Hitchens Urges Perspective on Revolutions

Christopher Hitchens has witnessed many stages of upheaval, in Eastern Europe, Asia, and South Africa, and he has a wary prognosis for the Egyptians who thronged Tahrir Square: they likely haven’t got the resources to break the chains of tyranny. “This doesn’t mean that the Arab world is doomed indefinitely to remain immune from the sort of democratic wave that has washed other regions clean of despotism. Germinal seeds have surely been sown. But the shudder of conception is some considerable way off from the drama of birth, and this wouldn’t be the first revolution in history to be partially aborted.”