egypt

I have been riveted by the coverage of Egypt in the last several days. This video of a young protester sums up well what the people of Egypt are trying to obtain in their country. Watching all the masses of people protest to gain basic freedoms {that we tend to take for granted in America} is inspiring. The government has shut down their internet and doing everything they can to make them miserable but nothing is deterring them. They will not stop protesting until their leader Mubarak leaves the country and they are allowed to vote in the next election for their own leader, not a fake election where Mubarak always wins. Christopher Hitchens {one of favorite writers} wrote a great article in Slate today on why people are driven to rise up against dictators as the Egyptian people are doing now. This is my favorite passage from it....

"People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can't bear to be humiliated in front of their children. One of Francis Fukuyama's better observations, drawing on his study of Hegel and Nietzsche, was that history shows people just as prepared to fight for honor and recognition as they are for less abstract concepts like food or territory."