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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump made an incredible claim—literally incredible, as in impossible to believe. He said he had won his 43rd golf championship. All of these “championships” have been “won” at clubs owned by the “victor,” Trump.

In the most recent case, Trump said he had won the senior championship at Trump National Golf Club, in Bedminster, New Jersey. He announced his achievement in his trademark fashion:

“I won with a score of 70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things. It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”

A score of 70 would be two under par. That is, again, incredible. As Rick Reilly commented, “No 80-year-old on earth with a pancake swing and the chip yips has ever shot TEN SHOTS under his age.”

Reilly is a veteran golf writer who in 2019 published a book about Trump and golf: Commander in Cheat.

You thought a 70 was good, how about a 67? That’s what Trump claimed to have shot in 2023, to win that same championship. He wrote, “Now, some people will think that sounds low, but there is no hanky/lanky [sic].”

Trump is a specialist in hanky/lanky. Reilly, in his book, reports that caddies nicknamed him “Pelé”—for his habit of kicking his ball out of the rough and into the fairway.

Bill Clinton was no stranger to hanky/lanky, on and off the golf course. In 1996, Byron York published a long, detailed piece on that president and his golf in The American Spectator: “Clinton’s Bad Lie.”

Falstaff says, “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” Trump has an amazing ability to co-opt others in his grievances, boasts, and fabrications. Last week, I wrote about the late Senator Lindsey Graham, and his embrace of Trump after the 2016 election. In 2017, Graham claimed that Trump had shot a round of 73 with him.

That told me more about Graham than about Trump’s golf.

In 1994, Kim Jong-il, the late North Korean dictator, played his first round of golf. He had a score of 34—over 18 holes. His round included 11 holes-in-one. If you don’t believe that, you can take it up with North Korean state media.

Fidel Castro was not one for golf—although there are some famous, goofy photos of him as a young dictator with his comrade Che Guevara, on the golf course. They are wearing military fatigues and combat boots. Castro effectively banned golf in Cuba, condemning it as a “bourgeois” pursuit.

But his son Antonio managed to play. He was sometimes depicted as a golf champion, as well as a fishing champion. Also, he was an official in national and international baseball federations.

Dictators’ sons like to involve themselves in sports. (I have a number of stories about this in a book, Children of Monsters.) Vassily Stalin was the boss of several Soviet teams. He punished them ruthlessly when they did not succeed. In Iraq, Uday Hussein did the same thing. He was the head of the national soccer federation and the Olympic committee.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser podcast

Muhammad Qaddafi headed Libya’s Olympic committee. His brother Saadi headed the soccer federation. He was also a player—the captain of the national team, in fact. Referees never crossed him, and broadcasters were not allowed to mention any other player’s name. They referred to Saadi by name. All the other players, they referred to by their numbers.

Saadi bought his way onto the European circuit for a while. He signed with teams in Italy. The joke in Libya went, “Other players are paid to play, but Saadi pays to play.”

At the end of 2021, an interesting hockey match took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. On one team were Vladimir Putin and the dictator from Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. Also present on the ice were retired Russian hockey stars. The dictators’ team won 18 to 7.

Putin scored seven goals—as many as the other team altogether. Lukashenko scored a measly two goals. But his 17-year-old son redeemed the family honor, scoring four.

It’s easy to laugh at dictators and their pretensions. But shouldn’t Americans be embarrassed when their president claims to have won his 43rd golf championship? By shooting two under par? Maybe that is not as outlandish and outrageous as Kim Jong-il’s 34, but—come on.

In 2016, a colleague of mine, on his way to being a full-time Trump booster, said, “Trump isn’t a liar, he’s a bullshitter.” In the years since, I have not really detected the difference.

Golf is a game of honor. It is a revealer of character. The subtitle of Byron York’s 1996 piece about Clinton was, “The way he plays golf tells you more about his character than any special prosecutor ever will.” The subtitle of Rick Reilly’s 2019 book is “How Golf Explains Trump.”

When I spoke of these issues on social media, a tweeter named Jas Easterly responded with a quote: “If you aren’t playing by the rules, it’s not golf.” He then said that his grandfather Harry had despised cheats. Harry Easterly was the president of the United States Golf Association and a steward and champion of the rules.

A couple of weeks ago, I podcasted with Gabriel Sterling, an elections official in Georgia. He was one of the Republicans who refused to falsify the 2020 presidential election, despite great pressure from Trump & Co. I told a favorite story about Bobby Jones.

In the 1925 US Open, he called a penalty on himself—two strokes—and wound up losing the Open by a stroke. When people praised him for his sportsmanship and honesty, he would have none of it. “Sooner praise a man for not robbing a bank,” said Jones.

Yes. But when bank robbery is in vogue and encouraged—not participating in it is commendable.

Gabe Sterling made an interesting point. The rules of golf are written down, but you have to carry them out. You have to abide by them. Otherwise, they are irrelevant words on paper. And our government functions in much the same manner.

We have “parchment barriers” aplenty, but there’s no substitute for honorable men and women in public life, and in life at large.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

There’s an old expression: “If you have something to say, say it to my face.” As a rule, I criticize public figures when they’re alive and kicking. When they die, I favor praise or silence.

My friend William F. Buckley Jr. would occasionally write a biting obit—as he did when Murray Rothbard, the anarcho-capitalist, died in 1995. The writer Florence King said that WFB had authored an “attack obituary” or a “hit obit.”

He arguably had. But Rothbard, an old Buckley antagonist, deserved it.

When Lindsey Graham, the veteran South Carolina senator, died last month, there were many appreciations and many—well, non-appreciations. Today, I propose to write neither type of piece. I will offer some observations, providing angles on a politician of our times.

I first encountered Graham at Davos in the mid-2000s. He was in the company of Senator John McCain, as he often was. Graham clearly relished being in Davos. He relished being “in the arena” wherever that arena was.

In those days, Graham was a bête noire of the Right. Rush Limbaugh dubbed him “Senator Grahamnesty,” for his work on immigration reform. (“Amnesty,” “Grahamnesty,” get it?) Graham was also tagged as a “neocon,” in a pejorative way.

So was John McCain, of course.

“He’s like a son to me,” McCain often said of Graham. In a jocular mood, he’d say, “Lindsey is my illegitimate son.”

I talked with McCain about this in 2015. It was the second-ever episode of my podcast, Q&A, the first having been with Garry Kasparov, the founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative and The Next Move.

McCain said that he and Graham had many interests in common—chiefly concerning foreign policy and national security. They were big promoters of freedom, democracy, and human rights. They thought that both America and the world were better off with America engaged in the world.

McCain also noted that Graham was just plain fun. “Entertaining.” “Not boring.”

So true. Graham once told me that when he showed up at some campaign event or civic gathering, “my first ten minutes is standup.”

In 2016, he ran for president—the Republican nomination. He and Donald Trump brawled. Graham said, “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.”

He also said—tweeted—“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”

The GOP did not get destroyed. Trump, in fact, won. And that changed everything. Many Republicans had objected to Trump, not on grounds that he would be bad for the country, but on grounds that he couldn’t win.

No one got with the program with more alacrity, or brazenness, than Lindsey Graham. In November 2017, he told CNN, “What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy some kind of kook not fit to be president.”

Had Graham forgotten that he had called Trump a “kook” “unfit for office” the year before?

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

In the past decade, I have heard the expression “to navigate the Trump era.” How have Republican politicians and journalists “navigated the Trump era”?

It is only human to do some navigation. And it is natural for politicians to be political. (The journalists have less excuse. Truth-telling should be more their bag.)

“You want Graham to have a seat at the table,” I often heard. “You want Graham to play golf with Trump. Better that Graham be in his ear than the isolationists, right?”

Maybe. But Trump has always changed people more than they have changed him.

We must also consider the simple matter of partisanship—“the call of the tribe.” (Mario Vargas Llosa used this phrase in the title of a book.) Graham was a Republican, and where his tribe went, there went he.

But he was probably more aware of this than most. He would comment on his own hypocrisy.

When Trump and his team covered for the Saudi dictatorship after that dictatorship murdered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Graham said, “If they were in a Democratic administration, I would be all over them for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia.”

When Trump announced a pullout from Syria later in 2018, Graham said, “If Obama had done this, we’d be going nuts right now: how weak, how dangerous.”

Graham stayed close to Trump right through the afternoon of January 6, 2021, when the mob assaulted the Congress. That night, Graham said, “Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. I hate it being this way. All I can say is, count me out. Enough is enough.”

Enough was enough for about three weeks. Graham was then back at Trump’s side, along with pretty much every other Republican in the country.

In this, Graham was a man of our times, an emblem of our times—though more colorful and flagrant than most.

When the United States and Israel launched what would be called the “Iran war” last February, Graham appeared on Fox News and said, “To Donald J. Trump: You just surpassed Ronald Reagan as the most consequential Republican president since Lincoln.” He went on to say, “You’re Reagan plus, plus, plus.”

Was the senator pumping Trump’s ego? Or did he mean it?

“To live is to maneuver,” said Whittaker Chambers (in a line quoted by Bill Buckley). Yes. It is hard, and unwise, to live without maneuvering or navigating. But to a point. You have to stand for something, right? You have to draw some line, right?

Herbert Hoover gibed that FDR was “a chameleon on plaid.” Lindsey Graham once said to a friend of mine, “If you’re lookin’ for consistency, I’m not your guy.”

Congressman Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who served in the House from 1975 to 2007, had the job of speaking to new members at their freshman orientation. He stressed one thing: Figure out what you’re willing to lose your seat over. What principle or policy. If there is no such thing, “then you’re going to do damage here.”

Lindsey Graham would have been reelected unto forever. His predecessor, Strom Thurmond, was in the Senate for almost 50 years.

One evening, Graham and I were speaking at the same conference (with the senator having a bigger role, obviously). We were sitting at the same table when our host was introducing him. Graham was looking at his phone.

Our host noted that Graham had now received more votes than anyone else in South Carolina history. I leaned over and whispered to Graham, “More than Strom?” He nodded yes. Still looking at his phone, he said, “Don’t tell him. He’ll come back.””

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In June, at the G7 summit in France, President Trump said, “Look, our elections are totally rigged. We have rigged elections.” America’s enemies have always said that our democracy is a sham. Now we have a president who says it, and on foreign soil.

Who needs Kremlin propaganda? And who undermines trust in American democracy more than the president himself?

Traditionally, the rigging of elections is a job for dictators and their cadres. Last week, Meduza, the Russian news organization in exile, ran an article under the following headline: “As support for Putin slips, the Kremlin lowers the ruling party’s election target amid fears a landslide victory would look suspicious.”

That headline says a lot about the nature of dictatorships.

Russia will “hold” “legislative” “elections” in September. (There will be an unusual number of quotation marks in this piece of mine.) “President” Putin does not have to “run again” until 2030. But he has done pretty well in “elections” past.

In 2000, he squeaked by with 53 percent of the “vote.” (His closest competitor got 29 percent.) Since then, his total has ranged from 64 percent to 87 percent.

Of course, it helps if your main opponents are dead. Boris Nemtsov, the valiant opposition leader, was murdered in 2015 within sight of the Kremlin. Alexei Navalny, another valiant one, was murdered in 2024 while in prison.

In a 1987 column, Charles Krauthammer came up with the “Tirana Index.” Named for Albania’s capital, the index holds that, in Krauthammer’s words, “repressiveness correlates with electoral success.” In 1982, the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha had won by 1,627,959 votes to 1.

Why was there a need for any opposing vote at all? One vote does not make a fig leaf. Maybe a thousand votes would have been more imaginative?

François Duvalier was not a man for fig leaves. In 1957, he was elected president of Haiti. This election was less corrupt than subsequent elections would be.

In 1961, Duvalier decided to stage a referendum, asking the people whether they would like six more years of him as “president.” They answered in the affirmative—by a vote of 1,320,748 to zero.

Duvalier, humble, said, “I accept the people’s will. As a revolutionary, I have no right to disregard the will of the people.”

Not waiting for the expiration of his “term,” Duvalier staged another referendum in 1964. This time, he asked the people whether they wanted to make him “president” for life. They did—by a vote of 2.8 million to 3,234.

That’s a lot of no votes—almost amounting to a fig leaf.

In 1971, the dictator was ailing and in need of a successor. That would be Jean-Claude, his only son. But according to the Haitian constitution, you had to be 40 to be president. And Jean-Claude was 19.

Duvalier père, ever thoughtful, asked the people whether they wanted the age minimum lowered to 18. In tandem with that, he asked them whether they wanted Jean-Claude to be his successor.

Amazingly, they did, and without a fig leaf: the result was 2,391,916 to zero.

“Papa Doc” died in April 1971, and the 19-year-old “Baby Doc” took over, becoming the youngest national leader in the world. (Those interested in more on this subject may consult my book Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators.)

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq in 1979. In 1995, it occurred to him to hold a referendum, ratifying his rule. Why do they do it? Why do dictators go through the charade? Their ego may demand it. Also, these charades might be the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

In 1995, 8.4 million “votes” were “cast,” and Saddam Hussein got 99.96 percent of them. Some 3,000 “votes” went the other way—same as in Haiti in 1964.

By 2002, Saddam Hussein was even more popular. He staged another referendum, this time winning 100 percent, in a 100 percent turnout—11,445,638 “votes.”

Putin is more canny than that, you see. He assigns himself more plausible, though equally fraudulent, percentages.

In Egypt, “President” Sisi had an “opponent” in the 2018 “election.” It was an interesting kind of opponent to have: the man, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, endorsed Sisi. Moussa got almost 3 percent of the vote anyway.

Back in 1996, Yasser Arafat allowed an opponent in the Palestinian Authority. She was a grandmother, Samiha Khalil, who got 11.5 percent against Arafat—which was pretty respectable, under the circumstances.

I have written in a jocular or sardonic manner about a grave and maddening subject: the faking of elections by dictators and the denial of rights to citizens.

