Blackmoor Vituperative

This is pretty huge news. The Egyptian government has shut off the Internet there, in response to civil unrest which may be reach civil war proportions. And Egypt isn’t the only Middle Eastern country having problems.

I am not going to make any pronouncements or try to draw any conclusions from any of this. I will point out a couple of things, though. First, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 30 years. I am probably typical (among Amercians, anyway) in thinking that this is too long for one person to hold that much power. Second, although the average Egyptian is poor, the Egyptian economy is in better shape now, and is less centralized, than it was 30 years ago. So would an Egyptian civil war make that better, or worse?

A revolution is a dangerous thing. The revolution which resulted in the creation of the United States of America is almost unique in how little it cost us and in how well it turned out (and it certainly wasn’t bloodless). People in the USA who call for overthrowing or even substantially changing our form of government should keep that in mind.

Be careful what you wish for.