Freedom's roar.

editorial editorial t he year 2011 has thus far been marked by a wave of revolutions, sparked by the desire of oppressed people all over the world—notably the arab world—for freedom and democracy. Some dictatorships have fallen, whilst others have trained their guns on their own people , in a vain attempt to postpone the day of reckoning for their regimes. But, lest we delude ourselves that reason and tolerance are finally emerging as humanity's guiding principles, we should remember that the upheavals of the past year have also included a spate of violent protests in afghanistan, fuelled by religious fundamentalism. the spark that ignited that particular eruption of anti-Western fervour was itself an act of extreme religious in tolerance: the Koran burnings by american fundamentalist zealots. We have also witnessed continuing communal strife in nigeria, iraq and other countries, driven by ethnic or sectarian hatred. in the countries that still adhere to the veneer of communist ideology, there is also little evidence of any relaxation of state control or respect for basic human rights. Despite the liberal thread running through the revolutions of 2011, recent decades have seen an unmistakable re surgence of religion and other rigid ideologies , including extreme nationalism, in the politics of many countries. the open, pluralistic societies built on reason— which emerged over many centuries in Western nations, and have been the norm since 1945—are not a universal model. in the West, we have tended to turn a guilt-ridden, blind eye to the rejection of liberal values in the post-colonial world, as an understandable reflex action against 'imperialism'. now, whilst rejoicing at the chance that many more people might enjoy freedom, we should be aware of the danger that revolutions may simply open the door to new forms of dictatorship, as happened in iran in 1979, or in Burma in 1990. 'Western' values are not even fully secure in the Western countries themselves. in the uSa, the first country that succeeded in throwing off the burden of arbitrary rule by King and church, the word 'liberal' has nowadays become a term of abuse in political discourse. in many of its states, 'creation science' has a legal protection requiring educators to place it on a par with real science as an explanation of the world. and one of its two mainstream political parties is in serious danger of being hijacked by a coalition of patriotic …