And in the naked light, I saw . . .

Or put another way, about 30% of the total population of Lebanon, which includes infants, hospital patients, prisoners, etc. Take that, Hezbollah!

It’s getting more difficult than ever to contain my optimism about (some parts of) the Middle East. Until recently, I could have sworn I’d visited that part of the world and declared it unfit for civilization. As much as I wanted to believe that this was possible, I’m at a loss to explain this. I want very much for my initial impressions to be proven wrong here. Don’t miss the roundup over at Publius, who has great pictures and even some video. Check out the pictures here on the BBC, and here on NRO, via Amir Taheri. Even the Democratic Underground is interesting–it has great wide-focus pictures that must be seen to be believed, which can also be said for the out-of-focus comments.

Today, there were Christians and Muslims, Shiites, Sunnis, and Druze out on the streets together from almost every part of Lebanon. It was probably the largest pro-democracy demonstration in the entire history of the Middle East and the largest demonstration in the history of Lebanon. Today’s demonstration dwarfed the numbers that Syria and the Hezbollah bused in last week, which is no small feat given that many of the pro-Syrian protestors, not surprisingly, appear to have been Syrians. It’s a reminder that human aspirations lay dormant but survive oppression, because, just possibly, people are still people. And when fear can no longer contain those aspirations, the revolution that seemed impossible yesterday becomes inevitable today.

Freedom is beautiful. Are they listening in Pyongyang?