Ah, the dangers of feeling good about a particular moment in time. Faced with the scenes today in Cairo and the natural high of teaching about eighteenth century political revolutions, I was hard pressed not to feel heartened by the Egyptian revolution. Today in a class on world history (an impossible class to teach), I discussed the slow development of alternatives to the monarchs of Europe. To make a point, I juxtaposed a image of the Palace of Versailles with an image of Paris in 1700, the point being that Louis XIV had his symbol of power and the people Read more