Shorter notices
Stefan Beck on The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, by Natan Sharansky & Ron Dermer.
Natan Sharansky & Ron Dermer
The Case for Democracy:
The Power of Freedom to Overcome
Tyranny and Terror.
Public Affairs, 279 pages, $26.95
Critics harp on the hubris of the Bush administrations plan to democratize the Middle East. It simply cant be done! they wail. Youll destabilize the region! Breed more terrorists! Trigger doomsday! Sometimes, not content with this exaggerated pessimism, they opt for condescension: The Arabs arent ready for freedom. Worse still: They dont want it. These arguments, usually propped up by cursory observations about sharia or other aspects of Muslim culture, are in use by everyone from the top Mideast analysts down to the anti-war student activists on the quad.
Yet, says Natan Sharansky in The Case for Democracy, these arguments arent new. They are precisely the...
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