They're Mad As Hell And They're Not Gonna Take It Anymore

Christopher Hitchens looks at one of the possible reasons for the current mood of revolution in the Mid-East. Embarrassment. Arabs simply cannot tolerate being viewed as a backwards people with no option but authoritarianism any longer.

People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can't bear to be humiliated in front of their children. One of Francis Fukuyama's better observations, drawing on his study of Hegel and Nietzsche, was that history shows people just as prepared to fight for honor and recognition as they are for less abstract concepts like food or territory. 

He provides this analysis as a reason for the fall of dictatorships worldwide. I cautiously agree but would like to point out: North Korea bravely soldiers on...