For many years, I heard people say, “Castro is popular with his people, you know!” One answer was this: “If that’s true, why doesn’t he prove it? If he is so popular, why doesn’t he allow opposition parties? Why doesn’t he allow independent media? Why doesn’t he allow free and fair elections?”

Also: “Why does he exile, jail, maim, or murder his critics?”

In recent years, I have heard people say, “Putin is popular with his people, you know!” The same answer applies.

Let me end where I began, with the United States. On January 2, 2021, President Trump got on the phone with Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia. Trump had lost the election in November 2020, and he was trying to overturn it. One state he was trying to reverse was Georgia.

Trump said to Raffensperger, “What I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes.” That is a specific, not a ballpark, number. Biden had won Georgia by 11,779. Trump was not even allowing himself a cushion.

On Thanksgiving Day, at the White House, Trump had said of Raffensperger, “He’s an enemy of the people.”

Dictators, rather than democrats, talk that way. So far, our constitutional “guardrails” have held, more or less. But whack on them long enough, and who knows?

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

A small incident on July 15 relates to something bigger about where we stand—“we” meaning the United States.

The Navy’s Blue Angels conducted a flyover in Pensacola, Florida, where they are based. One pilot flew dangerously close to the beach, sending umbrellas and chairs flying.

Fox News, on its website, played the story this way: “Blue Angels thrill beachgoers with wild low flyover.” Yes, some were thrilled. Other people were maybe a little less so.

One of these was Captain Adam Bryan, the Blue Angels’ commanding officer. In an interview the day after, he said, “One of our pilots found himself over the beach, over a crowd, in an unsafe situation.”

Bryan went on to say, “We’ll have a heavy review of what happened yesterday to ensure that, one, we don’t put ourselves in unsafe situations again and, two, we learn from it.”

Captain Bryan graduated from the Naval Academy in 2005 and has been honored many times. He is clearly a professional.

The Trump administration did not sound like Bryan, at all. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, posted a picture of a flyover—if not the specific flyover in question—and said, “Carry on Patriots.”

Parnell’s boss, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, tweeted, “The flyovers will continue until morale improves.” (This was a play on an old satirical line: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”)

The White House posted a Blue Angels picture and said, “It’s okay to love America.” Had anyone suggested otherwise?

Then chiming in was the acting secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao. He posted a video of the flyover and said, “That’s the sound of Freedom!” He also said, “No reprimands. No firings. No problem.”

One of the president’s sons, Eric Trump, got into the act, tweeting, “Can’t stand the manufactured outrage by the low-T mainstream media.” “Low-T” stands for “low-testosterone,” and it’s a new putdown in the MAGA vocabulary.

Outstanding in this whole affair was the pilot himself, Lieutenant Chris Houben, of Geneva, Illinois. He talked with the Florida House representative for Pensacola, Michelle Salzman, who wrote the following about him:

“He didn’t make excuses. He didn’t try to shift blame. He simply talked about the miscalculated turn, something no pilot ever wants to experience … More than anything, he talked about the weight he’s been carrying since that moment.”

Salzman continued:

“He shared that he was shaken by what happened and needed time to process it. You could see the disappointment on his face. This wasn’t someone brushing off a mistake, it was someone who holds himself to an incredibly high standard and was deeply affected by falling short of it.”

That is the kind of man we ought to want in our military.

For many years, I have had two prayers (among others) for Americans on the right: that they recover a proper sense of patriotism and that they recover a proper sense of manliness. Patriotism is not chest-thumping jingoism, and manliness is not grunting, preening machismo.

On the Fourth of July, eight Army pilots, in Apache helicopters, did a flyover of their own. This was on the South Carolina coast. Apparently, the flyover was problematic, and the Army immediately suspended the pilots, with an investigation pending.

But Hegseth tweeted, “We’ll fix this. Carry on, Patriots.” Not long after, his spokesman, Parnell, tweeted, “Effective immediately, the suspension of all involved South Carolina pilots has been lifted. Carry on Patriots.”

Parnell, unlike his boss, has no time for commas.

Still another incident had occurred in March. Apache pilots paid a visit to the home of Kid Rock, outside Nashville. He calls his home the “Southern White House.” Kid Rock is sort of an official artist of the MAGA GOP. For example, he performed at the 2024 Republican convention.

On that day in March, Kid Rock and the pilots exchanged salutes, as the helicopters hovered. On social media, the rocker posted a video of the moment, along with a statement that began, “This is a level of respect that [the] shit for brains Governor of California will never know.” (In this period, Governor Gavin Newsom and President Trump were feuding.)

The Army immediately suspended the pilots with an investigation pending. Hegseth put a quick stop to that, saying—what else?—“Carry on, patriots.”

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

A month later, Hegseth and Kid Rock took joyrides together in Apaches.

More than a few people wondered, “What if Apache pilots had hovered over the home of Bruce Springsteen, an anti-Trump rocker? Would that have been cool? Would the pilots have been ‘patriots’ then?”

Of all the institutions in America, it would be nice if our military were free of partisan and tribal politics.

I think of Ron Silver, the movie actor, who died in 2009. He was an ardent Democrat and liberal activist. At Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, in 1993, Silver saw a military flyover at the National Mall. At first, he bristled. Why should the military be involved? But then he thought, “They’re our planes now.”

He got over this. In fact, Silver became a “9/11 Democrat,” meaning a Democrat who supported President George W. Bush after the War on Terror began. Silver spoke at the Republican convention in 2004, the one that renominated Bush.

Back to this business of testosterone (I’m afraid). Last week, Secretary Hegseth posted a video of himself, which he headed “The High-T Department of War.” (The Trump administration has been styling the Department of Defense the “Department of War.”)

In the video, Hegseth said that the Pentagon would be screening servicemen for their testosterone levels.

“What is a man?” is an ancient question, and so is “What makes a soldier?” We might explore these questions at length another time. For now, I would like to recall another Trump secretary of defense, very different from Hegseth.

He was Jim Mattis, who served from 2017 to 2019. Mattis is a retired Marine Corps general. He commanded our forces in three wars. Trump was attracted to Mattis’s nickname: “Mad Dog.” But the general had another nickname: the “Warrior Monk.” Mattis is a very thoughtful, sober type.

Hopelessly at odds with Trump, Mattis resigned. Trump then pronounced him “the world’s most overrated general.”

For a time, Trump had another former Marine Corps general at his side: John F. Kelly. Kelly was first the secretary of homeland security and then the president’s chief of staff. At almost the same time as Mattis, Kelly resigned, dismayed at what he had seen.

Kelly is at the center of one of my favorite stories about patriotism. Before the confirmation hearing on Kelly’s nomination to the DHS post, a young White House aide suggested to him that he wear an American-flag lapel pin.

Bear in mind, Kelly had commanded troops in one war, Iraq, and lost a son, Robert, in another, Afghanistan.

Kelly said to the young aide, “I am the American flag.” What need had he of a pin?

Over and over, Pete Hegseth has ousted senior and experienced officers from the military—men and women who know our traditions and ethos. The most recent to go was General Chris Donahue. There must be civilian control over the military—but let it be as wise and apolitical as possible.

A politically charged military is a threat to democratic health.

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There are some 1,300 political prisoners in Cuba, and two of them are Félix Navarro and Saylí Navarro. They are father and daughter. It is very rare for a father and daughter to be political prisoners. I can think of no other example.

Félix, 73, is in Agüica Prison, a notorious maximum-security facility. Saylí, 40, is in La Bellotex, a women’s prison. Both of these prisons are in Matanzas Province.

No one in the Cuban democracy movement is more esteemed by his fellow democrats than Félix Navarro. In March 2022, the Council for Democratic Transition in Cuba put out a statement, saying, “Félix Navarro represents all the solid values that enrich the human soul: order, justice, moderation, humility, and honesty.”

The statement continues, “Hardened in the face of the unjust sentences suffered for defending freedom and rights for Cubans, he has not lost an iota of his nobility, despite the cruelty to which he has been subjected, especially now, when his daughter has also been sentenced to prison.”

Saylí Navarro is cut from the same cloth as her father.

The National Endowment for Democracy, in Washington, will honor various people with Democracy Awards in a ceremony at Mount Vernon this September. One of the honorees (in absentia) will be Félix.

NED was founded in 1983 at the instigation of President Reagan. Last year, Elon Musk, when he was a senior adviser to President Trump in charge of cutting government, said this about NED: “That evil organization needs to be dissolved.”

Fortunately, that blessed organization still breathes.

Félix Navarro Rodríguez was born on July 10, 1953, in Perico, Matanzas Province. His family was a peasant family. Bright and curious—and with a desire to help others—Félix became a teacher. But in the 1980s he took the fateful step of democratic activism.

In 1992, he was arrested for such acts as distributing pro-democracy posters. He was sentenced to prison on charges of being “anti-revolution” and spreading “enemy propaganda.” He was released in 1994 but stripped of his license to teach.

Saylí Navarro Álvarez was born on March 11, 1986, on the Isla de la Juventud, the Isle of Youth. Her youth would not be like others’. She was six when her father first went to prison. The Navarros were subject to the indignities and horrors visited on an “anti-revolutionary” family: raids on their home, arbitrary detentions, etc. Young Saylí, filled with anxiety, experienced hair loss.

But she became something strong and extraordinary. “I had to grow up prematurely,” she said in a 2013 interview with Ivette Leyva Martínez. “I feel good about what I do, I assume it as something natural. My dream is to see a democratic and legally constituted state arise in Cuba.”

In March 2003 came the “Black Spring”—the dictatorship’s crackdown on pro-democracy groups. Seventy-five democracy leaders were imprisoned, including Félix Navarro. His wife, Sonia Álvarez Campillo, and their daughter, Saylí, were among the founders of the Ladies in White.

This is a group of prisoners’ relatives who attend Mass every Sunday, wearing white, and walk peacefully through the streets. Those walks are seldom peaceful, however: the ladies are harassed and attacked by agents of the state.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Over and over, Saylí was detained, often violently. She said in that 2013 interview, “I never resist arrest, but they always use excessive force and hit you. I am able to overcome my fear because I know they are the ones who are committing a crime.”

Owing to her position as a dissident’s daughter, and a dissident herself, Saylí was denied the higher education available to others. But she is obviously wiser than most.

After about eight years, in late 2010 and early 2011, the Black Spring prisoners were released, in a deal brokered by the Vatican. Almost all of the prisoners were exiled to Spain, as a condition of their release. The last two prisoners to be released were Félix Navarro and José Daniel Ferrer—as they had refused to go into exile. They vowed to continue their work on the island, which they did.

On July 11, 2021, the island exploded, in mass protests. Many were arrested that day. On July 12, Félix went to his local police station, to inquire about those arrested—which was like him. He himself was arrested, along with the woman who had accompanied him: Saylí.

Félix was sentenced to nine years in prison, Saylí to eight. On what charges? You know, it doesn’t matter. If a dictatorship wants to imprison you, it just will. But, for the record, the made-up charges included “contempt,” “disturbing the peace,” and “disobedience.”

It probably goes without saying that the conditions in which the Navarros are kept, in their respective prisons, are vile and inhuman. Moreover, the 73-year-old Félix is in bad health: with diabetes, post-COVID pulmonary complications, and yet more ailments.

A few months ago—on April 8—Félix was savagely beaten in prison. They then handcuffed him and threw him into a punishment cell. Anamely Ramos, a veteran democracy activist, spoke for many when she said:

“Neither his age, nor his condition, nor the respect he commands has been sufficient to contain the violence. Félix should never have been in prison. … It is public knowledge that he is an innocent man.”

But he is not innocent of opposing the dictatorship and standing up for the rights of his fellow Cubans and human beings. Neither is his daughter.

In recent weeks, the auxiliary bishop of Havana, Eloy Ricardo Domínguez Martínez, has paid visits to both of them. He has proposed a deal: release at the price of exile. Both Navarros have refused.

Exile is a touchy subject. “Stay or go.” It is a personal, individual subject. There are great and heroic dissidents who accept exile, however grudgingly, with whatever agony. And there are others who do not. Some have no choice at all.

And whether you really have a choice can be gray …

Cubans, wherever they live, are in awe of the Navarros, and of the others like them. A totalitarian society tends to give birth to heroes. Cuba has.

Félix and Saylí are “patriots,” says Maria Werlau, the co-founder and executive director of Cuba Archive. “That, plus their great project of helping people, is considered dangerous by the Cuban dictatorship. Thus, they are paying such a high price. Their suffering breaks my heart.”

I suspect we will see the Navarros freed one day. And even Cuba itself.

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This piece was originally published on Onward and Upward by Jay Nordlinger.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

America is a “universal nation,” yes, but it’s also a specific one, a peculiar one. Here I borrow a word from the King James Bible, which refers repeatedly to “a peculiar people.”

We are a nation “in the air,” if you will—a nation of principles and ideals—but also a nation “on the ground.”

We come from England, and from Plymouth specifically, you might say. We have in our roots the Mayflower Compact and the Plymouth Colony.

A few years later, John Winthrop came, to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Before his group left England, Winthrop said, “… we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Of course, he was borrowing from the Sermon on the Mount, and what could be more universal than that?

Some 150 years after these Pilgrims and Puritans, we had the drama of our revolution. In 1976, our bicentennial year, my parents took us to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail, which traces revolutionary sites. This year—our 250th—a friend of mine has taken his own kids to walk the trail.

Part of our past is our civil war, which drenched America in blood. Is it past, entirely? (Cue William Faulkner, who wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”) Newcomers to America often have a hard time understanding our racial sensitivities.

Like many another people, we have our songs: “At the River,” “Shenandoah,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” (Spirituals constitute an American songbook unto themselves.) “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Good Vibrations,” “Sweet Home Alabama.”

We have our lines of poetry: “I hear America singing” (“the varied carols I hear”). “A dream deferred.” The “City of the Big Shoulders” (meaning Chicago). When I was a kid, there was an ad slogan, capturing something essential: “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.”

