This will be short: it is complete BS that there is not more outrage from the West regarding the coup in Egypt. While I am no fan of Islamism, it is duplicitous of the West to advocate democracy but then balk when a movement or party we don't like wins an election. If civil unrest is due to the majority trampling on the civil and basic human rights of the minority, I understand that the West may wish to remain neutral or even support those whose rights the majority is abrogating. However, I understand that deteriorating economic conditions drove the coup in Egypt (at least ostensibly-one may reasonably surmise that this was only pretext for an otherwise naked power grab).
A changing economic landscape is the precise sort of civil problem that democratic elections are uniquely qualified to resolve peacefully. If a particular policy fails to generate expected or promised results, the electorate will opt for a new party or movement that offers a different policy prescription. While we may quibble over the efficiency of using democratic elections as the mechanism for choosing policy-makers, it is the only method that allows for a government of the people to remain of the people. The same ethos should govern our response to Egypt: we should support the democratically elected government so long as the government is acting within their constitutional mandate. If Egypt's economy is tanking with the Muslim Brotherhood in charge, then we should simply demand that the next round of elections be administered fairly. If a majority of the population wants a change in leadership, the majority will oust the Brotherhood through the peaceful and constitutionally mandated form of popular election. Any other solution to changing policy makers renders the West, as advocates of representative democracy, hypocritical.
Jon Lee Anderson has a great piece in The New Yorker addressing the same thing that is worth reading.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/in-egypt-echoes-of-latin-america.html
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