Here’s the gist of it in Egypt:

• President Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 30 years.
• The people of Egypt don’t want Mubarak to be president anymore.
• It’s illegal in Egypt to protest the government.
• The Egyptians protested anyway, using social media like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to coordinate their efforts.
• The Egyptian government promptly shut off all Internet and cell service in the country, shutting its citizens off from the world and each other.

I am not going to speculate on whether or not the Egyptians have a right to protest, or even if they should protest. I have no opinions to offer about the relationship between the United States and Egypt, because I’m not fully educated on the subject. A great writer once said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

I do know that Egypt is supposedly one of our allies in the Middle East. Mostly because our mutual distrust of Iran unites us. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something like that.

The people of Egypt probably aren’t too keen on the United States right now, since their government is trying to end their protests partly with tear gas made in the USA. Ah, nothing like using American-made products to quell protesting citizens. No one better give Barney Frank any ideas, mmmkay?

I don’t know exactly what the end goal for the Egyptian protesters is. I get that they don’t like the current regime. But what’s their ultimate goal? Remember the Bolsheviks? They violently overthrew a corrupt government ‘for the people of Russia.’ That didn’t turn out so well … Remember Stalin? Super evil dude.

On the other hand, the Boston Tea Party led to the American Revolution, from which emerged a new nation that became the greatest and freest country in all of history.

I don’t know if the Egyptians are Bolsheviks or Patriots, and I would be an idiot to speculate. Of course I hope they want a truly free society, instead of replacing one oppressive government with their own oppressive government, but hope is not truth, and to blindly assume that the people of Egypt are purely good while the government is purely bad is naïve.

What I can speculate on is the power of social media and networking, and the danger of letting government regulate it. Whether or not these protesters are protesting for actually democracy or just another regime change is irrelevant to this point. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are basic human rights (we in America have legal rights to them as well, but the rest of world isn’t necessarily as lucky), and protesting one’s government falls under the whole ‘pursuit of happiness’ thing.

The people of Egypt used Twitter, Facebook, emails, texts, and more to coordinate their efforts. The initial manpower didn’t have to be huge. They didn’t need to send people out to knock on doors and share the information. They did it from home, blasting it to hundreds and thousands of others, who joined their ranks. They worked together, quickly and efficiently, to get the protests organized and to rally the people. Every person in the chain of communication felt like part of something; they might be just one link, but that chain needs them.

This is what we’ve seen over the past few years in our own country. A sense of camaraderie and partnership formed over the interwebs that was near impossible even just a decade ago. We have a free-flow of information and dialogue; first-hand accounts of events live-tweeted, speculated on, compared with other accounts, related to the past, and used to make predictions about the future.

Social media has been an integral component of the conservative uprising we’ve seen in America. We are no longer isolated – we have found each other and realized that there are more of us than the mainstream media wanted us to believe. We have organized rallies, we have cheered one another on, and we consoled each other when Jerry Brown was reelected Governor of California.

Watching the Egyptian government take away its people’s ability to communicate rapidly and efficiently makes me grateful to live in America. And fearful to ever let the authorities have any power to regulate our online access. The government should fear its people, not control them.