When I was a student abroad, a lot of my fellow Americans wanted to blend in. They were loath to be taken for an American (and plenty of them had been taught to be ashamed of their country). I stood out like an American thumb, and still do.

At the moment, I am in Italy, where I was a student. You can spot me as an American from 200 paces: shorts, golf shirt, a certain comportment. I ask for ice for my drinks and (sometimes) butter for my bread.

I might as well sing “Yankee Doodle.”

And yet and yet …

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I know some people who wish that those words had been omitted from the Declaration. “Airy-fairy rhetoric, universalist hokum.” But as some of us see it: classically and necessarily American.

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Important to many of us is what Lincoln said of Henry Clay in his eulogy of him: “Mr. Clay’s predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep devotion to the cause of human liberty …” Lincoln went on to say, “He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.”

You have heard of people who believe that they were “born American but in the wrong place”—meaning that they were born in a different country. I have known such people. Some were able to join us, and become citizens, and some were not.

I remember what Reagan said in his very last speech as president. He quoted a letter he had received: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Five years ago, I met a computer engineer and tech entrepreneur in Dallas, Mark Haidar. I had a talk with him at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Haidar is included in a book of Bush’s paintings: Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants.

Mark Haidar—originally “Mahmoud”—grew up in Lebanon. His family suffered many hardships and horrors.

One day, two employees of the United Nations showed up at Mahmoud’s school. “This was the day that changed my life,” Haidar told me. They had brought with them two computers—by which the boy was fascinated.

He found something called “Encarta,” an early Microsoft encyclopedia. He began reading about the United States and discovered the Declaration of Independence—a document that excited him. He knew, in his core, it was true: Human beings have rights that no man or system can negate.

From then on, he had a tradition. Every time he got a new notebook in school—like a spiral notebook—he would write on its cover seven words: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

America is important to us Americans, needless to say, but it is also important to the world at large: as an example of ordered liberty and human dignity; as an opponent of tyranny; as a haven for the oppressed.

One of the most moving, and painful, reporting trips I have ever taken was to Denmark last year. I talked to a bunch of Danes about America’s new posture toward their country: one of hostility and belligerence.

They were heartbroken. They had loved and defended America all their lives. One of these men was in tears, a sight I will not soon forget.

“So what?” some might sneer. “America First!” Well, America’s openness, generosity, and leadership have benefited one country above all: America.

There is an Italian expression, fare una brutta figura—roughly, to put forth an ugly face. Last week, an Italian friend remarked to me, “I’m sorry to say it, but, these days, America is putting forth una brutta figura.”

What can be done about it? Each of us, as individuals, can put forth the best face we can.

It was Carl Schurz who made possibly my favorite statement ever about patriotism. (He was a German immigrant who became a Union general, a US senator, and so on.) “My country, right or wrong—when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set.”

I also like what Miss Julia said. Formally, she was Julia L. Coleman, a high school teacher and administrator in Plains, Georgia. One of her students was Jimmy Carter, who liked to quote her: “We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”

I’m going to close with John Winthrop. Before setting sail for the New World, he told his fellow voyagers, “If we mess up this experiment of ours, our name will be mud throughout the world.” I have paraphrased, of course. You want the real stuff, however stern it is?

“… if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world”—a bad story, a negative example.

With freedom comes responsibility. (You have heard this a time or two.) I ask my fellow Americans, aspirant or actual: Would we have it any other way?

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This column concludes our mini series looking at America’s milestone birthdays—and how contemporary leaders handled those anniversaries. Read Part I on Calvin Coolidge at America’s 150th, and last week’s installment on Gerald Ford at America’s bicentennial.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

A couple of articles ago, I quoted Donald Rumsfeld, who said, “You go to war with the army you have.” By the same token, you mark a major American anniversary with the president you have.

For our 50th, we had John Quincy Adams. For our centennial, we had Ulysses S. Grant. For our 150th, we had Calvin Coolidge. For our bicentennial, we had Gerald R. Ford. And today, for our 250th, we have Donald J. Trump.

In recent days, he has created a “culture war” over the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. This “war” is an excellent example of Trump’s modus operandi. You can read details elsewhere. I would like to make a single point.

According to Trump, the Reflecting Pool ought to be “American Flag Blue.” Actually, a reflecting pool is meant to reflect—in this case, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the natural surroundings.

Trump’s presidency is a reflection of our nation, is it not? “Here, the people rule.” In a democracy, the people say something about who they are in the political choices they make.

It was almost inevitable that we had cage fighting on the White House lawn. Before that, there was a weigh-in of the contestants at the Lincoln Memorial.

At the end of one of the bouts, a fighter yelled, “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”

(There is a fixed belief in quarters of our country that the former first lady is, in fact, a man named “Mike.” I first learned of this belief about ten years ago.)

Speaking at Gettysburg, Lincoln said, “… we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.” I do not believe that the White House or the Lincoln Memorial should be hallowed. These are not sacred spaces; they are civic spaces.

But, you know: a little dignity and respect.

In 2020, President Trump arranged to have a Fox News interview inside the Lincoln Memorial. I thought this was gross. Also: can you imagine if President Obama had arranged such a thing with, say, MSNBC?

William F. Buckley Jr. said, “Within every conservative is a streak of libertarianism.” (WFB is thought of, rightly, as a conservative, but he sometimes described himself as a “libertarian.”) I further contend that within every conservative—and every liberal—is a streak of populism.

Don’t most of us smile on thinking of Andrew Jackson’s (raucous) first inauguration?

I must say, however, that recent years have narrowed my populist streak to a barely visible thread.

It is a trick of populists to say that if you object to such things as cage fighting on the White House lawn, you are a snob, an elitist, who looks down on “real people.”

There are many things you might say in return—including, “You have too dim a view of ‘real people.’”

Over the course of my life, I have seen high culture largely erased from the public square. There is barely any room for “middlebrow” culture—Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, say.

In 1961, the Kennedys invited Pablo Casals, the venerable Spanish cellist, to play at the White House. (It was not his first time. He had played for President McKinley in 1898.)

Vladimir Horowitz, the great Russian pianist, played recitals for Carter and Reagan. (The latter awarded Horowitz the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)

Leontyne Price sang for Johnson, Carter, and Reagan. Marilyn Horne sang for Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton. One could go on and on.

Kid Rock seems to be the artist laureate of the Trump administration and the GOP. Obviously, there is a place for Kid Rock in our culture—and in our official proceedings. Millions love him. But how about a place for the music of Ives, Barber, or the aforementioned Copland?

Might we hear a little poetry by Whitman, Dickinson, or Frost? (Robert Frost recited a poem of his at Kennedy’s inauguration.)

Everything is downward, downward.

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As for the festivities on July 4 itself, President Trump has announced that the nation will see “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.” This is par for the course.

An old expression applies to Trump: “He has to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.”

In the past, our presidents at least paid lip service to being “president of all the people.” Trump makes no effort at all. George W. Bush described himself as “a uniter, not a divider.” Trump is a master of division.

Here is a recent presidential missive, typical:

Last week, Barack Obama inaugurated his presidential library. In attendance were the living ex-presidents and their wives: the Clintons, the Bush 43s, and the Bidens.

In 2013, I attended the opening ceremony of Bush 43’s library (and wrote about it here). Sharing the stage with Bush were all the living ex-presidents and their wives—and the incumbent president and his wife, too: the Carters, the Bush 41s, the Clintons, and the Obamas.

“The establishment,” some people sneer. That’s one way of looking at it. Another is: “This is the way we do things here in America.” For instance, the outgoing president attends the inauguration of his successor. In January 2021, Donald Trump refused.

(Joe Biden attended both of Trump’s inaugurations—first as the outgoing vice president, second as the outgoing president.)

No foreign adversary maligns our country more than our president himself does. At the G7 summit in France this month, Trump said, “Look, our elections are totally rigged. We have rigged elections.” Who needs Kremlin propaganda?

I myself have been in Italy lately. And President Trump and the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, have been exchanging harsh words. Trump claimed that Meloni had “begged” to have her picture taken with him at the G7. Meloni said that this was a lie.

Does anyone doubt Meloni? Even Republican voters, in their heart of hearts?

When I was a student in Italy in 1984, a lot of people around me—Italian and American—despised President Reagan, and bad-mouthed America in the bargain. I delighted in defending both (and even got some grudging agreement).

All these years later, I find myself saying “Brava!” to the Italian leader, for telling the plain truth about the current occupant of the White House.

Above, I said “downward, downward.” I am in such a mood. In Verdi’s Falstaff, the fat knight says, “Mondo reo. Non c’è più virtù. Tutto declina.” Wicked world. There is no longer virtue. Everything is in decline.

Yes, I know: I’m a walking cliché. In every era, older people—especially conservatives—say, “The world is going to hell in a handbasket.” In my defense, however, there is no lack of evidence.

And yet, just as men have worse angels, they have better angels, as Lincoln said. May they swell in chorus, pronto!

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The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is pleased to join the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of The UnPopulist, as a media partner for the third annual Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference—LibCon 2026—in Washington, DC on July 16 and 17. Click here for more information and to register. Coinciding with America’s 250^th anniversary, the theme of the conference is the Reconstruction Agenda. The conference will assess the damage that authoritarian and demagogic politics have caused to the country’s liberal institutions and propose a path forward to rebuild accountability and confidence in the rule of law. The conference features a stellar lineup, including RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez, along with Francis Fukuyama, Anne Applebaum, David French, Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law and many more. We’ll be there and so should you.

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This column is Part II in a mini series looking at America’s milestone birthdays—and how contemporary leaders handled those anniversaries. Read last week’s installment on Calvin Coolidge at America’s 150th, and stay tuned for our coverage of Donald Trump at the semiquincentennial.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Last week, I wrote about President Calvin Coolidge and the speech he gave in 1926 about the Declaration of Independence. That year, America was marking the 150th anniversary of the Declaration.

Fifty years later, Gerald R. Ford was president. I remember that year, 1976, our Bicentennial, pretty well. I was 12.

With every passing week, I was becoming more interested in national and world affairs. The year 1976 was not only our Bicentennial, it was also a presidential election year.

Fresh on the scene was Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia. On the Republican side, President Ford was battling with Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California, for their party’s nomination.

I listened to the GOP convention in Kansas City on the radio. (I grant you, this was somewhat abnormal in a 12-year-old.)

For years already, I had loved the American founding. And 1976 was a bonanza for lovers of 1776 and all that.

Circulating in our money were “Bicentennial quarters.” It was cool to get one—not just a regular old quarter.

On television (CBS), we had the “Bicentennial Minute.” Nightly, there would be some nugget about the Revolution.

I remember the tall ships, gathered in New York Harbor, and later in Boston.

I remember the royals, too: Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip. They participated in our Bicentennial activities. Pretty sporting of them, I thought.

They gave us a “Bicentennial Bell,” cast at the same foundry in London as our Liberty Bell. The inscription on the Bicentennial Bell ends with “LET FREEDOM RING.”

That was very sporting, indeed. Those words come from “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” our patriotic song, which has the cheek to use the tune of “God Save the King” (or Queen).

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July 4, 1976, was a very busy day for President Ford. But, before getting to that day, I would like to touch on the day after—July 5. Ford presided over a naturalization ceremony at Monticello, Jefferson’s home.

He spoke to the new Americans about the place of immigration in our national story. People had always come from all over, he said, bringing something of the old, to blend with the new.

“Such transfusions of traditions and cultures, as well as of blood, have made America unique among nations and Americans a new kind of people. There is little the world has that is not native to the United States today.”

We have been able to offer citizenship to pretty much everybody. How? Because, said Ford, “we are uniquely a community of values, as distinct from a religious community, a racial community, a geographic community, or an ethnic community.”

Yes.

Our nation was founded, the president continued, “not on ancient legends or conquests or physical likeness or language, but on a certain political value which Jefferson’s pen so eloquently expressed.”

What did that pen express? “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” etc.

Everyone has his own idea of what it is to be an American. We fight about that nearly every day. Here is Ford’s idea:

“To be an American is to subscribe to those principles which the Declaration of Independence proclaims and the Constitution protects—the political values of self-government, liberty and justice, equal rights, and equal opportunity.”

And “these beliefs are the secrets of America’s unity from diversity—in my judgment the most magnificent achievement of our 200 years as a nation.”

Ford ended his remarks with an admonition:

“Remember that none of us are more than caretakers of this great country. Remember that the more freedom you give to others, the more you will have for yourself. Remember that without law there can be no liberty.”

Right on. Ordered liberty is the name of the game. The noun and the adjective are equally important. Liberty without order is something like anarchy, and order without liberty is—unfreedom.

About immigration, I would like to mention a simple fact. In our most recent presidential campaign, the two main nominees were Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Three of their four parents were immigrants. And the fourth—Trump’s father—was the son of immigrants.

This is classically American.

On July 4, 1976, while we were absorbed in tall ships and the like, there was big news from far away: Israel had rescued its hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, in a daring raid. Only one Israeli commando lost his life—Jonathan Netanyahu (brother of the future prime minister).

In the morning, President Ford delivered remarks at Valley Forge. He began, “They came here in the snows of winter over a trail marked with the blood of their rag-bound feet.”

That is an arresting sentence.

Further on, he told a story about the Battle of Concord. A veteran of that battle was interviewed at the age of 91. His interviewer asked, in essence, “Why did you do it? Why did you take up arms against the King? Had you been especially oppressed?”

“No,” came the answer, “never paid a penny for one of them stamps, never drank any tea, never heard of Locke. Only read the Bible and the Almanac.”

(The Stamp Act and the Tea Act were hated and resented by the American patriots, and the philosopher John Locke was a prime articulator of political freedom.)

Well then, why did he do it?

“Young man,” said the old man, “what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: We had always governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean that we should.”

A few hours after appearing at Valley Forge, Ford spoke at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He said, “Our Founding Fathers knew their Bibles as well as their Blackstone” (the standard book on law).

The population in general knew the Bible, if not Blackstone. Think of the Concord vet we have just heard from.

