What do those “revolting” young Egyptians want? They want what protesting Czechoslovakian youth wanted in 1968, when they were crushed by Soviet tanks: freedom.
They want what Blacks in the United States wanted when they marched, boycotted and braved the onslaught of lynch mobs, police dogs and truncheons in the 1950s and 1960s: freedom. They want what working-class Barbadians wanted when they rebelled against racial exploitation and disenfranchisement in 1937: freedom.
As we watch the Egyptian people incoherently but passionately clamour for their human rights, we should be wary of two responses. One is professional pessimism – an occupational hazard of diplomats and politicians – which would sacrifice the idealism of Egyptian youth to the stability of an authoritarian government deemed critical to the status quo in the Middle East.
If we all adopted this “realist” attitude, South Africans would still be suffering under apartheid; the people of Eastern Europe would still languish under Soviet tyranny; and Latin Americans would still be bearing the cross of military dictatorships. When “realism” equates to passive acceptance of the status quo, it’s both morally and intellectually bankrupt. It’s cynicism passing itself off as wisdom.
The second response to avoid is equally fashionable and pervasive. This is the postmodernist view that everything is relative and there’s no universal yardstick by which to judge other people’s actions.
So it’s cultural imperialism at worst and hypocrisy at best to insist that women enjoy equal rights to men in tribal Islamic countries. That’s their culture. Who are we to judge?
Maybe Arabs prefer authoritarian leadership; that’s their culture. Besides, human rights and democracy are Western concepts. It’s patronising and imperialistic to ask other people to abide by our standards. And on it goes, sinking ever deeper into a morass of moral relativism.
Worse still, while this misconceived relativist attitude supposedly respects other cultures, it in fact insults them by imputing to them limited human aspirations.
What is needed is a moral vision tempered by a realistic appreciation of the infinite capacity of human beings to screw up. While it’s good to have visionary ideals, it’s also essential to have down-to-earth plans for achieving them; plans which take into account human fallibility and place checks on human ambition.
Without those restraints, revolutions have a disturbing tendency to devour their own children – look no further than Maurice Bishop’s Grenada.
The inevitable movement towards democracy in Egypt, fuelled by the passionate indignation of youth harnessed to digital technology, will no doubt upset the Middle Eastern apple cart. And so it should.
For too long now the world powers have sacrificed the people of the Middle East to the demands of realpolitik: let’s support tyrants so long as this keeps the oil flowing and makes Israel secure in its ever-expanding territory.
Now all this will change if the young people of Egypt prevail. Egypt will no longer be as accommodating to Israel. This alone should force those who govern Israel to rethink what they are doing. The Israeli leadership, like that of many other countries, does not always recognize what is in its nation’s long-term interest.
It should also give the United States pause before automatically supporting all Israeli policies towards their neighbours. This may break the log jam and lead to a constructive peace process in which Israel will be forced to make genuine compromises.
Besides, it’s not just the pro-Western authoritarian governments that the youth threaten; the contagion may spread to anti-Western dictatorships like Syria, Libya and Iran.
But even if none of this comes to pass and the Middle East spirals down into deeper crisis, we must insist that democracy and respect for human rights are ends in their own right. They need no justification.
Human rights are not concessions conferred by states; they derive from the dignity that inheres in all human beings as the pinnacle of God’s Creation.