How 'Revolution' Makes You Dumb

From Cato:

ISIS’s public declaration that it has restored the caliphate has been noted as a bold move, potentially changing some elements of their revolutionary calculus.

One does not have a restoration and some sort of revolutionary calculus. What restorations do is try to put things back to rights. What revolutionaries do is steal and claim it is moral, usually by suggesting whoever it is they are stealing from stole it 'from the people.' Of course, 'the people' generally like to go to the casinos and bars on Friday and blow most of their paychecks rather than doing any saving, capital formation, etc... The assiduous are outnumbered, so democracy inevitably fails.

ISIS is essentially anti-revolutionary. They want to restore the caliphate, which is a little weird if they really are this extremist strain of Muslim, because the caliphates weren't particularly hardcore. I am quite suspicious that a caliphate would calm the Muslim world down, because the caliph would have an interest in his realm, and would want to pass on something healthy to his children. Such a person would be civil to his nuclear armed neighbor and generally have an interest in the sort of behavior conducive to trade, which means these ghastly videos of people being murdered should end.

Violence would also end because the Caliphate does not have to keep up the pretext of the revolutionaries. See, inevitably, the revolutionaries run out of whatever they have stolen and then they have to steal more. They have to create imaginary enemies or elaborate scams through which to fleece the people.
In Egypt they were told pretty much the same thing they tell us here- go to school, work hard, get a degree, and there will be a nice fulfilling job for you when you get out. They were lying. The old communist state, not really that ideological anymore, but full of bureaucrats and their relations who don't want to stop their own gravy train, were choking out the economic forces necessary for 'the people' to get jobs. Any new job the government created actually caused a negative impact on Egypt overall, because that's even less resources available for real economic growth.

So people started protesting. They've been taught revolution too, and have less of an economic sense than CATO does, so they essentially tried to start a revolution. They are attracted to the machinery the state has in place, and tend to assume it is the evil people in charge that is the problem. The Egyptian school system, for instance, is deeply awful and corrupt. Now obviously, I have this principle that say, hey, we need a free market in schools, but even an unprincipled person should, at some point, see that having nothing is better than having something so pernicious.

The quote above is indicative of how revolutionary thinking has permeated our thinking so completely that we can make statements that are completely nonsensical. There is no 'revolutionary' restoration. Similar drivel is found among Christians, who appear to think the King of Kings, who incarnated for the ultimate act of restoration, is a revolutionary. This kind of thinking is stupid, dangerous, and will never lead to the sort of life people actually want to live- well, unless you want to be a thief that is, and then I can say you are doing very well with this retarded line of thinking.