Last paragraph? No, I don't think the elections would have turned out differently, assuming Mubarak had still fallen. Most of us have a pretty good idea now that in those Middle Eastern nations where a strong government takes its hand off the wheel, the radical Islamists will pop up like mushrooms and attempt to institute a much stronger government.

Bush's biggest mistake in the wars was assuming democracy was a natural "ground state" for people freed from oppression. The "all people want to be free" thing. I used to think the same thing, but maybe I've gotten more cynical. Or maybe I just have more information now.

A nation of individual liberty and human rights isn't the oxygen molecule of politics. It's the ozone. In human history, totalitarianism is practically helium.

To switch metaphors, looking through history I'm paying less attention now to the seeds of liberty, and more attention to the soil.