Showing up for history

One of those people was Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who created a Facebook page in late January calling for the first day of protests on Jan. 25. He is by no means the leader of the movement, but without his actions, Mubarak might still be in power. On Feb. 7, he appeared on television after being released by Egyptian authorities, and on Feb. 8, he told the protestors, “We won’t give up.” Three days later, Mubarak did, partly because Ghonim showed up to claim freedom for his country.

Someone else who could not show up in person was Khaled Said. Said was beaten to death by suspected government agents last June after he threatened to expose police corruption. Ghonim’s Facebook page proclaimed, “We are all Khaled Said.” Perhaps Ghonim might have found a different name with which to call for a “day of wrath” last month. But as it played out, millions of people showed up, spurred on by the memory of Said’s tragic defiance.

We could write off Ghonim, Said and the millions of Egyptians who came to make history. After all, unemployment was estimated at 9.7 percent in 2010, inflation hit 12.8 percent and GDP per capita was a measly $6,200. That was the real powder keg, we might reassure ourselves, and the protestors were only the spark. On this account, Mubarak’s regime could not have stood forever and when exactly it finally fell was a minor detail.

But somehow that cheapens the efforts of the people who filled Tahrir Square and the streets of Egypt to proclaim that enough was enough. It cheapens the acts of the hundreds who died, the many more who were injured and the risks they all took by protesting against a government willing to send goons on trucks and camels to scare them into submission.

That’s one lesson we should remember: History belongs to those who show up. For instance, our own history depended on Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart’s initial absence at the Battle of Gettysburg. The disparity between Union and Confederate industrial capacity and population can explain much, but not all, of the story.

Egyptians got rid of their dictator, but they must still build the functioning democracy they want in its place. They must do so at a time when the only serious opposition group is the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist group with ties to terrorism and a distaste for secular democracy. Judging by the composition of the crowds, the Muslim Brotherhood hardly speaks for this movement or Egyptians as a whole.

Furthermore, as of press time, the army was in control of the country, promising a transition to democracy within six months but also suspending the constitution and dissolving parliament. Managing this transition will take a lot of talented people, but it is only one of many challenges ahead of Egypt.

America’s greatest 18th-century aphorist, Benjamin Franklin, understood this general predicament in 1787. When a woman asked him what kind of government the U.S. Constitutional Convention had designed, he responded in a typically incisive fashion, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The Egyptian people now have the promise of representative government, if they show up and keep it.

In fact, as Brendan Carroll wrote on this page last week, the United States ought to be showing up on behalf of secular democracy in a region long condemned to misery. It wouldn’t do any good for the United States to poison the discussion by meddling too much in a country where anti-American sentiment is a political force of its own. But the moral support we offer for secular democracy could be decisive. American liberty has always inspired oppressed people — whether 18th-century Frenchmen such as the Marquis de Lafayette, 19th-century Turks and South Americans or 20th-century Eastern Europeans.

As one older Egyptian told Roger Cohen, a columnist for The New York Times, in Egypt, “This is a very precious generation ... They did what we failed to do.” Young Egyptians defined their own lives and their nation’s history, and we should support them in seeking their freedom, even if previous generations did not help. We should do so in Egypt, in Iran, in Tunisia and anywhere people show up for history and demand their liberty. Our individual and national decision to show up — as students, voters and citizens — does matter, just as Ghonim’s Facebook page mattered.

And when we study these truly remarkable human events, perhaps the memory of individual Egyptians showing up to claim their rights can remind us of the importance of humans in history, politics and international affairs. Long-range social, cultural, economic and even technological pressures all add another dimension to our historiography but only in concert with the human story.

One Egyptian citizen, quoted in The New York Times, summed up the past three weeks directly and correctly: “We took our freedom.”