On the Rachel Maddow show last night two big reasons were given for why the United States is on “the wrong side of history” when it comes to who we support in Egypt. One big reason is the Suez Canal, where the U.S. enjoys “first-in-line” status each and every day due to our support of President Mubarak. The second reason is that Egypt buys a lot of our expensive military hardware—from the high priced F-16 fighter jets to Chinook helicopters to M1-A1 Abrams tanks all the way down to handguns, assault rifles, and grenades. Egypt is second only to Israel on our military spending list. As Chris Weigand puts it in an op-ed column in The Huffington Post, “when American values conflicted with American national interests, our national interests always trumped our values.” Selling stockpiles of weapons and ensuring unfettered, if undemocratic access through the Suez Canal are undoubtedly, if shamefully, in our national interest.

But those are only two of the big reasons we still support Mubarak.

Like most Americans who pay attention to world affairs, I stand in mediated awe of the protests in Egypt. Part of me cheers the protester’s rallying cry for democracy and the end of tyranny, and part of me worries about what happens next. As the co-author of a new book on the role of master narratives in Islamic extremism I am confident that calling for the end of Mubarak’s regime by labeling him the last Pharaoh has deep cultural resonance with Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but I know that this revolution has nothing to do with extremism of an Islamic kind. It is a protest, a movement, that should be understood as a political unity organized by an emerging story of hope rather than one organized by a political party or extremist ideology rooted in fear.

The Egyptian protester’s story could be called “the audacity of hope,” although that title has already been used and this revolution has nothing to do with Obama. It is the hope of a youthful population—the average age of an Egyptian is 24—for the better life they see elsewhere in the world, and the idea that it can also be theirs. It is the hope that springs from the promise of economic opportunity and equality more so than freedom, although at least some freedom from repression and corruption of the sort they have endured under a military dictatorship is certainly part of it. It is the hope that food will be more affordable, wages will be higher, and that promised reforms will bring an unprecedented ability to get ahead and to enjoy their lives. In this way, the “story” on the street is one of hope for the future. It is hope chanted in poetry, sung in popular songs, and cried out in slogans that echo other popular uprisings both at home and abroad.

One of the lessons from the successful (so far) revolution in Egypt is the importance of voice in creating and keeping a democracy.  I say that with some obvious bias, of course, as I am a communication scholar.  But you don’t need a Ph.D. in my field to recognize that one reason Mubarak remained in power so long was because he cultivated a tyranny of silence that controlled the speech of citizens and suppressed the media. It is that same kind of fear that has characterized America since 9/11.

I don’t think it is possible to overstate my case.  From my first blog back in October I have explored this fear of speaking out against tyranny, whether the tyrant was a blowhard right-winger parroting Rush Limbaugh in a parking lot or a politician on television calling for second amendment solutions or a former president reconstructing a past through fabrications and fantasies that go largely unchallenged, we have been numbed into silence by the rich and the dumb.  And, as brutal prison guards and Rupert Murdoch know so well, a people quieted by fear for so long lose the will and the ability to speak.

In the grand American story we like to tell ourselves about the relationship of a popular democratic uprising and the resulting freedom it brings, we often edit out the boring and nasty parts. Nobody really wants to hear about the years of dangerous clandestine work, or the risky publishing of posters, leaflets, broadsides, and tracts; or about the off-camera torture, the beatings, and bloody deaths of those associated with the cause; or how much time dissidents spent forging alliances; or how many godforsaken prisons they endured before some tipping point was reached that finally, finally brought down a tyrant and brought about democracy in places like Poland, or Romania, or for that matter, the good ol’ U. S. of A back in the day.

Now, however, because of that editing, we expect quick-time miracles. We expect, as if this whole protest thing were just some televised drama sponsored by the Wisconsin Dairy Association, that revolutions can be accomplished in a fortnight or at most, in an action-packed season.

In the midst of an American uprising against those who would break the backs of unions, eliminate broad swathes of public employees, and redefine higher education as the common enemy of all right-thinking, self-righteous citizens, it is particularly disheartening to see a progressive leader of a major university willingly succumb to the “divide and conquer” strategy used to drive an economic wedge between her flagship and the rest of the university system. I am speaking ill of Carolyn A. “Biddy” Martin, the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. But also I am implicating former Secretary of Education and the current Chancellor of the University of Miami, Donna Shalala, who called Martin’s plan “a bold move.”

Neither of these highly accomplished progressive leaders is going it alone, or, my guess is willingly, and therein we find the ugly spread of this right wing ideologically fueled strategy, as well as the true nature of our deeper challenge, which is to begin to speak openly about money. The “M” word. The thing those of us in education are not supposed to talk about, or complain about. The taboo term for those of us who have dedicated our lives to public service.