The Fine Line Between "Popular Uprising" and "Ushering in a New Era of Sharia"

Roger Kimball writes:

What is happening in Egypt? Joe Biden, whose record for imbecility is unblemished, chalked up another victory a few days ago when he assured us that Hosni Mubarak was “not a dictator.” He looks like a dictator. He certainly acts like a dictator. Nevertheless, Biden, in what Fox News called “the Obama administration’s most definitive statement to date” (January 28), said that Mubarak should not step down.

He might be right.

The “unrest” (a polite word for “riots”) we are seeing in Egypt is certainly “popular” unrest. We are supposed to be in favor of unrest when it is “popular,” aren’t we?

Again, I would suggest that we take a look at the nature and composition of the populace before offering a definitive opinion about that. Ponder this headline from The New York Times: “Iran Sees Rise of Islamic Hard-Liners.”

An unhappy truth: in this imperfect world, we are often faced with a choice between something bad and something worse.

That "something worse" refers, of course, to the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's unofficial official opposition, currently waiting patiently to seize the moment should it become opportune.