Feb
1
2012
Your Patience (with the Arab World) Is a Virtue
Author: Lee Jay Berman
The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, are they similar to the uprising in the United States 250 years ago? Perhaps, but we did it when people penned letters to each other and there were no 24-hour news networks with microphones, bright lights and pundits pressuring day after day for “what will happen next!!” The Declaration of Independence took 17 days to write and just over a year for us to agree upon. A year. Then it took 11 years for us to adopt a brand new constitution. Here we are almost 250 years after that spark and we’re still fighting, polarized with 180 degree different perspectives on life and how it should be lived. How can we expect those nations to figure out their direction any sooner? And yet, with the intense scrutiny of the media in this information age, how can they have the time to think through it thoughtfully and get the same buy-in that took us 11 years to accomplish?
Simply because people have a common enemy, doesn’t mean that they agree on anything else.
Breathe, people. Breathe. Give them time to find themselves. They won’t achieve clarity or consensus any faster than your teen-aged child will figure out the rest of their life. How could they possibly?!
