Deja View

To put events in Egypt into perspective (specifically, the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is too small and too unpopular to come to power post-Mubarak), Robert Spencer pulls a Peabody and takes a trip in the WABAC (pronounced "way back") machine:

Westerners watching the fall of imperfect, autocratic regimes in the Middle East are like Englishmen reading in newspapers of the abdication of the Tsar. All around us, fatuous liberals (like that excitable Yank, Woodrow Wilson) are venting their glee at the end of the Okhrana, the refusal of the Cossacks to fire on the crowd, the opening of the (rather mild) Tsarist jails, the release of political prisoners and their arrival in St. Petersburg. While comrades Lenin, and Trotsky, and Stalin mount the rostrum, the liberals assure us that they lack the support of the people. True, they are tightly organized, fanatically dedicated, and armed for combat. True, in the midst of chaos, they are the only group that clearly knows what it wants and how to get it. But surely an organization this fanatical, this out of touch with how the "real," modern world works, can never win the allegiance of millions of people. Once the autocratic system that has been repressing the popular will is removed, it will become clear that what the oppressed masses of this country want... is exactly what we modern Englishmen want: a little plot of land where they can grow their vegetables, their rights under Common Law, and a decent cup of tea.