Dispatches: Stories from War Zones, Police States and Other Hellholes

by Michael J. Totten

It reminded me of something Carsten Niebuhr wrote in 1774: “Young men who like their comforts, and a dainty table, or who wish to pass their time pleasantly in the company of women must not go to Arabia.”

“Many revolutions are begun by conservatives,” Christopher Hitchens said, paraphrasing John Maynard Keynes, in an interview with Reason magazine, “because these are people who tried to make the existing system work and they know why it does not. Which is quite a profound insight. It used to be known in Marx’s terms as revolution from above.”