If the 2012 edition of Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom has bad news for the United States, the news for Europe is not much better. The 43 nations of the European region did manage to lose less economic freedom than did the United States, but a decline is still a decline. And the European decline was broad-based: Only nine countries made gains, and every one of the top 10 declined—in some cases, dramatically. The underlying driver of the declines in many cases will come as no surprise: higher levels of …
This week brings the nationwide release of The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Streep referred to the challenge of portraying Lady Thatcher as “daunting and exciting,” and as requiring “as much zeal, fervour and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher possesses.” Her performance has already been widely praised by critics, but for those who respect Lady Thatcher, not all the omens are positive. In an interview with The New York Times, Streep compared Lady Thatcher to King Lear and commented that what interested …
There are quite a few reasons to be concerned about the U.N.’s pending Arms Trade Treaty. It poses a number of risks to the Second Amendment and, more broadly, it is based on the completely fallacious belief that all the world’s nations are actually serious about controlling the illicit arms trade. If they were, of course, no treaty would be necessary. What the treaty will end up doing is making the arms trade more dangerous, by giving the world’s dictator states an internationally-recognized right to import and export all the …
The latest issue of the Weekly Standard gives everyone the chance to play a game called “What if it happened in America?” What if in America there was a gang of neo-Nazis who, over the course of 14 years, murdered 10 people, nine of them “foreigners” and one a policewoman? What if the gang had also carried out a nail-bomb attack in an immigrant neighborhood? What if immigrant (in this case, Turkish) households and apartments were attacked with Molotov cocktails and spray-painted with Nazi SS symbols? What if the authorities …
When in November 1942 the British Army broke and routed Rommel, and sent him fleeing through Libya, Winston Churchill recognized that it was not the end of the war. But it was, he said, the end of the beginning. We are at the same place in Libya today – not at the end, merely at the end of the beginning. If Libya comes to be dominated by Islamists, or falls into chaos, the destruction of Gaddafi’s tyranny will evoke less satisfaction. But as Churchill said in another connection, the chains …
On July 15, the U.N. wrapped up its third and final Preparatory Committee meeting on its Arms Trade Treaty. After a last gathering devoted to procedural matters in early 2012, the U.N. will call a concluding conference in 2012 to adopt the treaty and open it for national ratification. Unfortunately, while the most recent committee improved the treaty, it could not remedy the treaty’s fundamental flaws. This week, the Senate took notice of this fact. A letter drafted by Senator Jerry Moran (R–KS), and signed by 44 other Senators, alerts …
American commentators are beginning to react to a British announcement of a modest increase in defense spending. Any increase is welcome, but there is unfortunately a good deal less to this increase than meets the eye. Start with the amount of the increase, which has been reported in the U.S. as being 30 billion pounds. The correct figure is actually 3 billion pounds (or about 5 billion dollars). That increase will kick in only after 2015, after the next Spending Review, and will be spread over a five-year period. It …
President Obama’s address to Britain’s Parliament in historic Westminster Hall was of a piece with many of his speeches: a mixture of soaring generalities and devils in the details, with some dubious history thrown in. The President’s entire visit to Britain has delivered a mixed message. Both leaders have evidently been told that they should downplay the fact that a Special Relationship exists between the U.S. and Britain and focus instead on what is now supposedly an “essential” relationship. But both the President and the Prime Minister have—rightly—ignored these promptings …
Earlier this week, former National Security Adviser Jim Jones was promoting “a type of Marshall Plan for emerging democratic states like Egypt.” The White House has now stated that in his speech on the Middle East this morning, President Obama will announce a new foreign aid package for Egypt. Egypt’s financial situation is undeniably dire. As David P. Goldman noted two weeks ago in the Asia Times, “Egypt is running out of food and, more gradually, running out of money with which to buy it. . . Egypt imports half …
It’s a common-sense idea that criminals should not be able to escape justice in one country simply by fleeing to another. In this Internet age, it’s also common sense that citizens of one country should not be able commit crimes electronically in another without fear of punishment. This is the problem that extradition is intended to solve. Of course, it’s also true that all democratic nations have the obligation to protect the rights of their citizens and uphold their national sovereignty. Thus, any system of extradition must balance the national …