Our founders, said Ford, “boldly reversed the age-old political theory that kings derive their powers from God and asserted that both powers and unalienable rights belong to the people as direct endowments from their Creator.”

What’s more, “they declared that governments are instituted among men to secure their rights and to serve their purposes, and governments continue only so long as they have the consent of the governed.”

This is A-B-C—kindergarten talk. But it must be learned and relearned, in perpetuity.

Here is a shrewd point, made by Ford: “Seldom in history have the men who made a revolution seen it through, but the United States was fortunate.” How so? “The result of their deliberations and compromises was our Constitution, which William Gladstone, a great British prime minister, called ‘the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.’”

Have you ever thought about the relationship between the two “great charters” on which we are founded? In a pithy sentence, Ford said, “The Constitution was created to make the promise of the Declaration come true.”

He ended his speech by asking for “a moment of silent prayer and meditation in gratitude for all that we have received and to ask continued safety and happiness for each of us and for the United States of America.”

I have cited a lot of Fourth of July rhetoric—literal Fourth of July rhetoric. But, you know? I believe it all. And I hope that Americans will want to keep this unusual project going.

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The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is pleased to join the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of The UnPopulist, as a media partner for the third annual Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference—LibCon 2026—in Washington, DC on July 16 and 17. Click here for more information and to register. Coinciding with America’s 250^th anniversary, the theme of the conference is the Reconstruction Agenda. The conference will assess the damage that authoritarian and demagogic politics have caused to the country’s liberal institutions and propose a path forward to rebuild accountability and confidence in the rule of law. The conference features a stellar lineup, including RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez, along with Francis Fukuyama, Anne Applebaum, David French, Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law and many more. We’ll be there and so should you.

More from The Next Move:

This column is Part I in a mini series looking at America’s milestone birthdays—and how contemporary leaders handled those anniversaries. Stay tuned for our coverage of President Ford at America’s bicentennial and Donald Trump at the semiquincentennial.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

“You go to war with the army you have,” said Donald Rumsfeld. By the same token, you mark a major American anniversary with the president you have. We are now celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1826, on the 50th, John Quincy Adams was president. On the day itself—July 4, 1826—his father, John Adams, died. So did another former president, Thomas Jefferson.

In 1876, on the centennial, Ulysses S. Grant was president. (Short years before, on the field of battle, he had played a pivotal role in saving the Union.) In 1926, on the 150th anniversary, Calvin Coolidge was president. In 1976, for the bicentennial, it was Gerald R. Ford. And today, of course, the president is Donald Trump.

Here and now, I would like to focus on 1926. That year, Coolidge delivered an excellent speech—even a profound one—on the Declaration of Independence, and on the American founding in general.

That it speaks to us today—even in urgent tones—need hardly be said. But I will say it regardless: it does.

Coolidge delivered the speech in Philadelphia on the day after, i.e., July 5. His birthday, by the way, was July 4. He is the only president to have been born on the Fourth of July.

This president was known as “Silent Cal,” because he was taciturn. Do you know this famous anecdote about him? Whether it is true or not, it is illustrative.

When it is her turn in a receiving line, a woman says to Coolidge, “I have a bet with my husband that I can get you to say more than two words.” Coolidge replies, “You lose.”

He may have been sparing with his words—but he usually made them matter, as he did on that July day in 1926.

Coolidge described the Declaration of Independence as “the most important civil document in the world.” Its publication, he said, was “an incomparable event in the history of government.” That is not mere Fourth of July rhetoric—or Fifth of July rhetoric—but true, or at least arguably so.

“Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics,” said Coolidge, “every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken.”

I believe we are in need of “solace and consolation” today, amid that “clash” and that “welter.” Do we care to turn to our “two great charters”? Are we sufficiently aware of them? They may be the only thing that can hold us together.

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When I was in college, I sometimes heard the American Revolution mocked as “conservative”—not a real revolution, such as France would see 13 years later! Well, Coolidge embraced this. Referring to the Declaration, he said, “It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection.”

(The words “riotous insurrection” might remind you of January 6, as they do me.)

Our founding was “in no sense a radical movement,” said Coolidge, “but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative…”

If you want to start a brawl, just say, “America is an idea” (apart from blood and soil). In Philadelphia, Calvin Coolidge said that our founders established a new nation, yes, but also a new kind of nation: one built on ideas, principles, ideals.

He cited a big three—three “very definite propositions,” as he called them: all men are created equal; they have inalienable rights; the just powers of government come from the consent of the governed.

In 1926, as today, there were people who thought that the Declaration was outdated, that we needed something more suited to modern life. Coolidge would have none of it.

“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”

Do you fancy yourself a progressive? Do I? What are we progressing from?

“No advance, no progress, can be made beyond these propositions,” said Coolidge. “If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward…”

Backward to when?

To a time “when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary.”

Every day, I hear the claims of the “post-liberals.” To me, it usually seems that they are “pre-liberals.” The Enlightenment was a big mistake, and so was the American founding. Some of them say so outright (which has the virtue of candor).

You know what Benjamin Franklin said, after the Constitutional Convention. When someone asked, “Do we have a republic or a monarchy?,” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Here is Coolidge:

“A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features, the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions.”

For example?

“Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man—these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world.”

And here comes a warning:

“Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

Government has a role, right? It does. “Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed…” There is a but coming.

“…but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.”

That last sentence deserves to be read twice, as does the whole speech.

I will leave you with a passage—another one—that is beautiful, thought-provoking, and, to my sense, true:

“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.”

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The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is pleased to join the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of The UnPopulist, as a media partner for the third annual Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference—LibCon 2026—in Washington, DC on July 16 and 17. Click here for more information and to register. Coinciding with America’s 250^th anniversary, the theme of the conference is the Reconstruction Agenda. The conference will assess the damage that authoritarian and demagogic politics have caused to the country’s liberal institutions and propose a path forward to rebuild accountability and confidence in the rule of law. The conference features a stellar lineup, including RDI Advisory Board Member Anne Applebaum and RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez, along with Francis Fukuyama, David French, Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law and many more. We’ll be there and so should you.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Concert halls have been filled with American music this year as our country marks its 250th anniversary. A self-consciously American concert took place at Lincoln Center, in New York, a couple of Sundays ago.

The sponsoring organization was the Together in Hope Project, based in Minneapolis. The organization has been carrying out a project within a project: Sing Democracy 250. The motto of this project is “Uniting in harmony to renew democracy’s promise.”

That is something to get the attention of a music critic who is affiliated with the Renew Democracy Initiative. (I have been the music critic of The New Criterion, the monthly arts-and-letters journal, for many years.)

A co-founder of the Together in Hope Project, Celia Ellingson, made some remarks before the concert at Lincoln Center. She concluded her remarks by saying that we Americans must do all we can “to ensure that our democracy is not just remembered but renewed for the next 250 years.”

On hand were three choirs, combined. One of them was a local group: the “oratorio choir” from Stuyvesant High School, an institution better known for its scientific whizzes than for its musicians. Playing with the choirs was the Main Line Symphony Orchestra, from Greater Philadelphia.

These forces were conducted by G. Phillip Shoultz III—GPS3. He also served as a kind of emcee for the evening. In his remarks to the audience—about democracy and its challenges—he sounded like a civic pastor.

The concert began, fittingly enough, with the national anthem. It was in A flat, rather than the customary B flat. And it had been arranged by Shoultz himself. It is a skillful, pleasing arrangement, different enough to be ear-catching, not so different as to be distracting or self-advertising.

There were two big works on the program, beginning with Redeem the Dream, a kind of oratorio. It was composed by Brandon A. Boyd, who works at the University of Missouri.

Redeem the Dream begins with lines from the Declaration of Independence—the most famous lines of all: “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” It continues with a canonical American poem: “Let America Be America Again,” written in 1935 by Langston Hughes.

The poem calls on America to live up to its promises and standards and ideals. To be its best self.

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At the beginning of this year, I reviewed a new work called American Lament, which sets parts of the Hughes poem. Music aside, I objected to bowdlerization.

“For instance, ‘every man’ becomes ‘everyone,’ ‘Indian’ becomes ‘Native,’ ‘Negro’ becomes ‘black man,’ and so on. Is that really necessary? Wouldn’t an audience understand that different words and phrases have been used in different eras?”

In any case, Redeem the Dream leaves Hughes in the original, which is wise. He is hard to edit or improve on. He knows rhythm and phrasing—and sensibility—better than most of us do.

Today, I am not wearing my music critic’s hat, but I will comment briefly on Brandon A. Boyd’s work, this semi-oratorio, if you will. It is eclectic. It has flavors of jazz, swing, pop, gospel. The choirs sometimes swayed back and forth, and the audience sometimes clapped along.

The work is full of affection, in addition to eclecticism. I was reminded, in some sections, of Wynton Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass (2008).

After Redeem the Dream came US, another “semi-oratorio” (although maybe I can do without the prefix, in both cases). As Richard Haass explained in introductory remarks from the stage, the title refers to “us,” as in “We the People,” but also to the United States.

Richard Haass? The American diplomat who for 20 years was the president of the Council on Foreign Relations? What was he doing there?

In 2023, Haass published a book called The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. And it is on this book that US is based.

The composer is Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, “whose music engages with pressing social and environmental issues.” (I have quoted from the composer’s bio.)

US is not dissimilar to Redeem the Dream, in that it is eclectic, affirmative, and listenable. One might groove along to it, as many a chorister did (and some audience members too).

The first of Richard Haass’s ten good habits is “Be informed.” The second is “Get involved.” The third, “Support the teaching of civics” (amen). The fourth, “Remain civil.” They are all pretty good, and well-nigh inarguable.

Unusual for a libretto, this particular one is mainly a series of quotations, from a range of Americans. These include presidents: Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, JFK, Reagan, George W. Bush, Obama.

Other Americans include Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Harvey Milk, John McCain, and James Mattis. That’s variety.

I like what Frederick Douglass says, under “Be informed”: “A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.”

Here is Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee leader, under “Get involved”: “The desire to do something and contribute was stronger than the fear of speaking up.”

One of Haass’s ten good habits is “Stay open to compromise.” Naturally, we hear from the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay: “All legislation, all government, all society, is founded upon the principle of mutual concession.”

I quite like what JFK says, in this same category: “Compromise need not mean cowardice. Indeed it is frequently the compromisers and conciliators who are faced with the severest tests of political courage.”

When I was coming of age, I heard Reagan say, over and over, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” I used to roll my eyes a little. Sure, he was right in theory, I thought, but in practice? Suffice it to say, I don’t roll my eyes anymore.

This quotation is included in US.

The concert ended as it began, with an anthem: “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” popularly known as “the black national anthem.” Is this separatist? It is complementary, I think, and, regardless, it is a great entry in the American treasury.

“Lift Every Voice” became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, believe it or not. (This was Obama vs. McCain.) I wrote about it, here.

The song was written in 1900 to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday. The music is by J. Rosamond Johnson and the words are by his brother, James Weldon Johnson. If you will indulge a personal memory: I had the pleasure of teaching “Lift Every Voice” to summer campers in 1983, between my freshman and sophomore years of college.

This concert at Lincoln Center—Sing Democracy 250—was maybe a little corny, a little hokey. But that is so much better than cynical or nihilistic—or unpatriotic. The worse politics looks, the more we depend on civil society, which includes people who lift up their voice and sing.

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The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is pleased to join the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of The UnPopulist, as a media partner for the third annual Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference—LibCon 2026—in Washington, DC on July 16 and 17. Click here for more information and to register. Coinciding with America’s 250^th anniversary, the theme of the conference is the Reconstruction Agenda. The conference will assess the damage that authoritarian and demagogic politics have caused to the country’s liberal institutions and propose a path forward to rebuild accountability and confidence in the rule of law. The conference features a stellar lineup, including RDI Advisory Board Member Anne Applebaum and RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez, along with Francis Fukuyama, David French, Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law and many more. We’ll be there and so should you.

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Since we are adults, let us stipulate that democracies often have to engage with dictatorships, and that foreign policy is not for the pure. A lot of nose-holding is involved. Paramount is the national interest, and realism is required.

Yet America has long been a nation apart—not merely “another pleasant country on the UN roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.” I have quoted a phrase from the first President Bush.

He saw America as “a unique nation, with a special role in the world.”

Once, President Carter was meeting with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister. Carter brought up the case of a political prisoner: Anatoly Shcharansky (later known in Israel as “Natan Sharansky”). Gromyko was nonplussed. The United States and the Soviet Union had nuclear arsenals to discuss. And the president wanted to talk about a prisoner?

Shcharansky, in Gromyko’s words, was but “a microscopic dot.”

Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, always brought a list of political prisoners when he met with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev—a list of prisoners that he (Reagan) was especially interested in. Gorbachev grumbled, “Too many lists.”

A very different president is Donald Trump. The matter of human rights does not seem to figure in his thinking. In fact, he is likely to pour praise on dictators—including anti-American ones. Toward the end of his first term, I did a roundup of his relations with dictators: here. A roundup of such relations in his second term bids to be equally full and pungent.

On his visit to China earlier this month, Trump said to Xi Jinping, “You’re a great leader,” and, “It’s an honor to be your friend.”

Xi presides over a one-party police state with a gulag (laogai). That state is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. Xi has crushed Hong Kong and threatens to swallow Taiwan. Etc.

A great citizen of China was Liu Xiaobo, the democracy leader and political prisoner. He received the Nobel Peace Prize, in absentia, in 2010. He died, still a prisoner, on July 13, 2017.

On that very day, Trump said of Xi, “Well, he’s a friend of mine. I have great respect for him. We’ve gotten to know each other very well. A great leader. He’s a very talented man. I think he’s a very good man.” And so on.

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In 2019, as Beijing was crushing Hong Kong, many people, including some members of his own party, were imploring Trump to “stand with Hong Kong.” Said Trump, “Look, we have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi. He’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy.”

You have noticed this “friend of mine.” John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in the first term, addressed this matter at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit earlier this month.

