So much justly negative criticism has been made of the neoconservative"nation-building" project that some kernels of truth about the need for social change in the Middle East might get drowned out by the loud public debate. Katherine Zoepf, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, focuses on one aspect of that need in her recent article about Syria,"Building a Civil Society Book by Book." Zoepf focuses on the work of one young publisher, Ammar Abdulhamid, who has set out"to translate the works of Western political philosophy into Arabic."

Abdulhamid is"a 38-year-old American-educated historian and novelist," the founder of"DarEmar, a nonprofit publishing house dedicated to making canonical works of Western philosophy, social science, and literature available in Arabic. His goal, he says, is to print books that will foster 'debate on a broad range of issues pertaining to civil society and democratization.'" Zoepf writes:

In most of the world, it has been a couple of centuries since publishing a new edition of John Locke could be considered risky or incendiary. But this is Syria, a Baathist dictatorship with tightly controlled news media and a stagnant publishing industry. Mr. Abdulhamid knows he must be careful. His tiny publishing venture, which is seeking support from foundations and other Western donors, just released its first books this fall. It is being watched hopefully by intellectuals within Syria, although some observers wonder whether ordinary Syrians will be interested in the sometimes esoteric writings of long-dead Western philosophers.

Abdulhamid studied at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point in the early 1990s, and wondered why"so few of the books that are considered cornerstones of the European enlightenment" remain unavailable in Arabic. He mentions such works as The Federalist Papers, as well as the works of Descartes, Hume, Kant, Erasmus, Spinoza, and Locke. Abdulhamid blames"low literacy rates and repressive censorship laws" for keeping"the number of foreign books that find their way into Arabic translation very low." Moroever, there is no"accumulated tradition of Arab scholarship" that is directed outside the Arab world or experience. Abdulhamid argues that this is a major obstacle to the creation in places like Iraq of a Middle Eastern"beacon of freedom":"You're talking about democracy and modernity and bringing all these good things to the Arab world. But we just don't have the basic intellectual foundations," he says.

Zoepf's article focuses on Abdulhamid's efforts to commission"fresh, accessible translations of Western philosophers into Arabic ... making the books available cheaply, accompanied by critical and interpretive essays." But, in Syria, for example, the so-called"Damascus Spring" that flourished briefly after Bashar al-Assad took office in 2000, was ended with the arrest of"pro-democracy" organizers shortly thereafter. And the fact remains that"Syrian newspapers and magazines are monitored by the state, and all books must be vetted by a government panel before publication."

It is no coincidence that"free thought" is having such difficulty getting started in Syria. The Syrian constitution is nationalist-socialist, after all:

The Constitution's economic principles not only set forth a planned socialist economy that should take into account"economic complementarity in the Arab homeland" but also recognize three categories of property. The three kinds are property of the people, including all natural resources, public domains, nationalized enterprises, and establishments created by the state; collective property, such as assets owned by popular and professional organizations; and private property. The Constitution states that the social function of private property shall be subordinated, under law, to the national economy and public interests.

Such subordination effectively destroys the meaning of"private property." Murray Rothbard once pointed out that when government owns or controls printing shops and publishing, there can be no free press. As he writes in For a New Liberty,"since the government must allocate scarce newsprint in some way, the right to a free press of, say, minorities or 'subversive' antisocialists will get short shrift. ... The human right to a free press depends upon the human right of private property in newsprint. ... [T]he human right of a free press is the property right to buy materials and then print leaflets or books and to sell them to those who are willing to buy."

That's why the movement away from authoritarianism in Syria or other such regimes in the Middle East must be simultaneously a movement toward liberalization politically and economically. Striking upon important points of liberal sensibility, my colleague Richard Ebeling has stressed:

In civil society there is no longer a single focal point in the social order, as in the politicized society in which the state designs, directs and imposes an agenda to which all must conform and within which all are confined. Rather, in civil society there are as many focal points as individuals, who all design, shape and direct their own lives, guided by their own interests, ideals and passions.

Mr. Abdulhamid, in his own small way, is attempting just that kind of shift in focal point. Perhaps his published translations of John Locke will be just a beginning; perhaps he might consider translating the works of Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand too.