I have to say that I am against revolutions; or to put it more accurately I do. not romanticize them. History shows that most revolutions wind of making things worse, and exacerbating the grievances that gave rise to them in the first place. I struggle to think of many revolutions that wound up creating an unambiguously better social order – I would say that 80% make things worse. The American revolution seems like an arguable exception but that is because it was not really a revolution but an anticolonial war.

My skepticism of revolutions is not a defense of cruel or corrupt ancien regimes. However the way that I see it revolution is not some kind of conscious progressive turning of the laws of history to be celebrated but more like a tragedy, wherein a society that is under tremendous pressure finally breaks open in a manner that usually generates more hardship ahead. My views are very much informed by being a personal observer of the Arab Spring and seeing how great hopes transformed into heartbreak.