Too many countries that do not play by the free trade rules of the World Trade Organization - including, notably mercantilist China and monopolist Saudi Arabia - have been allowed in, to the detriment of both the WTO and the liberal trading environment it is supposed to sponsor.

Most Americans will be horrified that President Obama is compromising our deterrent to chemical and biological attacks on this country. Our allies will also be troubled by his aspiration to eliminate U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

But I really believe it is in America's interest as well as that of the free world more generally to stop Iran from getting its hands on nuclear weapons. This regime has threatened to wipe Israel off the map and bring about a world without America, and either of those is a really bad prospect.

Unbeknownst to most American investors, significant portions of their public pension, mutual fund, life insurance and private portfolios are comprised of stocks of privately held companies that partner with state sponsors of terror.

After all, from the Muslim Brotherhood's inception in Egypt in 1928, it has been a revolutionary organization committed to the imposition worldwide of a totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah.

The object of China's strategy is inexorably to supplant the United States as the world's premier economic power, and if necessary, to defeat us militarily.

It is one of the truisms of politics that a conservative is often enough a former liberal who has been 'mugged by reality.'