Trump “thinks he’s friends with Xi Jinping and with Vladimir Putin,” said Bolton. “And I will guarantee you, that’s not how they see Trump. I think they both see him as an easy mark.”

In a 2023 interview, Trump said, “They’re all top of the line.” He was referring to Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong-un. “President Xi is a brilliant man,” said Trump. “If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find—there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing.”

Trump is consistent in this belief. In Beijing this month, he said, “If you went to Hollywood and looked for a leader of China to play a role in a movie—he’s Central Casting. You couldn’t find a guy like him.”

The first US president to go to China was Richard Nixon. “The week that changed the world,” he called it: February 21–28, 1972. Accompanying the president’s party on the trip was William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative journalist. He was nauseated by what he saw.

“We have lost—irretrievably—any remaining sense of moral mission in the world,” WFB wrote.

He continued, “Mr. Nixon’s appetite for a summit conference in Peking transformed the affair from a meeting of diplomatic technicians, concerned to examine and illuminate areas of common interest, into a pageant of moral togetherness at which Mr. Nixon managed to give the impression that he was consorting with Marian Anderson, Billy Graham, and Albert Schweitzer.”

When Nixon toasted “the bloodiest, most merciless chief of state in the world,” said WFB—he meant Mao—“he did so in accents most of us would reserve for Florence Nightingale.”

After this latest summit, President Trump posted a picture of himself with his Chinese counterpart, writing a caption that made him sound like an excited and awed schoolboy: “The man I am walking with is President Xi, of China, one of the World’s Great Leaders!”

If Trump pours praise on anti-American dictators, he makes sure to pour scorn on American leaders who are his political opponents. Consider two examples: one from 2019, one from this month.

In May 2019, Joe Biden, kicking off his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, said, “Are we a nation that embraces dictators and tyrants like Putin and Kim Jong-un?” In retaliation, North Korea’s official “news agency” called Biden a “fool of low IQ.”

That is a favorite Trump phrase: “low IQ.”

In the White House, Trump issued a tweet, saying, “I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me”—concerning weapons—“& also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”

During this month’s summit in Beijing, Xi Jinping mentioned the “Thucydides trap,” whereby a rising power and a declining power come to blows. Someone must have explained the implications of this statement to Trump, which prompted a tweet from him:

“When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct.”

Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un may be monstrous Communist dictators, but at least they’re not “Sleepy Joe,” right?

At home, the two Trump terms have been a festival of lawlessness, vulgarity, and corruption. But our president’s sweetness on monstrous dictators may be the most painful thing about the whole ordeal.

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The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is pleased to join the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of The UnPopulist, as a media partner for the third annual Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference—LibCon 2026—in Washington, DC on July 16 and 17. Click here for more information and to register. Coinciding with America’s 250^th anniversary, the theme of the conference is the Reconstruction Agenda. The conference will assess the damage that authoritarian and demagogic politics have caused to the country’s liberal institutions and propose a path forward to rebuild accountability and confidence in the rule of law. The conference features a stellar lineup, including RDI Vice Chair Linda Chavez along with Francis Fukuyama, Anne Applebaum, David French, Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law and many more. We’ll be there and so should you.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

In 1976, Petro Ruban made a wood carving in the shape of a book. On the book’s cover was the Statue of Liberty, along with the words “200 Years.” Ruban intended the carving to be a gift to the American people on the occasion of their bicentennial. He had worked eight months on it.

The Soviet authorities, however, confiscated the carving. In short order, they confiscated the wood-carver, too. That is, they threw him into prison—again.

Ruban was not only a wood-carver, he was also a Soviet human-rights activist. More specifically, he was a Ukrainian human-rights activist. Ruban was a nationalist, believing in independence for Ukraine. This made him doubly intolerable to the Soviet state.

Today, as you can see, the Kremlin is still intolerant of Ukrainian nationhood—to the point of an all-out war of subjugation.

Last month, I wrote an article titled “People vs. Dictatorships.” I emphasized the importance of distinguishing people, or peoples, from the dictatorships that rule them. Ronald Reagan was conscientious about making this distinction.

He would often cite the cases of specific political prisoners. In 1987, he spoke to a Captive Nations conference, held at the Ukrainian National Catholic Shrine in Washington, D.C. I quoted this speech in my article last month.

Reagan talked about Petro Ruban that day. He identified him as “a prisoner in Special Regimen Labor Camp No. 36-1, one of the most notorious of the Soviet camps.” He mentioned Ruban’s Statue of Liberty carving, etc.

Reading this speech of the president’s, I got curious about Ruban. I looked into his life.

Of particular help was the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, an organization started in Soviet days. It is affiliated with the Memorial society, a project started by Andrei Sakharov and his friends in the late 1980s.

(Sakharov, you will recall, was the great physicist turned great dissident.)

The purpose of Memorial is twofold: to document atrocities of the past and to promote democracy in the present. Obviously, Putin’s Kremlin has banned Memorial, along with Russian civil society at large. But Memorial people continue to operate in exile.

In 2022, Memorial shared the Nobel Peace Prize. (For an article of mine on the 2022 prize, go here.)

Petro Vasylovych Ruban was born on January 10, 1940. His birthplace was Konotop, a city in northeastern Ukraine. It was wartime, and Ruban’s father was a fighter pilot. “For having been captured by the Nazis, he became the victim of repression by the Soviets and never returned.”

I have quoted the Kharkiv group in its sketch of Petro Ruban’s life.

Understand that Soviet prisoners of war were considered traitors by the Soviet state. Stalin himself had a son, Yakov, who was taken prisoner. “In Hitler’s camps,” said Stalin, “there are no Russian prisoners of war, only Russian traitors, and we will do away with them when the war is over.”

Stalin had his daughter-in-law, Yulia, arrested as the wife of a traitor. She was imprisoned for a year and a half, and was never the same again.

(I wrote about Stalin and his family in a book called Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators.)

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Petro Ruban was first sentenced to prison in 1959, when he was 19. For the next 30 years, almost, he would be in and out of prison—mainly in. Twenty-five of those years, he spent in prison.

What were the charges against him? In a police state, this hardly matters, for the authorities will choose whatever charge seems handy. But one particular charge against Ruban is noteworthy: “bourgeois nationalism.” In other words, he favored Ukrainian independence.

In the Gulag, Ruban experienced the usual hardships and tortures. There were also periods of relief. For example, it was in prison that he learned wood-carving. In the rare years on the outside, he did such carving for a living.

Once, while in the Gulag, he helped smuggle out the prison diaries of Eduard Kuznetsov. In 1975, the New York Times published an article that said, “Kuznetsov’s diaries are the latest stunning addition to the most significant genre of contemporary Soviet letters: the prison stories and memoirs from the camps.”

When Ruban was rearrested in 1976, it was for the Statue of Liberty carving. But Andrei Sakharov guessed that there was also another reason: officials were taking revenge on Ruban for having helped Kuznetsov. (The latter man would be swapped in a prisoner exchange with the United States in 1979.)

Ruban was released from prison in 1985—but he was very soon rearrested and reimprisoned. Why? In part, because he had criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But mainly because he had applied to travel to the United States with his son, Marko, to seek medical treatment for him.

Marko, age about eleven, had been paralyzed in an accident. Ruban and his wife, Lidya, did not even have a wheelchair for him. They thought he could be helped with modern medical care in the US. But the Soviets did not take kindly to the request.

One report, published in 1988 by The Ukrainian Weekly, an exile outlet, gives a taste of Ruban’s spirit and character. Ruban “insisted that he should serve his sentence on the territory of his homeland, Ukraine.” For this and other offenses and effronteries, he was “constantly punished with solitary confinement.”

Thanks to Western pressure, Lidya and Marko were able to travel to the United States in January 1988. Reagan would travel to Moscow for a summit a few months later. Before Reagan’s arrival, in one of those gestures that became familiar in the Cold War, the Soviets released Ruban.

At the US embassy, Ruban sat next to Secretary of State George Shultz, no less.

In July of that year, 1988, Reagan gave his annual Captive Nations Week address. “Now, as you may recall, on this occasion last year, I spoke of Petro Ruban,” he said. He went on to say, “Last January, his son, Marko, was permitted to come here for medical treatment.” There was a story or two involved.

“When Marko got off the plane, his first words in his new country were, ‘I want to be able to stand on my own two feet.’ In his hands, he held something that he had labored on during the long plane trip from the Soviet Union. The boy whose father had been imprisoned for making a Statue of Liberty had embroidered Lady Liberty onto a towel.”

One more thing, from Reagan: “I’m happy to be able to tell you that Petro Ruban was released from prison and just last night arrived in this country to be reunited with his family. Petro and Marko are with us here.”

When Reagan died in 2004, Petro Ruban made a statement, which included these sentences: “I remember Reagan for his magnificent internal beauty. For me, he is the president who gave me freedom.

Ruban died in Kyiv—in independent, and not-yet-invaded, Ukraine—on September 26, 2011.

Let me ask a question: Who are the democratic leaders—the heads of state and government in the Free World—keeping an eye on political prisoners today? Speaking out for them?

Another question: Would political prisoners and other dissidents pay tribute to America today, as Petro Ruban did on the occasion of our bicentennial? We are now celebrating our 250th. Would their sons embroider the statue on towels?

There is no shortage of political prisoners to keep an eye on. In Russia, there are more political prisoners today than in the late Soviet period. Many of those prisoners are Ukrainian.

Here is one headline from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group: “Russia sentences abducted and tortured Melitopol journalists to 26 years for pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel.” Those journalists are Denys Hlushchenko and Oleksandr Malyshev. (For the article, go here.)

Here is another headline: “71-year-old Ukrainian patriot Halyna Dovhopola unbroken after 7 years in Russian captivity, but ‘won’t survive another such winter.’” (Article here.)

There is astounding bravery in the world, to go with cruelty, tyranny, and depravity. I sometimes quote José Martí, the Cuban independence leader: “When there are many men who lack honor, there are always others who have within themselves the honor of many men.”

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Is NATO dead? Find out on our next premium subscriber Zoom call, featuring former NATO Secretary General and Prime Minister of Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The conversation—exclusively for premium subscribers—will take place on Wednesday, May 27 at 9am ET. For more information and registration, click here.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a veteran politician, is known to be direct. He had barely greeted his audience before he said, “Let me be direct: The world we once knew, and the democratic foundations we once took for granted, are collapsing.”

Rasmussen was speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday.

He was the prime minister of Denmark from 2001 to 2009. He was the secretary general of NATO from 2009 to 2014. Three years later, he set up the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, in Copenhagen. This “summit” is the foundation’s annual event.

Let me pause for a quick commercial: On May 27, we at The Next Move will host a Zoom conversation between our Garry Kasparov and Rasmussen. For information about this event, and to register, go here.

Preceding Rasmussen in directness was Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada—not in Copenhagen but in Davos, last January.

“Let me be direct,” said Carney. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” And “this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.”

Up in Copenhagen, Rasmussen said, “The rupture in the post–World War II order has happened. The United States no longer has the will to lead. And from the perspective of Greenlanders, the global policeman has gone rogue.”

More on Greenland (an autonomous territory of Denmark) in due course.

Rasmussen was speaking “in sadness,” he said, for “much of my life’s work has been dedicated to the transatlantic alliance.” True. But “we do not have the luxury to lament what has passed into history. Our job is to build what comes next.”

So, what comes next? What’s the next move, from the perspective of this Dane and his partners?

Not a “G7,” which stands for “Group of Seven,” and includes the United States. No, a “D7,” standing for “Democracies-7.” (Sounds a bit like a movie title, as in Ocean’s Eleven.) This would be an alliance of seven “middle powers,” as Rasmussen says, borrowing a phrase that Carney used in Davos.

“These countries are not hegemons like China or the United States,” said Rasmussen in Copenhagen, “but they still have the money and the muscle to matter, collectively.” These middle powers “must grasp the torch of freedom and the burdens that come with it.”

The seven that Rasmussen has in mind are the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. (Is it cheating a little to count the EU as one country or power? We might entertain that question later.)

Rasmussen emphasized the overwhelming importance of Ukraine. “Ukraine’s security is our security,” he said, “and we are failing to meet the moment.” An EU or a NATO without Ukraine is hollow. Nonsensical. “Ukraine must be an integrated part of a new European security architecture,” said Rasmussen.

And “I want to be honest with you about the costs of defending democracy.” (Rasmussen had already mentioned the “burdens” of leadership.) “Higher defense budgets mean tough choices on welfare and taxes.” There are “real trade-offs,” and “I will not pretend otherwise.”

But, said Rasmussen, “we must consider the alternative”—the alternative to self-defense, and collective defense. The alternative is “a world where the strong pick off the weak; a world where democracies are treated as trading chips; a world of submission, of repression, of war.” And “that is not a world I will accept for my grandchildren.”

Typical politician’s rhetoric, maybe—but somehow, in Copenhagen, it sounded earnest and urgent. The Ukraine war is not hypothetical. Neither are Putin’s greater ambitions. Neither is the new direction of America.

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Last year, I went to Denmark in order to report on the dramatically altered relations between Washington and Copenhagen. President Donald Trump had been threatening the Danes over Greenland. “We’ll get Greenland,” said Trump. “Yeah, 100 percent.” More than once, he refused to rule out military force.

Americans might think that this is “trolling” or “owning the libs” or “Trump being Trump.” But Danes are unamused and on alert.

Denmark’s refusal to cough up Greenland is one reason that Trump has turned his back on NATO, treating the alliance as some hostile power, rather than America’s creation, in the American interest. (Denmark is one of the twelve founding members of NATO, by the way—“present at the creation.”) Talking to the press last month, Trump was candid, as he often is.

“And you know, it all began with, if you wanna know the truth, Greenland,” said the president. “We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us, and I said, ‘Bye-bye.’”

Following Anders Fogh Rasmussen to the podium at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit was the prime minister of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen. He gave a diplomatic, though firm, speech, which he ended with a call for mutual respect—for civilized international behavior, rather than the law of the jungle, might makes right, and spheres of influence.

