Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.

Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives

Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.

You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

...Environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public.

Women aren't the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.