DAVID FROMKIN: A Wall of Faith and History

The New York Times
Published: March 24, 2005

BLISS was it in that dawn to be alive," sang William Wordsworth of the French Revolution of 1789, which, insofar as laws, customs and politics were concerned, promised to wipe the slate clean and offer the human race a fresh start. A similar exhilaration seized the Western world in the autumn of 1989, when cheering crowds dismantled the Berlin Wall - and with it, soon enough, the Soviet empire. Now many analysts are suggesting that the rumblings we hear from the Middle East presage an eruption of that sort. Is the old order in those lands about to be exploded?