Conservatives, in whatever party they serve, wanted to gain control of Iraq, so they voted for preemptive war.
Conservatives wanted to control Palestinians, so they forced an election that delivered Hamas.
Conservatism is dry, infertile, cruel and deadly. It is about control and order versus freedom.
Liberalism is ripe, generous, infinite and hopeful. It is fundamentally uncontrollable, which is why people fear it. Like freedom itself, it is inexhaustible.
Everywhere in the world where people are rising up on the cry of freedom it’s because of liberalism.
Conservatism is bondage to rules, which in our country is well represented in Strom Thurmond, as well as Trent Lott, who bolted the Democratic Party to eventually form the Republican Party’s Southern wing, because they couldn’t stomach integration that was being heralded by the new liberalism of the ’60s.
Conservatism shuts off, where liberalism opens up.
Imagine if Iran’s mullahs were liberal.
Imagine if PM Netanyahu was a liberal.
Imagine if Democrats who voted for the Iraq war were guided by liberalism instead of 20th century conservative militarism.
When a small group of freshman Republicans voted against several tenets of the Patriot Act recently, they were joining liberals at a point of common ground, bipartisanship meeting organically. Liberals believing that government has no right to infringe on personal privacy without reason, with a few new conservatives agreeing because they think government’s role should be restricted so that it doesn’t impede on the individual.
Could this finally be a place to reboot, a new political beginning?
Then the Republican establishment rose up, including Rush Limbaugh, to say these conservative freshman were misinformed. The Right’s elite stepping in to curtail the freshman’s freedom to vote in favor of the people over government intervention. Their basic reasoning being that there is much to fear in the world, which makes impeding the American citizen’s freedoms worthwhile. Republican conservatism once again robbing people out of fear, which they also utilize on immigration.
“Compassionate conservatism” is finally understood to be the oxymoron it always was.
Pres. Obama is the latest elite politician to err on the side of conservatism over liberalism under his fear and ignorance moored to marketing more than truth. Because without liberalism Barack Obama would not be president. His conservatism evident amidst the Egyptian revolution, because he didn’t trust the Egyptian people’s freedom cry and know instinctively that they were in the right, no matter the outcome.
The Iranian Green uprising teaching a lesson Pres. Obama and his administration didn’t learn. The thirst for freedom will eventually win out.
If Barack Obama trusted liberalism, which he never has, he would have known what to do on Egypt from the start. If Sect. Clinton had trusted liberalism she would never have uttered that Mubarak’s government was “stable.” And V.P. Joe Biden would never have embarrassed himself by stating Mubarak shouldn’t step down or that he wasn’t a dictator. In the Administration’s struggles to get Egypt right the answer was always right in front of them, but they simply couldn’t see it and definitely didn’t trust it. It’s not just their failure, however, it’s the failure of a world coming out of the 20th century where control was policy.
Freedom cannot flourish in the confines of conservatism.
When Ronald Reagan shouted to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” it was a liberal demand.
When a conservative is crying out for freedom’s justice he’s simply pleading for a release from bondage that conservatism itself has imposed.
There’s no denying it.
Wherever freedom is breaking out, demanded or being defended, liberalism is at its heart.
Taylor Marsh is a political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.