… Gerard Baker in the London Times. To be read in its entirety, but here’s a choice excerpt (hate the term “money graph”):
Sometimes moments of truly historic significance are almost instantly recognisable for what they are. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 proclaimed its universal importance right from the start. No one needed to be told that the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to change history. With others the consequences creep up on us slowly, even surreptitiously. Some wise heads see the significance; others resist it or are blind to it. It was not immediately necessarily evident that Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 would lead to the unrelenting tragedy that unfolded for Europe and the world over the next decade. We all know better now.
Last Sunday I think will quickly fall into the first category. There is an unstoppable momentum for change in the Middle East now. In just two years tyrannies have been felled in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Palestine, the inexorable clock of human mortality has ended another. But the crucial element was always going to be the voluntary and courageous act of self-assertion that democratic and free elections represent – a message heard around the region and the world.
(hat tip: #23)
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