In “Let There Be Light Bulbs” Ms. Collins says the little old light bulb has provoked some heated debate in Washington this year. Mr. Kristof, in “Democracy Is Messy,” says Egypt is messy, and Islamists are gaining ground. But keep your seat. Young democracies are always chaotic. Here’s Ms. Collins:
Of all the controversies now raging in Washington, the one I find most endearing is the fight over federal regulation of light bulb efficiency.
“Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy,” complained Representative Michele Bachmann in her Tea Party response to the president’s State of the Union address.
Bachmann has strong opinions on this matter. She is the author of the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, which would repeal a federal requirement that the typical 100-watt bulb become 25 percent more energy efficient by 2012.
Bachmann hateshateshates that sort of thing, as you would expect from a woman whose Earth Day speech in 2009 was an ode to carbon dioxide. (“It’s a part of the regular life cycle of the earth.”)
Hysteria over the government taking away our right to buy inefficient light bulbs has been sweeping through certain segments of the Republican Party. Representative Joe Barton of Texas, sponsor of the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act, says we’re about to lose the bulb that “has been turning back the night ever since Thomas Edison ended the era of a world lit only by fire in 1879.” Barton’s vision of the standard 100-watt incandescent is so heroic, you’d think it would be getting its own television series.
“When Congress dictates which light bulbs folks in South Carolina must buy, it’s clear the ‘nanny state’ mentality has gotten out of control in Washington,” said Senator Jim DeMint, one of 27 co-sponsors of a Senate bill calling for repeal of the new efficiency standards.
The great thing about this battle, which has spawned predictions of widespread light-bulb-hoarding, is that it will take your mind off Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and the pending government shut-down. It’s a little like the Donald Trump presidential candidacy, only less irritating.
Opponents of the law claim that the newer, more energy-efficient and cost-saving breeds of bulb give a less pleasing light, although that doesn’t seem to have dissuaded the American consumers from moving away from the incandescents in droves. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association says demand for the allegedly beloved old bulbs has dropped 50 percent over the last five years.
A terribly cynical mind might suspect the whole hubbub was just for political show. Jeff Bingaman, the chairman of the energy committee, said he had not actually been accosted by any of his fellow senators begging him to help get angry light bulb aficionados off their backs.
“I heard the statements at the committee hearing, but nobody’s walking the halls lobbying me about this,” he said.
That was the famous hearing during which Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky began with a rant about light bulbs and wound up complaining that his toilets back home didn’t work. “You busybodies always want to tell us how we can live our lives better,” he said passionately. “I’ve been waiting for 20 years to talk about how bad these toilets are.”
If Paul has been stewing about his bathroom fixtures since 1991, it may go a long way toward explaining his rather gloomy worldview. But the crux of his argument came at a different point, when he demanded to know whether Kathleen Hogan, a Department of Energy official, was “pro-choice.”
“I’m pro-choice on light bulbs,” Hogan said cannily.
Paul, not to be dissuaded, claimed that Obamaites favored “a woman’s right to an abortion, but you don’t favor a woman’s or a man’s right to choose what kind of light bulb.”
The proper comparison here would really be between the energy-efficiency regulations and the government rules that set minimum standards for sanitation and medical care when an abortion is performed. If you were willing to overlook the fact that any attempt whatsoever to equate abortions and light bulbs is completely nuts.
It’s a classic Tea Party herd of straw horses. Paul managed to lump the light bulb regulations with things his supporters hate (abortions/federal government telling me what to do) while ignoring the fact that the rules are much closer to things they like, such as standards that guarantee that if they go to a hospital or clinic, the place will be clean and staffed by qualified personnel.
Although the Rand Paul crowd is blaming the light bulb regulations on Obama, the rules were actually signed into law in 2007 by George W. Bush. And as Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote in a Times Op-Ed article recently, Washington has been in the standard-setting business since 1894, “when Congress standardized the meaning of what are today common scientific measures, including the ohm, the volt, the watt and the henry, in line with international metrics.”
You have to wonder if, back in 1894, there was a general outcry against the federal government trying to tell an American citizen how big his ohm should be.
