SOME PEOPLE WON’T LIKE THIS, but I do:

“The problem with America,” a college professor told me recently, “is that it can’t get over the idea that it is somehow special among nations.” His name is Robert Jensen and he teaches journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. He’s flat wrong. The problem with America and Western civilization in general is that it lost confidence in itself and started accepting relativist arguments.

Today, we launch a new Monday column on OpinionJournal, “The Western Front.” Many readers will recognize the reference to the Erich Maria Remarque novel about the Western world tearing itself to pieces in World War I. It was that war that accelerated Western civilization down into a dangerous pit from which it may now be emerging. The main purpose of this column will be to argue for rebuilding confidence in the West’s ideal of human freedom–spiritual, political and economic liberty.

Bravo.

THE BOSTON GLOBE has done some actual reporting on Jenin — instead of just recycling Palestinian statements uncritically as most reporters seem to have done — and reports that there wasn’t a massacre:

Palestinian Authority allegations that a large-scale massacre of civilians was committed by Israeli troops during their invasion of the refugee camp here appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting.

In interviews yesterday with teenage fighters, a leader of Islamic Jihad, an elderly man whose home was at the center of the fighting, and other Palestinian residents, all of whom were in the camp during the battle, none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed. All said they were allowed to surrender or evacuate when they were ready to do so, though some reported being mistreated while in Israeli detention. . . .

Meanwhile, a British military adviser to Amnesty, Reserve Major David Holley, was quoted yesterday by Reuters news service as dismissing the Palestinian allegations of a massacre and predicting that no evidence would be found to substantiate them.

Of course, almost as lame as the Western reporting on the subject is the Israeli PR operation, which hasn’t done very well at getting this story out.

On the other hand, this should discredit a lot of critics — or it would, if anyone paid attention to the critics’ track records.

HOLLYWOOD’S UNITED FRONT IS CRACKING, reports the Los Angeles Times. Well, heck: why not? There are splits in the Saudi regime and splits among the Palestinian terror groups. It’s not easy holding an Empire of Evil together, you know.

A REPORT FROM BROOKINGS says we need to focus more on preventing high-casualty terrorist attacks like those involving nuclear or biological weapons. This is probably true — but I think the best way to prevent these isn’t to add security, but to kill the terrorists before they can strike.

THIS COLUMN BY NEAL POLLACK has almost Lileks-like moments, and there’s no higher praise:

A young man approached me on the quad. He wore a Leonard Peltier for President t-shirt, and a lovely pair of acid-washed Che Guevara for Men jeans.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you Noam Chomsky?”

“No,” I said. “I just look like him.”

“Oh, that’s cool. Well, do you support Palestinian liberation?”

“I dunno,” I said. “What’s in it for me?”

“Nothing. You just should.”

“Why?”

“Because Israel,” he said, “is stupid.”

I thought about his penetrating statement. The last time I’d visited Israel, Amos Oz and I had taken ecstasy at a disco in Haifa and had met these three Spanish architecture students and we had a crazy gang-bang on the beach until dawn. The next day, I interviewed Yitzak Rabin, which also went pretty well. But that was nearly 10 years ago. What if Israel had become stupid since then? What a story!

I whipped out my cell and called The New Yorker.

The adventure continues well beyond this point.

AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON THE TUNISIAN BOMBING says that Islamist terrorists are more interested in “taking back their homelands” than in war on the West. Er, well, except that the “homelands” they want to “take back” include places like, you know, Spain.

CRACKS IN THE FACADE OF PALESTINIAN UNITY: This article from Ha’aretz says that there’s a growing split between religious and nationalist Palestinians. It also suggests that some United States efforts there are bearing fruit.

RALPH PETERS, who wrote the excellent essay on stability in Parameters that I linked to a while back, has an piece today in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the Arab world is hopeless, though the Islamic world is not. I think he’s absolutely right, and it’s important not to conflate the two. The Arabs were hopeless before Islam, they were hopeless at Islam’s peak, and they’re hopeless today. They’re the target of considerable resentment within the non-Arab Islamic world, which views them at times as colonizers who make mockery of Islam’s claims of equality. We should understand that, and take advantage of it.

Send a copy of Peters’ essay to your Senator.

MICKEY KAUS is defending the Los Angeles Times’ Sebastian Rotella against assaults from Andrew Sullivan and many other parts of the Blogosphere. But I think Kaus himself is wrong when he says, “Europe’s only just begun to deal with the problem of welfare-subsidized ghettos.” A fairer statement would be that Europe has only just begun to acknowledge the problem of welfare-subsidized ghettos. Actual dealing will come later, if at all.

SALON FINANCIALS: Bottom line is, they’re still hemorrhaging cash according to John Scalzi.

PUBLISHER JIM BAEN has been putting up his books for free on the Web. Now author Eric Flint explains what happened: it sold a lot more books. And he’s got the numbers to prove it.

PUNDITWATCH IS UP! Don’t miss it.

UTHANT.COM unveils a new Middle East Peace Plan^TM that, well, is as likely to work as any of the others!

Perhaps the international community wouldn’t be so stumped by the conflict had it bothered to ask Uthant for advice. [It’s not like we weren’t Secretary General of the United Nations for ten years for fuck’s sake.] That being said, here at last is the long un-awaited Uthant Peace Plan:

The Palestinians formally get control of all 2,165 square miles of the West Bank, with full autonomy, open borders, and if it turns out that there are any civil rights that come with being citizens of an Arab nation, they can have those too. It’s up to them. No questions asked.

In return, the Israelis get to take back 20 square miles of land every time an Israeli dies at the hands of a Palestinian. No questions asked.

