Free Republic

For months Iranian activists and even moderate clerics have been concerned about the radical tendencies of Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the past few weeks - after he said that the Holocaust was a myth, called for Israel to be wiped off the map and banned Western music from state-run radio and television, the concern spread around the world. But there is another development in Iran - this one positive and with great potential - that the world should not miss: civic defiance against Ahmadinejad's authoritarianism is increasing.