I’ve been sick the past few days and that’s why blogging has been light. A lot has already been said about President Obama’s Cairo speech, but I thought I’d chime in with some quick thoughts. Having read the text of the speech without watching, I was reminded of the Beach Boys song, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” That is, it was largely a fantasy of how wonderful things could be if current conditions were completely different, and everybody could put aside their petty differences and work together to live in peace with one another. The problem is, there’s a genuine ideological difference between those who believe in a civilization based on representative government, religious freedom, tolerance of others, freedom of speech, women’s rights, the rule of law, and those who see those very things as a threat to civilization. If appeals to reason and good will were enough to achieve peace, we would have achieved it long ago. But Obama was elected and now he gets to try things out his way, so we’ll move out of the realm of theory and see if his approach can actually succeed.