Opinions Expressed in "Rants," while informed by Catholic doctrine, are merely the opinions of the author.
Goodbye Mubarak, Hello...
Well, if you've turned on CNN in the last few days, you've noticed that there's this guy named Hosni Mubarak, who's been the dictator in Egypt for 30 years, who's just resigned from power.
And he was a dictator, perhaps not as evil as Saddam Husein or Nicolae Ceausescu, but he had all the ingredients - he didn't tolerate any dissension, controlled the media, didn't REALLY have elections, and used the military to keep things under control - ruling Egypt with an iron fist for decades.
He resigned as a result of public protests that have been going on for several weeks now, and that's pretty big news, because he, and the military, ALLOWED the people to oust him from power. Its a victory for democracy.
And the media is going on and on about dominoes falling in the middle east - this win for democracy could trigger more democracies in other middle eastern nations, like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, maybe even Iran, which had an election just about a year ago, which the dictatorship there chose to ignore so it could stay in power.
The people have demonstrated that they truly are the power in these nations - we could see, within a few years, an entirely democratic middle east, and that's a good thing, right?
Well, depends. There are some who believe that the PEOPLE might allow themselves to be influenced by some of the most radical, fanatical, maniacal terrorist type groups, like Hamas, or Al Queda - these are groups that the current DICTATORSHIPS have been suppressing - and allow these fanatics to have power in the middle east. That's bad.
This is something that, I know the U.S. in particular, are keeping a careful eye on - its also why they were stating so much support for the people, who now have the power, and their demoncratic rights - despite the fact that the U.S. has been very supportive of those dictators for generations, because it served U.S. economic and security interests at that time. The west is very nervous, as it should be, that the people of the middle east could elect a new Hitler rather than a new Gandhi.
And this is a reasonable course of action to follow, unfortunately - as the people, when their poor enough and desperate enough, tend to allow their desperation to influence their decisions - just as they did in Germany in the 30's.
So, this Egypt stuff is BIG NEWS - how big it is, remains to be seen. Hopefully its a good news. We'll see.