“Let’s sit respectfully around the table together,” said Nielsen. “Then nobody will be on the menu.”

Mette Frederiksen has been the prime minister of Denmark since 2019. With Rasmussen, she sat down for a conversation at the summit. They are different politicians: he a conservative (or classical liberal), she a social democrat.

Rasmussen told the audience that he and Frederiksen differ sharply on domestic policy. But on foreign policy, defense, and national security—they are as one.

He had an opening question for her: “How do you think the world’s democracies should respond to the strongmen of this world—Xi Jinping, Putin, Trump?” Look, I am nothing if not a realist about the American president. But even I had to gulp at this grouping.

Frederiksen is all for an alliance of the “middle powers.” The collapse of the old world order demands a new. “So we better hurry up,” she said. “We have to speed up. We have to scale up.”

Rasmussen often speaks of a “coalition of the willing,” using a phrase popularized by President George W. Bush some 25 years ago. (Denmark, of course, was a stalwart part of this coalition, with Rasmussen as prime minister.) In his conversation with Mette Frederiksen, Rasmussen said that a coalition of the willing must not be a “coalition of the waiting.”

Frederiksen was in full agreement. “A coalition of the waiting will be a disaster.” She went on to say, “The problem for us Europeans is that we still think and behave as we did in peacetime, and it is no longer peacetime.” Putin has seen to that. “Therefore, we have to change our mindset. If we don’t, Russia is going to win.”

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Denmark has increased its defense spending from 1.3% of GDP to 3.5. Frederiksen has implored her fellow Europeans to get serious. If Europe “is not willing and able to defend itself,” she said at the summit, “then who are we?”

About the Ukrainians, she spoke movingly. They have held off the Russians, sparing the rest of Europe, so far. “The main reason that Ukraine is still standing is Ukraine,” said Frederiksen. “It’s not the rest of us.” The Ukrainians have been denied NATO membership, they have been denied certain arms. “We have been asking them to fight for the entire European Union with one arm tied behind their back,” said Frederiksen. “That has been a huge mistake.”

She is palpably wary of peace negotiations between Russia and the United States—“so-called peace negotiations,” she called them, every time she mentioned them. “A bad so-called peace deal for Ukraine would probably be a disaster for the rest of Europe,” she said. “Any Russian win” would be a loss, for the Free World.

I titled my report from Ukraine last year “America Rattles Denmark.” The subheading was, “A report from an allied capital in a strange time.” My impression a year later is that Denmark is through being rattled. The shock of a belligerent Washington, or a transformed Washington, has worn off. A new day is upon us, whether we like it or not.

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Last week, Hamidreza Mohammadi told Radio Farda that his sister was “on the brink of death.” This was because of the torture and other abuse she had endured.

His sister is Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian political prisoner and Nobel peace laureate. She is a heroine of our time, a woman of almost super-human bravery and integrity. Now 54, she has been in and out of prison throughout her adult life—mostly in.

She was in prison when she received her Nobel prize in 2023. She had predecessors, in Nobel history.

Carl von Ossietzky was a prisoner of the Nazis when he received the peace prize for 1935. He died, still a prisoner, in 1938, at age 48. Liu Xiaobo was a prisoner of the Chinese Communist Party when he received his prize in 2010. He died, still a prisoner, in 2017, when he was 61.

Narges Mohammadi symbolizes the struggle of Iranian citizens against their dictatorship, and particularly the struggle of women—who have been in the forefront of the country’s democracy movement.

She was born on April 21, 1972, in Zanjan, where she is imprisoned, and near death, today. Her education in the brutal realities of the country began early.

“At the age of nine, when I heard my mother’s cries of mourning after the execution of her niece, a university student, and my grandmother’s lamentations after her son had been tortured, my childhood dreams were shattered.”

Mohammadi gave that testimony in 2023, after her Nobel was announced. She also said this:

“I was a 19-year-old girl when I was detained because of wearing an orange coat. At the detention center, breathless with disbelief, horror, and shock, I saw grim-looking men in black uniforms with whips in their hands who relentlessly lashed the bodies of four women …”

In 2003, when she was about 30, Mohammadi went to work for the Defenders of Human Rights Center, founded by the lawyer Shirin Ebadi. That same year, Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize. She would serve as Mohammadi’s mentor.

Mohammadi helped families of prisoners and campaigned against torture—including rape—and execution. Of course, she would often need such help herself.

She was in prison—Tehran’s unspeakable Evin Prison—in September 2022, when a movement erupted. A 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, had been killed by the “morality police.” This gave rise to a slogan, a chant: “Woman, Life, Freedom!” And those words became the name of the movement.

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its award to Mohammadi a year later, the committee said that it was honoring this movement as well.

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The new laureate herself was able to communicate some stirring news. When women in Evin Prison heard about the Nobel to Mohammadi, they responded with a cry that resounded throughout their cells: “Woman, Life, Freedom!”

Mohammadi said, to the world at large, “Victory is not easy, but it is certain.”

Like Carl von Ossietzky and Liu Xiaobo before her, Mohammadi was not released from prison to collect her prize in Oslo. (That prize is bestowed in a ceremony each December 10.) Her family was there in her stead.

Mohammadi has always refused to go into exile. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, and their twin children, Ali and Kiana, live in France.

From Ali, we have an interesting story. When the prize for his mother was announced in October, he was in school—checking his phone under his desk. “I couldn’t shout in class,” he said, “but I was so happy.” He further said: “We are afraid for my mom every day. The Nobel prize is a sign for her to continue straight on and not abandon the fight.”

At the ceremony in Oslo, the laureate’s absence was symbolized by an empty chair. On the chair, her Nobel medal and diploma were placed. Behind the chair, there was a picture of her—a picture selected by the prisoner-laureate herself.

The committee chairman, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said, “She has asked us to use this particular photograph, which expresses how she wants to lead her life—looking happy in colorful garments, exposing her hair, and with a steady gaze towards us.”

“Exposing her hair”? Mohammadi is a firm opponent of compulsory hijab, which she says is a tool of tyrannical control, not piety.

From Evin Prison, Mohammadi was able to write or dictate a Nobel lecture, which was read by her children in Oslo. Here is one passage:

“Democracy, thanks to its inherent capacity for freedom and equality, has been a fundamental demand of Iranian society, and, almost unanimously, civil society calls for fundamental changes and a transition to democracy…”

Possibly, the Iranian regime did not want this Nobel peace laureate to die in prison. In 2024, they gave her a medical furlough, for her health was failing (as why would it not?). But they rearrested her on December 12, 2025, horrifically.

She had attended and spoken at a funeral—that of Khosrow Alikordi, a human rights lawyer. The authorities said he had died of a heart attack; his colleagues and supporters said—credibly—that he had been murdered.

Arresting Mohammadi, agents beat her to a pulp, repeatedly kicking her in the genitals. If you can bear further details, you can find them in a bulletin from the Nobel committee, here.

Since the start of the war with the United States and Israel on February 28, the Iranian regime has cracked down on internal dissent with extra ferocity. Last week, they hanged a 21-year-old athlete from Isfahan, Sasan Azadvar Junaqan. His offense? “Moharebe,” i.e., “enmity against God.”

Whether Narges Mohammadi will still be alive by the time you read this, I don’t know. I do know this: in virtually every time and place, dictatorships imprison, maim, and kill some of the best people in their grasp.

A further taste of who Narges Mohammadi is can be had in an incident described by Berit Reiss-Andersen, when she was speaking about the laureate at the ceremony in Oslo:

“Recently, she was offered much-needed medical help at a hospital on the condition that she wear a hijab when leaving the prison. She refused and initiated a hunger strike. Finally, she was taken to the hospital for a brief examination under tight security—but not wearing a hijab. Her resolve is unshakable.”

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Before Donald J. Trump and Trumpism, there was Patrick J. Buchanan and Buchananism. In 1995, William J. Bennett was talking with The New Yorker about Buchanan.

Bennett, you recall, had been a secretary of education under Reagan, and he was a leading light of what was then known as “neoconservatism.”

Buchanan, said Bennett, was “flirting” with fascism. He had a black-and-white view of the world: there were friends and there were enemies, period. “A real us-and-them kind of thing,” said Bennett.

When the article came out, The New Yorker had mistranscribed Bennett’s remark: “A real S & M kind of thing.”

Oops. This caused great hilarity among some of us.

We are definitely living in an us-and-them time. With social media—and the media at large—everyone is in his own “silo,” hearing his own point of view, to the exclusion of others. People worry about “polarization.”

This worrying can be overdone. A free society involves rough-and-tumble, and divisions will be sharp. I am of the school that says, “Beware calls for national unity. The callers may well mean, ‘Unify on my terms. Get with my program.’”

In a bracing essay, published a month ago, Simone Sepe put in a word for polarization—or at least the allowance of these sharp divisions. Sepe is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, and his essay was published by the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona.

The essay’s title? It borrows from a now-classic movie of 2007: There Will Be Blood.

All of Sepe’s essay should be read and pondered, but I will quote only the final words: “There will be polarization. There will be ideas. There will be blood.”

Sure—but let it not be too overflowing or too literal. (Sepe, needless to say, agrees with this.) Our society is cursed by violence, as we saw again a few days ago with another assassination attempt on President Trump.

In 2020, David French published a book called Divided We Fall. His working title had been The Great American Divorce. His subtitle is America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. His answer, in a word, is “pluralism”—a renewed appreciation of this important concept.

In the American house are many mansions, so to speak. But they all exist under one constitutional, liberal-democratic roof.

French highlights an academic paper that does nothing less than “explain America,” he says. That paper is “The Law of Group Polarization,” by Cass Sunstein, published in 1999. Its author was then at the University of Chicago Law School and since 2008 has been at Harvard Law.

In French’s summation, this is the law of group polarization: “When people of like mind gather, they tend to become more extreme.”

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Last week, I talked with Professor Sunstein in a podcast. We discussed a range of issues, including this old devil polarization, and its law.

In the 1990s, said Sunstein, he and collaborators studied jury behavior. They found that juries tended to be more outraged at corporate misconduct than their individual members were. In other words, the jury as a group was more outraged than its median member.

Sunstein went on to study political preferences among Coloradans. When left-of-center people got together to talk, they became more extreme, and the same happened on the right. Internal disagreements or nuances were muted; confidence increased (perhaps a misguided confidence).

A person on his own was more moderate than a person in a group—a person with his tribe.

When Sunstein was explaining all this to me, I thought, I swear, of Saeb Erekat, the longtime negotiator for the PLO. I encountered him one winter in Davos, where he spoke to a group of us journalists.

His fellow Palestinians in groups, he told us, would say to him, “Why are you bothering with these Israelis? Why are you even talking to them? Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea!”

But as individuals, when no one else was looking, they would scurry up to him and say, “Dr. Erekat, we are so tired of living like this. Can’t you bring us peace?”

Not to go all Charles Darwin on you, but tribalism is natural in man, and you can no more stop it than you can stop the tide. Some tribalism is healthful, I dare say. Think of sports rivalries, with their colors, fight songs, and war chants.

But even these rivalries can get out of hand. I have observed this in my home state of Michigan, with increasing enmity between Wolverines and Spartans.

Returning to politics, I think of a recurring phrase: “one of us.” Nixon used it. “Is he one of us?” he would ask. Tom Wicker published a biography of Nixon titled One of Us.

Margaret Thatcher used the phrase, too. There is a delicious anecdote about her (its veracity aside). Aides wanted her to draw on a sketch from Monty Python, the famous comedy troupe. Thatcher was not known for her knowledge of popular culture. She said, “Now, this Monty Python: is he one of us?”

Hugo Young published a biography of Thatcher: One of Us.

In 2012, the Obama-Biden campaign aired a television ad that I considered ugly. It ended with the words, “Mitt Romney. Not one of us.”

I myself used “one of us” for many years. I was on the board of a foundation that sought to promote diversity on college campuses by backing conservative programs on those campuses.

And by “conservative,” I mean, mainly, “liberal,” or “classical liberal.” We were interested in free markets, Great Books, Bach cantatas, and all that other square stuff.

The nature or success of a program often depends on a particular faculty member. And I would inquire of our board’s executive director: “Is he one of us?”

I blush a little, but only a little. We all have our affinities, including political affinities. If I have a tribe, it is Reagan conservatives, who could occupy about three teepees these days.

My usual line is, “We could hold our convention at a modest-sized Denny’s.”

But my greater tribe is the American republic, and my still greater tribe is liberal democracy, as in the Renew Democracy Initiative, whose publication you are reading.

I want us all to argue vehemently—even fight like hell—but “within institutional bounds,” as Simone Sepe says in his “there will be blood” essay. Under the roof of democracy, in the atmosphere of ordered liberty.

Have all the “us and them” you want—but remember that there is an ultimate “us” with common rights and a common home.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Two weeks ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra traveled south to appear in New York’s Carnegie Hall. They opened with three scenes from Nixon in China, the opera by John Adams. As the title suggests, it’s about Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972.

Our program notes for the evening said the following: “By the 1980s, when Nixon in China was conceived, both former US president Richard Nixon (1913–1994) and the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976) were nearly universally maligned figures.”

Sure. One was one of the most blood-soaked dictators in history, and the other was a corrupt politician in a democracy, who, on the verge of impeachment, resigned and went home.

Our program notes referred to “Western antipathy to Maoist communism.” Oh? What about Chinese antipathy to that communism? What about the dissidents over the years who have given their lives in standing up to it?

One more quotation: “Adams and his creative partners, realizing the significance of Nixon’s visit, took an approach that avoids satire and latter-day political critique in spite of their inherent antipathy to Nixon and his politics.”

You have to wonder what they thought of Mao’s “politics.” According to The Black Book of Communism—published by Harvard University Press in 1999—Mao was responsible for some 65 million deaths.

The sheer horror of Chinese communism has never quite penetrated the American or Western mind. This is a source of wonder and bewilderment to Chinese dissidents and their supporters.

