On this first full day of spring, with a bracing west wind snow a'coming in our nation's capital, surely it's time to let our hearts replace winter's despond with a replenishing faith and hope.

I think of the bit of rhyme by A.E. Housman: "Oh, God will save her, fear you not: Be you the men you've been, Get you the sons your fathers got, and God will save the Queen."

We don't need to learn new tricks, we need merely to remember and return to our old strengths. Listening to the BBC world service in the pre-dawn hours this morning, I caught, precisely, such a glimmer of hope in a report of an old faith defeating a new fear.

The faith was in freedom, and the defeated fear was multicultural gibberish. The Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds was forced from office yesterday when it was revealed that she had ordered a right-wing party's website to be shut down because it was planning to republish the now famous Danish cartoons of Mohammad.

It was a month ago that the deed was done. And for a month the suppressed party demanded freedom of speech. And for a month the foreign minister denied a role in the suppression. But when it was revealed that she had personally ordered it, her prime minister, Goran Persson -- facing a national election in six months -- forced her out. Of course, in the universal hypocrisy that follows such defenestrations, he assured the public "It was her own decision."

In fact, it was neither her decision, nor his. It was a free people's decision to assert their freedom. The politicians merely bent to the will of the people -- and called it a decision. A small victory in a small battle of what will be a very long war -- it is true. But a victory nonetheless. And a useful one.

In recent weeks I have had several conversations regarding my recent book, in which I express optimism that Europe will rally to a defense of her historic culture in the face of radical Islam's brazen cultural intrusion. I am repeatedly told to give up on Europe, that they have lost the will to resist the alien yearnings of the radicals. And it is true that there are plenty of examples of European acquiescence.

For example, in Denmark, a few weeks ago, on the occasion of Denmark preparing for a conference on Muslim/Danish relations, the state railroad company in a fit of fear barred a billboard advertising a new book about Islam by a Danish professor -- even though there were no offending images of the prophet.

But once again, a glimmer of hope emerges. People complained of the railroad company's cowardice -- and the company reversed itself and permitted the advertisement. Continued...