Herbert: Egypt Si! Yanqui No!

By Mark Finkelstein
February 12, 2011 | 07:59

To the streets, Americans! We need to make the US more like . . . Egypt!

That's the thrust of Bob Herbert's hysterical rant in today's New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opini ... ef=opinion His notion is that while democracy is flourishing in Egypt, it is weakening here to the extent that [emphasis added]: "we’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only."

Money in politics is Herbert's predictable culprit, with "the endlessly egregious Koch brothers" serving as his bogeymen-in-chief. So where does Herbert head for a solution? Why, to the late, self-described democratic socialist historian Howard Zinn, of course. Here's how Herbert concludes his call to action [emphasis added]:

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,â€