Christiane Amanpour also comes in for some gratuitous abuse, as do many other major mideast political figures.

MORE CRACKS IN THE GLOBAL GUN-CONTROL FACADE: This article from the Los Angeles Times says that the global gun-control movement is in trouble, and gives a lot of reasons. But here’s the part that struck me — er, well, once reader John Thacker pointed it out, anyway:

Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino suggested in a radio interview Monday that the country’s gun laws should be loosened. Martino cited the U.S. Bill of Rights’ 2nd Amendment, protecting the right of citizens to bear arms, as a model.

Critics said the minister’s comments reflected a rising sense of insecurity as the population ages and the number of immigrants rises. Unlike in other European countries, fear in Italy has increased even as the number of violent crimes has gone down slightly.

If the “critics” are right about the concerns motivating this position, then such views are likely to spread to other European countries, despite cultural resistance among the elites.

I’VE BEEN PROPERLY CHASTENED BY READERS for my remarks about Le Pen, below. A French reader writes:

“A Le Pen administration might provide a salutary and much-needed wake-up call to the corrupt and intellectually bankrupt Europolitical crowd. The ideal outcome for me, I guess, would be for Le Pen to lose, but by a tiny margin.”

I do not know if you have read the guy’s proposals, apart from his populist formulas like “the euro is an occupation money” that you seem to enjoy, but a Le Pen victory would not just be a “wake up call”. It would most likely mean a civil war in our country, not to mention the prospect of a commercial war between France and about the rest of the world (the guy wants to “protect our national industry” by all means).

In addition, I’m quite surprised and saddened that you see it as just another thing to laugh at about us damn Frogs. This event certainly shows that we are indeed the “sick man of Europe”, but I don’t quite see what’s so great about it, and I certainly do not feel that a Chirac victory by a quick margin would bring about what you seem to envision. At best, I could only send the wrong message to our politicians who would feel obliged to be even more nationalist and protectionist. Finally, Le Pen is, for the record, a great admirer and supporter of Sadam Hussein (his wife his president of an association that raises money for the Iraki regime)…would you really feel delighted if such a guy was close to winning the French presidency ?

Meanwhile reader Adam Felber notes:

As much as I enjoy watching the French squirm, I can’t say I’d like to see Le Pen win. It’s worth remembering that France is a nuclear nation with more warheads than China. I know Cold War H-bomb fears are long out of vogue, but a Le Pen government might be just crazy enough…

Both are quite right, and I shouldn’t have been so flippant. I suppose it’s been too hard for me to really imagine Le Pen winning to take the threat seriously, but of course that doesn’t mean that his victory would be a good thing.

I guess I was just responding to the unwillingness of Eurocrats in general and the French political system in particular to accept any less dramatic correctives. But I agree that a Le Pen victory would very likely be disastrous, even if (as I expect) it never led to nuclear war.

UPDATE: Reader David Shulman writes in response:

I think you were right about Le Pen the first time. Although he is frequently called an “anti-semite” by the Left, I think that he would be “good for the Jews.” He would not put up with the violent crimes being committed on a daily basis by Arab hooligans. I’m Jewish, and if I lived in France, I’d probably vote for him.

Interesting. Maybe he has got a shot. . . .

DJ Pieter K created this image of North & South Korea. Advantage: Capitalism!

BRETT THOMAS wonders why there isn’t more of an outcry about gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia.

DAN HARTUNG’S LakeFX blog is back after a long absence. I like his post on how Harper’s has gone downhill.

DON’T WRITE OFF LE PEN YET, writes David Carr. I’m torn. On the one hand, I don’t actually like Le Pen, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, it’s delightful to see the French so upset and embarrassed, and that happy state would no doubt continue for quite some time if Le Pen actually won. I mean, this is a guy who calls the Euro “occupation money”. And while I don’t like Le Pen, it’s not like I like the other French politicians all that much, either. A Le Pen administration might provide a salutary and much-needed wake-up call to the corrupt and intellectually bankrupt Europolitical crowd.

The ideal outcome for me, I guess, would be for Le Pen to lose, but by a tiny margin.

This photo, if you haven’t seen it, is way cool. It’s the earth from space, at night. But for a real contrast, look at the difference between North and South Korea — and remember that the North used to be the industrialized part.

(Note — if you flunked Geography, find Japan (if you can’t do that, skip this — you’re hopeless) then look due west. What looks like an island of light is South Korea — if you look closely you can see just enough points of light to realize that North Korea is actually there, but just barely.)

The always visible difference between capitalism and communism couldn’t be much more visible than that.

JOHN ELLIS says that Karen Hughes is part of a growing exodus from the high-stress corporate/political lifestyle.

NORAH VINCENT says that Arab terrorists don’t measure up in the masculinity department.

VIA BILL QUICK I found this story about Putin rival Alexander Lebed dying in a helicopter crash. Quick connects it with the highly suspicious Venezuelan crash that killed a lot of anti-Chavez brass.

Of course, nobody was trying to rub out Stevie Ray Vaughan or Bill Graham: helicopters are dangerous, and if you fly in them a lot you have a nontrivial chance of being killed. But it is a bit suspicious.

A READER sends this Iranian cartoon. Quite a self-image, eh?

UPDATE: Reader Philippe Richards says that this is a self-critical image, not a celebratory one.

SEN. BILL FRIST AND CLONING: I can’t find it on their website, but the Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting that Bill Frist abandoned his support for therapeutic cloning because he is under consideration for the slot as Bush’s running mate in 2004. Cloning and Condi Rice supporters are likely to be disappointed to hear this — and those, like me (and, for different reasons, Asparagirl) who would like to see Condi Rice cloned are doubly unhappy, of course.