Tacitus — the blogger Tacitus, I mean, not the Roman historian — is someone I haven’t run across before; I may start checking his stuff out more regularly. (I assume Tacitus is a he, because otherwise, I figure, Tacitus would be Tacita.)

At the moment he has an interesting post on the why, how, and what-if of establishing democracy in the Middle East; a short attempt to address questions like why democracy has been working in some places and not others, and what happens if democracy in a Middle Eastern state results in the election of an Islamist regime.

All the alternatives have already failed. A democratic Saudi Arabia electing Wahhabist firebrands to office would be a terrible sight and a menace to the rest of us. But we must ask: are we safe now? Do the Wahhabist firebrands not exist now? Time to be bold. Time to let the people of the Middle East learn their own lessons, as the people of Iran seem to be. Time to let them learn by making mistakes — with the novel recourse of an electoral corrective when they do.

His point about Iran is especially apt, and one lost on many people who haven’t paid attention to Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution — even people who should know better. Of course, in the last election progressive voters, depressed by Khatami’s lack of progress, stayed home in droves — but that’s a problem American democracy has, too, isn’t it? At least there were polls for them to not go to.

I don’t agree with everything Tacitus says (I’m quite tired, for instance, of the idea that the Protestant Reformation is the fundamental — pardon the pun — reason why democracy has been a success in the West), but I think his position is not a bad one.

Side note: As pointed out by Get Your War On, though — thanks, Patrick — if we’re going to go around imposing freedom on people, we can’t mess around. (Not that I expect the bomb France crowd to show that much integrity.)

But that means none of this “free as long as you don’t do anything we don’t like” bullshit.