Gene Policinski: Egypt’s first steps toward liberty remind us of our own

  A small group, using the latest technology, excites fellow citizens with the concepts and possibilities of freedom after years of battling a repressive regime.

  As the protests grow more visible and vocal, armed representatives of the current regime try to interrupt, intimidate or imprison those calling for freedom, for an end to domination by a despot.

  Against all odds, this populist revolt succeeds. The seeds of democracy have been sown.

  Sound familiar?  In 2011, it’s a story involving bloggers, Tweets and demonstrations in Egypt and elsewhere in the Mideast that we’ve watched unfold with amazing rapidity. But for Americans, that same path to freedom harkens back to pamphleteers, village greens, Liberty Trees, 1776 and our own Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War.