It is impossible to say how what today’s events in Egypt mean in the long run, or how things will turn out there, but this is a great moment nonetheless. Egyptians have exercised the Right of Revolution spontaneously and unaided except by their own military, which seems to have acted with broad popular consensus. Once a people has done this for themselves, there’s really no going back.

Importantly, their act of self determination did not come at the point of a gun. It comes not only without American help, but in spite of decades of bipartisan American foreign policy.