I have been thinking about China lately, in part because of the Boston Symphony concert, but mainly because I recorded a podcast with Yaqiu Wang. She is a Chinese human rights activist here in the United States. She is affiliated with the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. She has also worked for Freedom House, among other organizations.

She was born in the 1980s to a family of peasants in Zhejiang Province. That’s what it said right on their registration cards: “peasants.”

“My birth is itself a human rights story,” says Yaqiu. She was the third child in the family, at a time when China had its one-child policy. The first child, a son, had been born with a disability, so the second child, a daughter, was legal. The third? Illegal.

Yaqiu’s mother hid the pregnancy, as best she could. When schooltime began, Yaqiu kept her distance from her sister (who was five grades above her). It was better for people not to know about this multiple-child family.

“When I was growing up,” Yaqiu says, “I always heard the propaganda that extra children were a burden to society.” That’s what the government called them: “extra children.”

“I carried that shame until I came to America,” she says, “where I realized that having siblings is normal.”

She came as an exchange student, at the University of South Carolina. She noticed something about Americans—something that all Chinese notice, she says: Americans have “freedom on their face.” They carry themselves in a confident manner, unafraid.

Courtesy of a congressman, Yaqiu had a tour of the White House. “I fell in love with American democracy,” she says. “I am one of those people who feel they were born in the wrong country.”

At the same time, she works for her fellow Chinese every day: arguing for their rights. She has had to cut off communication with her family back home, painful as it is. She does not want to invite any trouble for them.

In our podcast, I asked Yaqiu Wang about political prisoners. For years, I wrote about Liu Xiaobo, probably the most prominent of Chinese political prisoners. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010—received it in absentia. He died in 2017, still a prisoner.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Liu Xiaobo was, simply, one of the great men of our time.

There are many political prisoners in China today, and Yaqiu Wang gave me the name of one of them: Xu Zhiyong. He is a civil rights lawyer, born in 1973. He comes from Minquan County in Henan Province. “Minquan” means “civil rights,” believe it or not. Xu has said that the course of his life was practically predetermined.

In 2003, he co-founded the Open Constitution Initiative, which lasted until 2009, when the authorities shut it down. In 2010, he founded the New Citizens’ Movement, which is a network of democracy-minded people (a loose network, relatively hard to track and target).

Like most activists and leaders of his kind, Xu has been in and out of prison—although mainly in. He was arrested in 2013 and imprisoned until 2017. Once out, he resumed his activism, of course. In 2020, he was arrested once more and remains in prison today.

He has been tortured, as political prisoners, everywhere, routinely are.

Campaigning for him is his partner, personal and professional: Li Qiaochu. “It’s a great love story,” says Yaqiu Wang. Li was arrested in 2021 and imprisoned for three years and eight months. Once released, she went right back to work, campaigning for Xu, risking another arrest.

“People can be ‘crazy,’” Yaqiu observes, “but in such a heroic way.”

In 2012, Xu Zhiyong published a kind of manifesto concerning the New Citizens’ Movement. “This movement is a political movement in which this ancient nation bids utter farewell to authoritarianism and completes the civilized transformation to constitutional governance.”

The “goal” of this movement, Xu writes, “is a free China ruled by democracy and law.”

At the “core” of the movement is “the citizen.” And a citizen is “not a subject” but “an independent and free entity.” The citizen “obeys a rule of law that is commonly agreed upon” and “does not have to kneel down to any given person.”

In February 2020, as the coronavirus was spreading, Xu wrote an open letter to the ruling Communist, Xi Jinping, calling on him to resign. “What China needs above all other things is Freedom!” Xu wrote. “Only with freedom will creativity truly flourish and progress be possible.”

According to Yaqiu Wang, ordinary Chinese people strongly desire freedom and democracy. But it is very dangerous to express this desire. The likes of Xu Zhiyong and Li Qiaochu are never common, in any police state. But that does not mean that Chinese as a whole are happy with their lot.

She also has a message for citizens of her adopted country: “I really want Americans to know that what they have is very good, and they should cherish it”—and, if necessary, “fight for it.”

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For a stretch of years, there was a group of US congressmen who could be depended on to speak up for human rights—human rights anywhere in the world.

There are always people who will speak up for human rights in this country or that. And who will oppose this dictator or that. But human rights for everyone, and opposition to dictators everywhere?

That’s another story.

In April 2005, I wrote a story titled “Congressional Champions.” These were champions of human rights.

Among them were two Cuban-American Republicans from Miami: Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Other Republicans included Frank Wolf and Chris Smith. Democrats included Tom Lantos, Gary Ackerman, and Eliot Engel.

Referring to this group, Ros-Lehtinen quoted Shakespeare: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

Of that band, only Smith remains in Congress. The others are either retired or deceased. Eliot Engel died last week at 79. He served in Congress from 1989 to 2021.

Engel was a “Cold War liberal,” or a “JFK Democrat,” as he said to me. He also said that he was just about the last of the breed.

“I have always felt strongly about democracy,” he said. “We should promote basic freedom in the world. I have throughout my career been consistent in opposing both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships.”

The record proved it.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Engel was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1947. He was a month shy of 14 when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as president. Engel’s parents were working-class and Jewish. He was always aware of the Holocaust—it influenced his work.

Engel was alarmed by the “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians in Kosovo. And at the wholesale slaughter of Syrians, by the Assad regime and its allies. And at the targeting of the Uyghur minority by the Chinese government.

For him, the Holocaust hovered in the background.

Out of college, Engel became a schoolteacher and guidance counselor. Then he was elected to the New York State Assembly, where he served for 12 years, before going to Washington.

He wanted to sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Most congressmen, especially new ones, shun that committee, because it does them no favors. You can’t “bring home the bacon” to your district, and you can’t enhance your reelection. In fact, you may hurt it.

“He spends all his time on other countries and ignores folks right here at home!”

Engel, however, was different. As Josh Rogin noted in a 2020 column, the freshman congressman was presented with a questionnaire, asking him to list his three preferred committee assignments. On all three lines, he wrote, “Foreign Affairs.”

“I figured they would get the hint,” he said.

Throughout his years in Congress, he was opposed by the “activists,” as he called them. He meant activists and critics to his left. Engel provoked their wrath by supporting the Patriot Act of 2001, for example. And by opposing the Iran deal worked out by the Obama administration in 2015. He provoked and earned their wrath in multiple ways.

“If the activists aren’t happy with me, they’re not happy with me,” he told me. “So be it.”

They were really unhappy with him over Cuba. He was a staunch opponent of the Castro dictatorship, and a staunch supporter of Cuba’s democracy movement. “My party has a blind spot on Cuba,” he told me. “And the Republican Party has its own blind spots.”

(For The Next Move last January, I wrote an article titled “Blind Spots: On selectivity in human rights.”)

“Castro is a dictator,” Engel said, “and to me he’s no different from Saddam Hussein or any of those other guys.” Whether “it’s Somoza or Castro or that jerk in Venezuela, dictators should be opposed, and opposed vigorously.”

The “jerk in Venezuela” was Hugo Chávez.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen began a program whereby congressmen “adopted” a Cuban political prisoner, in order to call attention to that prisoner’s fate—and “Eliot was one of the first to respond,” she told me, “even though he doesn’t have any Cubans in his district.”

“He’s such a mensch, such a great guy,” she said.

This congressman from the Bronx—barely known in America—became well-known throughout the Albanian world: in Albania itself, and also in Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. That was because he stood up for their rights—not least the right not to be killed.

In the summer of 2005, I traveled with him and his party to Albania and elsewhere, reporting on their activities and the region at large. In the Kosovar town of Peja, they named a street after him: “Eliot L. Engel Boulevard.”

After the 2018 midterm elections, he finally got the seat he wanted: the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He held it for only two years, however, as he was defeated in a Democratic primary in 2020. His opponent and successor, Jamaal Bowman, was very different from a JFK Democrat. Engel seemed like a last gasp of history.

Who today, in either house of Congress, in either party, is concerned about freedom, democracy, and human rights, all over the world? Who has taken the place of Engel and the rest? Precious few. Fewer than the “happy few,” the “band of brothers,” that Ros-Lehtinen spoke about, back in ’05.

Engel told me, “I have always felt strongly about America’s role in the world. We, as a country, aren’t perfect. We’re all human, we all make mistakes. But I think our vision—what we want to share, what can be taken from our experience—is overwhelmingly positive. I don’t agree with the Blame America crowd.”

He also said, “You can be progressive and still understand that the United States is a force for good. We don’t always get it right, but we try to. And when we have the ability to save lives, we ought to use that ability.”

Last week, after he died, I contacted Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, to ask whether she wanted to say anything about her onetime colleague. She did.

“Eliot was almost an extinct animal in the public arena: a bipartisan and principled statesman who was unafraid to call out oppressors no matter their political bent. To Eliot, an oppressor on the left was as dangerous as one on the right.”

He “sought out compromise and did not consider it heresy or treason to see issues from another person’s point of view.”

This “did not mean that he was easily manipulated. Quite the contrary. Eliot knew where he stood on issues and was always a reliable voice and vote in behalf of freedom, human rights, and democracy in every corner of the world.”

To me, Eliot Engel stood for an Americanism that barely exists in our country anymore. I look forward to a revival.

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Last week, I spoke with a young colleague of mine about coming of age. She came of age in the early Trump era. Trump Republicanism, the Trump style—it all seems perfectly normal to her (and why wouldn’t it?).

I, conversely, came of age in the Reagan era. So I have my own sense of what is normal and right, not having quite adjusted to our “new normal.”

President Reagan always took care to distinguish dictatorships from the people ruled by those dictatorships. President Trump seldom takes any such trouble.

Without a peace deal with Iran, he said on Sunday, “we’re blowing up the whole country.” He also said, “If they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there.”

If you were an Iranian—and as anti-regime as they come—how would you feel about that? How would that sound in your ear?

Trump wrote, “Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!”

Again, how would you feel, how would that sound to you?

In a television address, Trump said, “We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

Who is “them,” exactly? The bad guys? Who belongs in the “Stone Ages”?

We used to say that the US president was the leader of the Free World, responsible for assuring people under dictatorship that, whatever we could do practically, we were on their side. (More on this in due course.)

I recall President Reagan making a television address two days before Christmas in 1981. The Polish dictatorship, under pressure from Moscow, had just imposed martial law. Reagan said that Christmas was bringing “little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.”

Reagan announced some measures that the US was taking against that government—quickly adding, “These actions are not directed against the Polish people. They are a warning to the government of Poland that free men cannot and will not stand idly by in the face of brutal repression.”

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Habitually, Reagan marked Captive Nations Week. This is how he put it in 1987: “For nearly three decades, Captive Nations Week has symbolized the American people’s solidarity with all throughout the world who courageously seek freedom and independence from Soviet domination.”

America, he said, “offers the world a vision of inalienable political, religious, and economic rights. This vision has always been shared among peoples subjugated by Soviet imperialism; and so has resistance, ever the catalyst of liberty.”

He also cited political prisoners, not just generally but specifically, by name: “people such as Gunārs Astra, Lev Lukyanenko, Mart Niklus, and Viktoras Petkus.”

Over and over—as a matter of both conscience and policy—Reagan and other officials of the era separated dictatorships from the people under their boot.

Here is the president in 1983, during Captive Nations Week: “Today we come to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are captives, not because of crimes that they have committed but because of crimes committed against them by dictators and tyrants.”

He went on to say, “To every person trapped in tyranny, whether in the Ukraine, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, or Vietnam, we send our love and support and tell them they are not alone.”

Reagan liked to use our “radios” to communicate with people abroad: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; the Voice of America; and Radio Martí, which broadcasts to Cuba, and was established under Reagan.

Under President Trump, our radios have been all but abolished. (For a piece by me on this subject, published last year, go here.)

On December 31, 1986, over the Voice of America, Reagan delivered a New Year’s address to “the peoples of the Soviet Union.” He said, “The American people are deeply concerned with the fate of individual people, wherever they might be throughout the world. We believe that God gave sacred rights to every man, woman, and child on earth.”

This was not fare you would hear from Soviet state media. You would not hear it in Russia’s media today.

One more memory of Reagan—this one from July 24, 1987, when he went to the Ukrainian National Catholic Shrine in Washington, DC, to speak to a Captive Nations conference. He began by saying, “Let us look forward to the day when Ukrainian Catholics and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will again be free to gather and worship in churches like this in their own homeland.”

Further on, he said, “Our global commitment to freedom does not mandate the sending of arms or troops, but at the very least it means that any people whose liberty is denied or whose independence is violated—that these people know we Americans are on their side.”

That was the way it was. That was the principle, the ethos. We were on their side.

Do the Iranian people know it, unmistakably? I hope they do.

On Easter, Trump tweeted, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Who will be “living in Hell”? Just the ayatollahs and their goons? How about “Praise be to Allah”? Is that sincere or mocking? How would it sound in an everyday Iranian’s ear?

Six days after the terror attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush went to a mosque to assure Muslims that our fight—the war that had been forced on us—was not against them. This was not mere politeness or political correctness. This was hard national interest—for we needed the support of countless Muslims.

Yesterday, in a post about Iran, Trump wrote, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

I ask once more: Can you imagine being an Iranian, hearing that?

In any event, a ceasefire is in place, as we go to press.

Looking back on Reagan, and beholding Trump today, I think of a French expression: Autres temps, autres mœurs—“Different times, different mores.” About five weeks ago, Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC), said, “To Donald J. Trump: You just surpassed Ronald Reagan as the most consequential Republican president since Lincoln.” He went on to say, “You’re Reagan plus, plus, plus.”

One more French expression: À chacun son goût—“To each his own.”

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A week and a half ago, CPAC, an American organization, held one of its regular jamborees in Hungary. Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, is a seat of the “postliberal” Right. Many such rightists have visited Hungary in recent days, boosting Orbán for a sixth term in office.

Marine Le Pen of France was there. So was Matteo Salvini of Italy. So was Geert Wilders of the Netherlands.

