I am an American history fan in many respects: I possess the books 1776 and John Adams by David McCullough (as well as the HBO mini series by the same name), Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick, and His Excellency by Joesph Ellis. Also I possess and obsessed over Assassin’s Creed III, an open world video game taking place before and during the Revolutionary War with fully realized major players from the war as well as to-scale replications of Boston and New York. The only thing I don’t do is re-enact battles, but give that time.

It is now the 237th anniversary of when a group of delegates representing the 13 colonies ultimately governed by Great Britain decided that independence was their last, and only, chance. If their mission failed, they would all be hanged as traitors; their signatures on the Declaration of Independence would guarantee that. In the end, surprise!, we did beat them, gained our independence, and then the real hard work began. But this isn’t a history review as much as a reminder for me on how absolutely brittle and fragile of a situation it was from start to finish. And a reminder of how even these days it seems our republic is  always stressing at the seamsm, but that’s how it always works. It’s be design.

Winston Churchill quipped, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” and he was right. It seems to be the most volatile, mob-driven, and incoherent form of governing a people, but with the proper checks and balances it works well enough. It’ll never be perfect.

In Egypt right now they’re going through the growing pains of having ousted their first democratically elected president in modern times. The army decided that Muhamed Morsi wasn’t sufficiently doing his job and booted him.  Only in office for a year, he and the Muslim Brotherhood did everything except the important matters like curbing inflation and unemployment, and pandered to the religious extremists. Now, after being out from under a rock for 40 years of oppression from Hosni Mubarak’s regime, they’re scurrying back to the shadows again. Whether they will acquiesce or accept martyrdom is anyone’s guess right now. But everyone agrees it’s going to be a wonderful experiment as a well-populated country grunts and groans its way to a stable government again.

Good luck, Egypt. You’ll need it. And a lot of us are rooting for you.