Moderate Revolt, Radicals Reap the Benefits

Submitted by Yoel Ben-Avraham (Israel), Aug 23, 2011 at 06:45

In response to TONY JONES's point, "Did your heart not leap, even for a moment, when you saw those hundreds of thousands of young people on the streets in Cairo, in Tunisia, the demonstrators for democracy in Syria and in other places?" In almost every revolution over the past two hundred years, the moderates are those who rebel and overthrow the old form of government. Being "moderate" and often property owners (or aspiring property owners) they more often than not attempt to introduce "populist" reforms. But it is the small hard core radicals who do not cringe from bloodshed and rampant violence that eventually reap the benefits. In the transition from the previous regime before the new can root itself in the hearts minds and day-to-day apparatus of governing, that the radicals sweep to power on the tails of the moderates. Yes the streets were filled with young facebook tweeters and their parents, but it is the few willing and capable of weilding indiscriminate violence and using bloodshed to cow their oponents that will eventually win the day!

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