Communism is, by any sensible standard, the worst theory of government in modern history. However, its slavish supporters — refusing to accept that this “scientific” theory of economics could ever fail — often resort to revisionist history in order whitewash its brutal, intolerant regimes.

One of the great ironies of the feminist movement is that it stiffly maintains that the Judeo-Christian moral and theological traditions are a primary source of the oppression of women. The silence of feminists in the face of honor killings, female circumcision, and other horrific crimes of Islam is deafening.

Fervent adherents of human liberty cannot also seriously support the United Nations. This corrupt world body, far from being the hope of mankind, is rather the prime suspect for a RICO investigation. Much of the reason for this failure is because international organizations simply do not work.

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), formed in 1954 — a group of which the United States, France, and Britain were charter members — had as its stated mission the protection of the new nations of Southeast Asia from communist aggression.

David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, told university students in Islamabad, Pakistan, that the “time is now ripe” for India and Pakistan to make real peace.

There are countervailing pressures in any nation: power and profit. Power that comes from conflict and agitation — power for the sake of power — and profit that comes from being hospitable to individuals seeking to maximize their own talents and efforts. All too often, pundits laud the first aspect of statehood and mock the second. 

Americans who look around Washington and despair of finding any ideas that can lift the nation out of economic doldrums, ethnic and racial divisions, and foreign entanglements can find few examples of well-run countries around the world.

Communist China supplies the world with more than 95 percent of the rare earth minerals, resources which are increasingly vital to advanced technology. In September 2009, China announced that it would reduce its production of these minerals to 35,000 tons, with the stated reason being to conserve scare resources and to protect the environment. In July 2010, China reduced the quota of rare earth minerals for export by 72 percent. In September 2010, the communist government halted shipments of critical rare earth minerals to Japan and the next month also halted shipments to the United States and Europe.

Romel Hawal was born in Habbaniya Cece, Iraq, 48 years ago. Most of the population then was Christian. Now Hawal may become part of a long exodus of Christians out of Iraq. There are no Christian services in the town any longer and his 11-year-old son knows no other Christians outside his family. “When my son swears," Hawai mourns, "it is on the Koran, not the Bible. Whenever I look at him my heart breaks. He is my closest friend. I just want him to live a normal life where he can practice Christian traditions.”

Banks in China allow American customers to buy and to hold Chinese yuan. A state-owned Chinese bank in New York has begun to offer its customers accounts denominated in yuan, a move calculated to expand the global reach of their currency. Daniel Hui, a foreign exchange analyst for the HSBC Bank in Hong Kong, explains that the Chinese government is “trying to expand the scope of people who can hold renminbi [yuan] and that increases demand.” Most economists believe it will take years before the yuan is an international currency on the same level as the dollar, the euro, or the yen.

The civilizations of China and India are two of the oldest in human history. Archeologists have found Bronze Age Indian artifacts from about 3,300 B.C. in the Indus River Valley, and say that signs of human activity in India date back many thousand years before that. China is relatively younger, with the earliest signs of civilization about 4,000 years ago, and signs of human life many thousand years before that.