“Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.”

- Arnold Glasow

The response by Conservatives to the events going on in Egypt should force us all to question how the Right views democracy.  Last week, as the Egyptian people were in the process of overthrowing the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, the Right gathered in Washington for their annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  Conservative politicians who spoke at CPAC gabfest were generally silent, petulant or just plain illinformed about what was going on in Egypt.

As we’ve come to expect, Sarah “speak now, get the facts later” Palin was the first out of the starting gate with her usual uneducated drivel.  In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network which aired on 7 February, Palin answered David Brody’s question of who should replace Mubarak with,

“Is it going to be the Muslim Brotherhood?  We should not stand for that, or with that, or by that.  Any radical Islamists.  No,  that is not who we should be supporting and standing by … we need to find out who was behind all of the turmoil and the revolt  and the protests so that good decisions can be made in terms of who we will stand by and support.”

Clearly, Palin is unaware that the Muslim Brotherhood represents, at most, 20% of the population of Egypt.  Nor does she realize that radical Islamists are not a force in Egypt, and for good reason.  Radical Islamists cannot thrive in a society that is dependent upon the outside world for support.  Egypt depends heavily upon the West for food imports, U.S. funds and fees from the Suez Canal.  Turning inward, as radical Islamists are wont to do, would cut off Egypt’s very means of survival.

At CPAC, Mitt Romney spoke without once mentioning the upheaval in Cairo—an upheaval that may be in the process of ushering in the most important geopolitical shift since the end of the Cold War.  This is surprising because Romney has all but announced his candidacy for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination and one would think that anyone who wants to be president would at least offer an opinion about the most important international activity of the week.

Former Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty, instead of addressing the actions in Egypt, chose to spend his time on the podium criticizing President Obama for somehow appeasing “Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” yet offering no specifics as to just how Obama had accomplished that appeasement.

Former House Speaker and perennial GOP presidential nominee wannabee, Newt Gingrich, seems just plain confused.  At CPAC, he mentioned “what’s happening in Egypt” without commenting further.  On Saturday, he told The Associated Press that Mubarak’s resignation was “good for the future,” then went on to criticize Obama for publicly supporting the dictator’s ouster.  On Sunday, Gingrich explained on ABC’s “This Week” that Obama was right to side with the freedom-loving protesters in Tahrir Square but should have done so privately.  Apparently, in Newt’s view it isn’t very presidential for the President to comment publicly on key international events.

Now, protests sparked by the Egypt uprising, which drew its spark from the recent protests in Tunisia, are raging across the Arab world—Algeria, Jordan, Yemen and Bahrain.  Just Monday, the first protest since the rigged elections in 2009 saw the clamor for democracy surface in Iran.

After President Obama spoke to the nation about the situation in Egypt, many Americans came forth with angry denunciations, with lots of people complaining bitterly that he had endorsed Mubarak’s grim struggle to hold on to power, missed an historic opportunity, and risked sparking a wave of anti-Americanism.  But once you actually read the transcript of his remarks, you will see that the instant analysis badly misread his comments and the thrust of the administration’s policy.  His speech was actually pretty good; so, too, is the rapidly evolving American policy.  The administration worked hard trying to protect the protesters from an escalation of violent repression, while carefully preparing to ensure that a transition will go in the direction of a more democratic successor.

It’s crucial to understand that the United States is not the key driver of the Egyptian protest movement.  They do not need or want American leadership—and they most certainly are not interested in “vindicating” Bush’s freedom agenda or the Iraq war, an idea which almost all would find somewhere between laughable, bewildering, and deeply offensive. Suspicion of American intentions runs deep, as does folk wisdom about decades of U.S. collaboration with Mubarak.  The protest has a dynamic and energy all its own, and while the protesters certainly wanted Obama to take their side forcefully and unequivocally they didn’t need it.

So, why, we must ask, have we seen such ambivalence, such ignorance, such glossing over of the event from so many prominent conservatives?

The key reason, of course, is that all of this is happening on Obama’s watch.  If everything turns out well, heaven forbid the president should get any credit.  The conservative mantra has been and will continue to be: Obama Is Always Wrong.  Therefore, regardless of the outcome, there must be something wrong with the way he has handled Egypt.  Even though it appears from what we’ve seen so far that the result is an historic opening for democracy in the world’s most troubled region.  And through it all, Obama has managed to strike the perfect balance between the protesters and the Egyptian government.

The other reason for conservative reaction to events in Egypt is a basic lack of faith in our most cherished democratic values—at least where countries that are majorly Islamic are concerned.  Conservatives don’t really want democracy to come to these countries unless it is a U.S.-dictated democracy, as in Iraq.

This isn’t about Glenn Beck’s paranoid fantasy of a vast leftist-Islamist conspiracy for world domination—only an expert couch counselor with an extensive prescription pad can take on that challenge.  This is about people like former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who told CPAC that “democracy as we see it” in Egypt would be all right but then grumbled that “a democratic election can produce illiberal (i.e., bigoted, as in conservative America) results.”

The main fear on the Right is the uneducated fear of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Although some Egyptians might vote for Muslim Brotherhood candidates, it is unlikely that the group would win a majority in a free and fair election.  It is equally unlikely that a government headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, if it came to that, would necessarily be more dangerous or hostile than the Mubarak regime.  But Bolton and others on the Right seem to believe that only political parties of which the United States approves should be allowed to participate in Egyptian elections.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, another wannabee presidential contender, used his CPAC speech to blast Obama’s handling of Egypt.  For weeks Santorum has been claiming that free elections in Egypt would lead straight to “sharia law.”

Pam Geller, the conservative blogger who led the opposition to the Lower Manhattan mosque, told an interviewer from Mother Jones magazine that Mubarak’s fall was “catastrophic” and would lead to sharia law throughout the Middle East.

So what we have is the Right arguing that the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims cannot be trusted to govern themselves.

And we say we stand for freedom and democracy?

No, what we really stand for, more and more each year, is fear of that which we do not understand.