Here’s Mr. Kristof:
Egypt is a mess.
Nearly two months after street protests inspired a democratic revolution, the transitional military-backed government has proposed — you guessed it — a law banning protests. That’s partly because everybody is protesting, even the police. The cops want more money, perhaps because their diminished authority means that they can now extract less in bribes.
With the police out of commission, the army uses thugs to intimidate its critics. And, when it really gets irritated, it arrests and tortures democracy activists. As I wrote in my previous column, it has even tried to humiliate female activists by subjecting them to forced “virginity exams.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, once banned, has been brought into the power structure. Instead of denouncing the system, it is becoming part of it — and some of its activists are rampaging around Cairo University.
Yet for Americans, what is unfolding is perhaps a reassuring mess. Westerners have mostly worried that Egypt might plunge into Iran-style Islamic fundamentalism — and, to me, that seems a reflection of our own hobgoblins more than Egypt’s. Indeed, it seems increasingly likely that Egypt won’t change as much as many had expected. Moreover, the biggest losers of the revolution are likely to be violent Islamic extremist groups that lose steam when the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood joins the system.
“There is a determined effort to stop the revolution in its tracks,” notes Prof. Khaled Fahmy of the American University in Cairo. That’s disappointing for democracy activists like him, but reassuring to those who fear upheaval.
Based on my third trip to Cairo since the protests began, here’s my guess as to how events unfold:
• Post-revolution Egypt will look a lot like pre-revolution Egypt, but modestly less repressive and with a more powerful civil society. The army will continue to run the show, as it has since 1952 through onetime officers like Hosni Mubarak, and will ensure continuity.
• People will continue to be tortured, but will complain about it more. Peace with Israel will continue, but Egyptian officials will speak up more forcefully about suffering in Gaza.
• The best bet for the next president is Amr Moussa. He’s a former foreign minister who has led the Arab League: a veteran politician and pragmatist who would constitute a breath of fresh air but not a gust of it.
• Islamists will play a greater role in society and government, as they do in Turkey. But this will also mean that they are trying to build things rather than blow them up.
Islamic groups are certainly more active than before. Mohammed Alaiwa, a professor of literary criticism at Cairo University, told me that he was in a dean’s office recently when a Muslim Brotherhood student burst in, pulled out a pistol and threatened to shoot the dean unless he resigned then and there (the student eventually backed down). Professor Alaiwa said that he now fears the Muslim Brotherhood students.
Meanwhile, the up-and-comer Islamists are Salafis, who think the Muslim Brotherhood is far too moderate. A group of Salafis recently attacked a Coptic Christian, apparently accusing him of illicit sexual activity and cutting off his ear.
Order is breaking down somewhat. When Egyptians celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8, gangs of men harassed them. When Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner who is running for president, tried to vote in a recent referendum, a mob attacked him.
When foreign reporters show up to cover news that might portray Egypt in a bad light, angry mobs sometimes chase them away. Fortunately, terrified reporters have so far proved to be swifter runners than Egyptian xenophobes.
Yet we have to be realistic: roads to democracy are always bumpy — and, frankly, I feel pretty good about Egypt. Despite some excesses, the Muslim Brotherhood has been tamed by being brought into the system. It says it won’t field a candidate for president and will contest only a bit more than one-third of parliamentary seats. Its Web site suggests that its aim is “a civil state” rather than “a religious state,” and it emphasizes the importance of respect for the Christian minority.
The big loser from the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise is probably its enemy, Al Qaeda, which wasn’t a part of the democracy protests and always argued that the only path to change was violence.
All in all, Egypt today reminds me of other countries in transitions to democracy — Spain after Franco, South Korea in 1987, Romania or Ukraine in the 1990s, and, most of all, of Indonesia after the ouster of its dictator in 1998. Indonesia was dodgy for a while — I once encountered Javanese mobs beheading people — but it settled down, the extremist threat diminished, and Indonesia is now a stable (if unfinished) democracy.
So, yes, Egypt is messy. A young democracy almost always is. Let’s get used to it.
