How does Roger Cohen know what Egyptians want?

With all due respect to Roger Cohen's long experience as a reporter, how does he know what the Egyptian revolution has been "about"?

He addresses the question with apparent confidence:

The uprising that ended decades of dictatorship and led to Egypt’s first free and fair presidential election last year was about the right to that vote. But at a deeper level it was about personal empowerment, a demand to join the modern world, and live in an open society under the rule of law rather than the rule of despotic whim.

In a Muslim nation, where close to 25 percent of Arabs live, it also demanded of political Islam that it reject religious authoritarianism, respect differences and uphold citizenship based on equal rights for all.

Cohen's sources? Heba Morayef, head of Human Rights Watch in Cairo, and Mohamed ElBaradei, the world famous "liberal modernizer" (Cohen's phrase) who signed onto the generals' coup. That's it -- the sum total of his cited sources for telling us what 80-plus million Egyptians want.