Tremblings of a feudal despotate This Newsweek article chronicles the changes wrought by the terrible fire where girls died to preserve their modesty. But at the end of the story-there is a paragraph that got my attention.

The crown prince will need that reserve of good will if he’s to continue his campaign of top-down reform. The sad fact is that most Saudis are deeply suspicious of change—and hostile to the West. Last October the Saudi intelligence agency produced a confidential poll of men between 25 and 41. Ninety-five percent said they approved of Osama bin Laden’s cause. As one high-ranking Saudi said, “fortunately, this is not a democracy.” Even so, changing it will not be easy. Reaction to the fire in Mecca was only one painful, small step.

So-this seems a clear clue that the Wahabbi/Salafi tradition isn't just a sugar-coated patina on Saudi society-its enmity to the Other runs deep. The solution so far has been to maintain the status quo-hypocritical despots that are more rational and amenable to American wishes than the moronic demagogues that would no doubt arise in their places. But as I have said before-let us take a step back, and consider, what would happen if the Saudi monarchy fell? There would likely be a short-term disruption of oil supplies-but in a nation with no other major natural resources and a lack of human capital they have no choice but to export oil. I'm beating a dead horse when I'm asserting that the American public would feel only mild economic repercussions-while certain slices of the elite would be financial inconvenienced beyond measure. So let's think about what would happen to Saudi society. An Islamic version of a proletarian dictatorship might ensue. And look what that has wrought in Iran-or China (granted, in these latter two cases the transformation is halting-but we see the pattern). Freedom's great ally is illiberalism. The expatriate community that supplies the red blood cells to the plasma of crude oil would likely leave the country if Islamic theocrats came to power. This would enrich our allies, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi society would cease to function, and perhaps they might be roused to begin a futile jihad along the fringes of the peninsula. But the numerous Yemenis in their mountain redoubts and the placid Omanis who are ruled by a genuinely benevolent autocrat would no doubt repulse the assaults of fanatics who would barely be able to fly the jets purchased with oil money (strangely, the fact that Oman or Qatar are not run by committee, as the Saud House rules, might be a factor in the ability of the autocrats to change their societies from above). Democracy would expose the intellectual bankruptcy of religious extremism in the modern era. Sometimes it's best not to keep maintaining old buggy code by writing patches-rather just rewrite from scratch. Of course-some might argue that Saudi Arabia would become a beacon of terror in the Islamic world spreading their anti-intellectual filth. Oh really? What a terrifying idea! I could never imagine....