I was listening to NPR as I drove home today, and heard yet more news about embassies being torched in response to the Mohammed caricatures. That’s in addition to the feverish demonstrations that have been going on for days. I’m not even going to discuss whether publishing the caricatures was right or wrong, or whether the Arab response is correct or not. What I want to say is this: where do these people find the time?

Every time something bothers them, they demonstrate. Don’t they have jobs? How can they get time off? Have they nothing better to do with their time than to tie up the streets in violent protest, chanting till their throats go numb? Have they nothing better to do than to burn flags and shoot bullets in the air?

Honestly, what kinds of people are these? Anybody with that much free time on their hands obviously isn’t working enough. No wonder most Middle East economies aren’t in good shape. Oil is the only thing propping them up (if they have it), and their countries, technologically and socially, are caught somewhere between the Middle Ages and the present. If they spent more time working and less time demonstrating, they might get somewhere.