Both the Kremlin and the White House are going all-out for Orbán’s reelection. I wrote about this two weeks ago, here (“Putin and Trump for Orbán”).

President Trump did not attend the recent CPAC conclave in Hungary, but he sent a video. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was scheduled to attend in person, but the war with Iran kept him at home, and he, too, sent a video. For good measure, his son Yair spoke to the gathering.

Prime Minister Netanyahu told the CPAC-ers, “I want to thank you for standing up for Western civilization.” Then, speaking about his Hungarian counterpart personally, he said:

“I want to thank my friend Viktor Orbán. He has been like a rock. … I know many world leaders, and I can tell you he is right there at the top. Viktor Orbán means stability, safety, security.”

As a rule, a country is the ally of another country, regardless of who is in office. In democracies, leaders come and go. But things have gotten very personal lately.

Standing alongside Orbán in February, and addressing him, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Especially as long as you’re the prime minister and the leader of this country, it’s in our national interest that Hungary be successful.”

Ponder this business of “Western civilization” for a second. It is an article of faith among Orbán fans that he is a champion and protector of that civilization. Here is a tweet from Steve King, an Iowa Republican who was in Congress from 2003 to 2021: “History will record PM Orban the Winston Churchill of Western Civilization.”

(My comment was, “Personally, I would accord that honor to Churchill.”)

To some of us, Western civilization includes liberal democracy: the rule of law, an independent judiciary, independent media, etc. In 2018, Prime Minister Orbán declared, “The era of liberal democracy is over.”

Also, does Orbán’s alliance with Putin square with Western civilization? How about his hostility to Ukraine and its cause? Does that speak to you of Western civilization?

Orbán supporters point out that he is staunch against immigration, particularly of the Muslim kind. I must say, I agree that countries should retain their national character. There was a slogan, and a song, in the 1970s and ’80s: “Let Poland Be Poland.” Yes, and let Hungary be Hungary, let France be France, and so on.

It’s up to immigrants to assimilate to the countries they go to; it’s not up to countries to assimilate to the immigrants.

But here is what I deny: that it takes authoritarianism to have a sensible immigration policy; that it takes a partnership with Putin to have a sensible immigration policy.

Back, now, to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is my main subject today.

I have been a Netanyahu admirer for a long time. You could even have called me a Bibi fanboy. At a young age, I was drawn to the Israeli Right. I regard Menachem Begin as one of the outstanding political figures of the second half of the twentieth century.

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The survival and flourishing of Israel is very important to me. I wrote about this in 2015, in a piece called “Hung Up on Israel.”

I think I first became aware of Netanyahu in the early 1980s, when he was deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Then he was Israel’s ambassador to the UN.

In my opinion, there was no better spokesman for Israel and its cause. He articulated principles and ideals—and facts—that were important.

Then, too, there was a mystique surrounding his family, as his valiant brother Jonathan was the only Israeli soldier killed during the raid on Entebbe. (This was the operation to rescue Israeli hostages in Uganda.) The raid took place on July 4, 1976, America’s Bicentennial Day.

Benjamin Netanyahu first became prime minister in 1996. His spokesman was David Bar-Illan, a pianist, whom I knew. Pianists as politicos—Israel is an unusual country.

In a later government, Netanyahu was finance minister. He was a liberalizer. Critics accused him of being “Thatcherite”—which was fine with me.

He returned to the office of prime minister in 2009 and has been there almost continuously since. Over and over, he clashed with President Obama—on Iran and other matters. I sided with Netanyahu. Did that make me unpatriotic? “America First!”

Well, tough. I thought Netanyahu was right.

In those years, I referred to him as the “Leader of the West.” (I applied the same designation to Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada.) In a forum once, I asked Paul Johnson, the British historian, “Whom do you regard as a major and impressive statesman today?” He named Netanyahu. “A man of destiny,” he said.

That sounded right to me.

As Netanyahu’s years in office wore on, my doubts set in. For one thing, I thought he was staying too long. He was not letting others in his party rise. Also, it seemed to me he was equating Israel’s security with his hold on power. But if the survival of a country depends on one man, who is mortal, it has no chance.

David Ben-Gurion, too, had a hard time exiting the scene. Frankly, I think my beloved Margaret Thatcher stayed too long. Speaking of beloved British prime ministers: Did Churchill really need that extra premiership in the 1950s? Did it do anything to burnish his record?

There was a touch of megalomania about Netanyahu. At his rallies, they chanted, “Bibi, King of Israel!” The democrat in me balked at that.

We should then note the charges of corruption. “But it’s the Left, it’s the media!” some of my friends say. That is reflexive in conservatives. “The Left, the media!” I understand this well.

Let me tell you something. I admired Reagan, and maybe over-admired him. I defended him at every turn: Iran-contra, Bitburg … Yes, I liked him, even loved him. But perhaps even more, I hated his enemies.

And you cannot let the “other side” win, ever.

In the summer of 2019, I was walking in Tel Aviv and saw the biggest campaign poster I had ever seen. It was on a skyscraper. I’m not sure how many storeys high it was, but—many. It showed Netanyahu and Putin in a chummy pose. The words read: “Netanyahu: In a league of his own.”

I was revolted—because I know who and what Putin is. I realize that nations must pursue their interests, and that the world is grubby, but I also know that there was a moral component to the founding of modern Israel.

Is Israel merely “another pleasant country on the UN roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe,” to borrow Bush 41’s words?

At the end of 2022, Netanyahu formed another government—not especially conservative. It includes such figures as Itamar Ben-Gvir, a bona fide extremist. In Israel, my conservative friends were disquieted. In America? Not so much. They knew less. And the watchword had always been, “Bibi good, his critics bad.”

So too, the conservative or right-leaning media in Israel published robust debate about Netanyahu. Our own conservative or right-leaning media were less robust in this respect.

I also thought it was not especially good for Israel to be closely tied to the Republican Party—or any single party in America. The US-Israel relationship must be bigger than Trump and Netanyahu.

Here is a typical headline, from last month: “Trump demands immediate pardon for Netanyahu to focus on Iran.” (The article is here.)

Above, I mentioned Churchill and also Paul Johnson. In the 1930s, Johnson’s father had a negative view of Churchill. And he referred to him as “Churchill.” When the war came, the elder Johnson said something like, “We’d better get Winston.”

Paul Johnson, who was about twelve, noticed this: it had gone from “Churchill” to “Winston.”

I caught myself starting to say “Netanyahu” instead of “Bibi.” When I’m feeling warm toward the man, it’s “Bibi.” When I’m not, it’s “Netanyahu.”

About October 7, I will be brief: How could the government let Israel be naked unto its enemies, especially on the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? I figured that the ensuing commission would make the Agranat Commission—the one that investigated the failures in 1973—look like a picnic.

But there was a war to fight, and Israeli and pro-Israel wagons circled, more or less.

Now the Iran war is upon us. Netanyahu realizes that Putin is an ally of Iran, right? And that Orbán has had cozy relations with Tehran, too?

In October 2022, Netanyahu published an autobiography: Bibi: My Story. This was eight months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the book, Netanyahu describes Putin as “smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal—returning Russia to its historical greatness.” We all have different ideas of “greatness.”

Putin has re-Sovietized Russia, abolishing civil society and independent media. There are more political prisoners in Russia today than in the last stage of the Soviet Union. Putin exiles, imprisons, maims, or kills his critics. He is committing war crime after war crime in Ukraine, as he seeks to subdue that nation and re-subjugate it.

If this is “greatness,” then to hell with greatness.

February 24, 2025, marked the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion. In the UN, Ukraine offered a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. The resolution passed 93 to 18.

Voting against the resolution were Russia, North Korea, Belarus, and Nicaragua. And Hungary (of course). And the United States. And Israel.

Of course?

Personally, I was sickened to see my country on that side of the vote—on the same side as Russia, North Korea, and the rest. Though it’s not my country, I was sickened to see Israel on that side too.

A question for you: If Benjamin Netanyahu puts paid to the Islamist regime in Iran and its tentacle Hamas—and maybe its tentacle Hezbollah, to boot—will anything that can be said against him pale in comparison?

Here at the end, I should “pull the trigger.” That’s what the late, great Norman Podhoretz instructed writers to do, especially in an opinion piece. You have to pull the trigger. You have to say what you believe, take a stand. Don’t leave the reader wondering.

The truth is, I’m ambivalent about Netanyahu. About “Bibi”! My only comfort is that others of my acquaintance are in the same boat.

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Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is in Ukraine! We’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation—read our first one here. Premium subscribers will receive each Ukraine Dispatch 24 hours before anyone else. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

Earlier this month, a Fox News host was talking with President Trump about the Iran war. The host said, “You think Putin is helping them?” (meaning the Iranians). Trump answered, “I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah, I guess. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right?”

Further on, Trump said, “It’s like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness.”

First, it would be news if the United States were still helping Ukraine. Second, Trump’s instinct—on every occasion—is to defend or excuse Putin. Third, many of us will not accept a moral equivalence between helping Ukraine and helping the ayatollahs’ regime.

The Ukrainians are trying to save themselves from annihilation and subjugation by Russia. Russia’s ally, the ayatollahs’ regime, is as monstrous as the Kremlin.

We American conservatives always complained about “moral equivalence,” by which we meant a false moral equivalence, a false equating. The Soviets do it, we do it—there are no “good guys” and “bad guys” here.

Sometimes that was dressed up as realism. But it was always flawed, if not plain wrong.

One brief example, from 1978. The Kremlin was putting dissidents through show trials. Our ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, gave an interview to a French newspaper, saying, “In our prisons, too, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people whom I would describe as political prisoners.”

Young was, and is, a good and decent man. But what he said was both cuckoo and offensive.

President Carter, at a press conference, said, “I know that Andy regrets having made that statement, which was embarrassing to me. I don’t believe he will do it again.”

William F. Buckley Jr. had a line about moral equivalence. He worded it slightly differently each time, but here is one version: “The man who pushes an old lady into the path of an oncoming truck, and the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of an oncoming truck, are not to be denounced evenhandedly as men who push old ladies around.”

He should have lived to see Donald Trump and his administration. (But that would have done WFB no favors.)

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A sign of things to come came in December 2015, when Trump was running for the Republican nomination. On television, Joe Scarborough asked him about Putin. Scarborough made the simple point that Putin is the type to murder his critics and invade foreign countries. “Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?” asked Scarborough.

Trump answered, “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”

Not giving up, Scarborough said, “But again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.”

Trump answered, “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”

That should have been enough for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. We had always decried such a mindset. But the Right was changing, dramatically.

Trump won the nomination with ease. In the summer of 2016, the New York Times asked him about civil liberties in Turkey. The strongman, Erdoğan, had cracked down on the country viciously.

“I think right now, when it comes to civil liberties,” said Trump, “our country has a lot of problems, and I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country.”

Trump continued, “When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger.”

Again, Republicans and conservatives would once have thrown a fit, rightly.

Trump was elected in November. Shortly after being sworn in, he had a conversation with Bill O’Reilly like the one he had had with Joe Scarborough. (This was another television interview.)

O’Reilly said, “Putin is a killer.” Trump answered, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

This was not a campus radical, mind you. This was the president of the United States.

In June 2018, Trump flew to Helsinki to meet Putin. Before the summit began, Trump wrote, “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!” The Russian foreign ministry answered, “We agree.”

How cozy.

American relations with Russia were indeed rocky. That was because of the Kremlin’s behavior, many of us thought: violating borders, murdering dissidents, interfering in foreign elections—all that.

Bless the name of Jeff Mason, a reporter for Reuters, who had a question for Trump at the summit press conference. Mason cited the president’s earlier statement about “many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” etc. The question: “Do you hold Russia at all accountable, for anything in particular?”

“Yes, I do,” Trump answered. “I hold both countries responsible. I think the United States has been foolish. I think we have all been foolish.”

At least our president had graduated from blaming America alone to moral equivalence.

In the summer of 2020, the Afghan War was still on, and there were reports that Russia was supplying the Taliban with weapons—to use against our troops, of course. Asked about these reports, Trump said, “Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too.” (Trump was apparently referring to the Soviet war in Afghanistan.)

The pattern never changes. You might credit Trump with consistency.

In the summer of 2023, Trump was out of office and under indictment. He faced four criminal indictments: two at the state level, two at the federal level. Needless to say, he had abundant legal help.

On August 4, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote, “The United States strongly condemns Russia’s conviction of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny on politically motivated charges. The Kremlin cannot silence the truth. Navalny should be released.”

A Republican senator, Mike Lee of Utah, had a response: “Regimes that prosecute opposition leaders on politically motivated charges deserve strong condemnation.”

We can have a debate over the indictments of Trump—whether they were just or not. But this is undebatable: in America, Trump was reelected president, and in Russia, Navalny was murdered.

There is no moral equivalence.

Trump is now about 14 months into his second term, and he and his administration have always drawn a moral equivalence—at best—between Ukraine and Russia: between invaded and invader.

February 24, 2025, marked the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. At the United Nations, Ukraine offered a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. The resolution passed 93 to 18.

Opposing it was Russia, of course. And the United States. Of course?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “We didn’t feel it was conducive, frankly, to have something out there at the UN that’s antagonistic to either side.”

In December 2025, President Trump was standing next to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. A reporter asked Trump about Russia’s unceasing attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Did this not show Putin wasn’t serious about peace?

“No, he’s very serious,” Trump answered. “I believe Ukraine has made some very strong attacks also.” In what may pass for graciousness or sympathy, Trump then turned to Zelenskyy and said, “I don’t say that negatively.”

About a week later, Trump was again talking about Ukraine and Russia, and he said, “They both have done some pretty bad things. Look, that’s Biden’s war. That’s not my war.”

Actually, it is Putin’s war—and that of his allies: China, Iran, North Korea, and so on down the blood-drenched line.

A false moral equivalence is not only illogical, it is also stomach-turning, even abhorrent. On this, as on so many other things, conservatives and Republicans were right the first time.

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