Like many Americans, what I know about Egypt can be summed up as follows: Nothing. Yet like many Americans, I’m absorbed by the news about what can only be called a revolution. And in typical American fashion, I’m forming an opinion about this revolution even though I don’t have an ounce of expertise about it.

A short while ago, several Egyptians hung in effigy President Hosni Mubarak. That may not seem like much, but to a visual person like me, the image concisely sums up the political situation. Mubarak is in the exit lane because of a populist revolt.

I can’t help but wonder what Egyptians, and the world, are in for once Mubarak is gone. While lovers of democracy thrill at the exhilarating spirit behind any democratic revolution, anyone who’s read the least little bit of political philosophy can’t help but think of Edmund Burke. Burke knew that all democratic revolutions aren’t the same. There’s a line to be drawn between good ones and bad ones, found not in the first moments of revolution, but in the aftermath. Burke supported the American Revolution, but loathed the French Revolution. There’s also a line between healthy democratic passions and vicious mob rule. With no single, clear leader of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who are saying no to Mubarak, the Egyptian revolution may end in that dreaded political black hole known as a “political vacuum.” What happens after Mubarak leaves is up for grabs.

While Mubarak was a nasty tyrant, and led his country into the abyss of corruption, cronyism, inequality and poverty, we supported him because he was also a force against Islamicism. A pact with the devil, to be sure, but such pacts have forever been at the heart of politics.

Just as we must be careful what we wish for in our individual lives, we must be careful what we wish for in politics. If Egypt goes the way of Iran after the Iranian Revolution, we may not be so keen on celebrating democratic revolutions for their own sake.

As they say, the devil is in the details—and in this case, the details are in what follows Mubarak.