I have not found it particularly easy to follow the progress of the "Arab Spring" these many months, particularly as concerns Morocco, where coverage has been somewhat muted by the more dramatic changes to the East.
As an American onlooker, however, I think we might be well advised to look to our own first principles, not the Constitution, but our more radical founding document, the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
I am not unmindful that these words were first penned by a Virginia slaveholder, but they nevertheless represent the worthiest expression of the American experiment. Among the oft-forgotten footnotes to these words is the fact that Jefferson abandoned the usual formulation of "Life, Liberty, and Property."
We in America could do worse than to remember that once we too tasted tyranny, that our Arab brothers and sisters are our equals, that they have unalienable Rights, and that they too are entitled to a government that is founded upon their consent.