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   From: too_many_koonz@yahoo.com   
      
   Last month, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, head of the Supreme   
   Council of the Armed Forces and Egypt’s new military strongman,   
   asked Egyptians to “come out to give me the mandate and order to   
   confront violence and potential terrorism.” What al-Sisi sought   
   was a green light from the Egyptian street to put down the   
   Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters were still protesting on   
   behalf of the country’s first elected President, Brotherhood   
   member Mohamed Morsi, whom al-Sisi removed from office and   
   jailed on July 3.   
      
   Today, al-Sisi put his mandate to work when security forces   
   attacked demonstrators in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities and   
   villages throughout Egypt. At this point, 278 people are   
   confirmed dead nationwide. Only time will tell if al-Sisi has   
   eradicated the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, but the death   
   knell is already ringing for another of Egypt’s famous political   
   movements: liberalism.   
      
   Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic   
   Energy Agency and the face of Egyptian liberalism, resigned on   
   account of Wednesday’s violence, but the reality is that many of   
   those Egyptians who define themselves as liberals supported the   
   July coup as well as today’s crackdown. “Egypt’s liberals are   
   trying to ignore the fact that people are being murdered,” says   
   Samuel Tadros, an Egypt expert and a fellow at Hudson   
   Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. In doing so, Tadros   
   told me in a recent interview, they have lost any claim to a   
   moral high ground. “For liberalism to succeed, it needs to   
   explain why this political worldview is superior to others. It’s   
   not just about the material benefits of economic liberalism, but   
   why it’s better for man. Man, after all, does not live by bread   
   alone. Here, Egyptian liberalism has failed completely. The   
   liberals in support of the coup and the violent crackdown have   
   abandoned morality for short-term political gains.”   
      
   It’s understandable that many Egyptians are concerned about the   
   Muslim Brotherhood’s religiously fundamentalist and paranoid   
   worldview. But the fact that people who describe themselves as   
   liberals want to see their neighbors’ blood shed suggests that   
   their liberalism isn’t what we typically mean by a political   
   doctrine that prizes individual freedom and seeks as little   
   interference from the state as possible. The reality is that   
   Egypt’s liberals have aligned themselves with the military — the   
   very same regime that they protested against during the 2011   
   uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.   
      
   Why have liberals turned from democracy, albeit a very imperfect   
   one, back to the military? As Tadros explains in his new book,   
   Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity,   
   Egypt’s liberals have always depended on the state for their   
   advancement, for education, employment and social status. “In   
   Egypt,” Tadros tells me, “liberalism didn’t start as it did in   
   Europe with the emergence of an independent bourgeoisie that   
   sought to limit the powers of the state and other entrenched   
   institutions. In Egypt, liberalism was born with the rise of the   
   civil-servant class in the mid–19th century. Since civil   
   servants are a part of the state, this liberalism is not at all   
   interested in limiting the role of the state.”   
      
   Moreover, whereas Western liberals have historically seen it as   
   their role to educate their fellow citizens in liberal values,   
   Egyptian liberals have always seen this as the job of the state.   
   Should the state prove incapable of inculcating others with the   
   same ideas and ambitions, then it is up to the state to protect   
   the liberals from what they perceive as the unwashed masses,   
   i.e., their neighbors. And right now it is the Muslim Brothers   
   and their Islamist partners whom the liberals see as a threat   
   that needs to be put down.   
      
   In addition to acting in bad faith, the liberals have made a bad   
   deal by siding with the army. Because the liberals never   
   prepared the ground for liberalism, they left it wide open for   
   the Islamists, who over 80 years built a grassroots network that   
   combined political indoctrination with social services that   
   earned them respect and admiration — which is why Morsi won the   
   presidential election in June 2012. In spite of al-Sisi’s   
   crackdown, the Muslim Brotherhood will almost surely return —   
   and next time better organized and, holding a vendetta against   
   the army and the millions who clamored for the Brotherhood’s   
   blood, much angrier. In the meantime, as Tadros argues, “it’s   
   the Muslim Brotherhood, and not the liberals, who can claim the   
   moral high ground.”   
      
   http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/14/egyptian-liberals-are-out-for-   
   blood/   
      
   Laugh! Laugh! Laugh!   
      
   It doesn't matter.  The Muslims and liberals are both going to   
   wind up dead.   
      
          
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)