StephenKMackSD's Blog

Here is Helena Cobban's very stirring concluding paragraph of her report,link above.

'Ah, I wish I were in Cairo tonight. But there is important work to do here in the United States, too. Long live the equality of all human persons. Long live the rule of law– domestically and in the international arena. Long live an end to hypocrisy. Long live this wonderful Egyptian revolution.'

'Why?  Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them.  Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted.'

How can one resist the elegant, literary, indeed,  hieratic prose styling’s  of The Great Will (TGW) on any subject, but perhaps they are most beguiling in his prose wedded to current events: most especially now, as we witness together the Egyptian Revolution at its birth, as it struggles to realize itself in time and a newly created  political space. The solemn policy pronouncements delivered in his unctuous tone of the omniscient observer, ex cathedra: a gift worthy of the declamation of an Old Testament prophet as recorded in that invaluable book or maybe a rehearsal, a paraphrase of one of Burke’s more obscure essays or letters.

Should one be surprised at TGW’s ‘defense’ of Mr. Obama’s lack of ‘prescience’ regarding the Egyptian Crisis as argued by his critics? What of TGW’s American Lekudnik allies? How might their unwavering support of much of the Neo-Conservative agenda- although I realize our writer’s self concept is simply to identify with a Conservatism of ‘the old school’- the question may be maladroitly realized but there is some connection. One could think upon the relation, the mediation between old school Conservatism and Neo-Conservatism as a negotiation continuously in progress, as continuously evolving? Or is this another opportunity of our writer to exhibit his natural moral/intellectual superiority? Certainly, a question worth pondering, you will agree? What function, we might consider, and then ask, does this ‘defense’ of Mr. Obama mean, in the larger political picture? In a larger ideological context, that surely must play a role here, as TGW is nothing, if not, an astute, able propagandist.