And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic.

What was distinctively Western was not slavery but the moral crusade to end slavery.

There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again.

The issue of religious liberty is absolutely critical. America was founded on three different types of liberty: political liberty, economic liberty, and religious and civil liberty. It's remarkable that, one-by-one, these strands of liberty are coming under fierce attack from the Left. And that's particularly ironic because "liberal" derives from a word which means "liberty," the free man as opposed to the slave. This liberalism which we're saddled with today isn't a real liberalism at all, but a gangster style of politics masquerading as liberalism.

Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did.

America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.

In my view, the pro-life movement at this point should focus on seeking to reduce the number of abortions. At times it will require political education and legal fights, at times it will require education and the establishment of alternatives to abortion, such as adoption centers. Unfortunately, such measures are sometimes opposed by so-called hard-liners in the pro-life movement. These hard-liners are fools. Because they want to outlaw all abortions, they refuse to settle for stopping some abortions; the consequence is that they end up preventing no abortions.