Afghanistan’s parliament demanded Wednesday that the government prevent a man, who faced the death penalty for abandoning Islam for Christianity, from being able to flee the country after his release from prison on Monday. The charges against him are simple: “apostasy from Islam.” His whereabouts are unknown but he is likely still within the country. The Italian government has granted asylum after Muslim clerics had openly and strongly called for his death.

It seems someone always forgets to tell the Afghans, in their rush toward democracy, that freedom of religion is a basic human right in normal democracies. I doubt that any of these new Muslim governments will allow such real freedom any time soon, thus making me less than impressed with all that we have done to spread “freedom” to that part of the world. We so easily forget that our form of freedom is rooted in both Enlightenment political thought and modern Christian advance and that this approach took Europe centuries to develop. The leaders in these Middle East “democracies” are oblivious to this part of freedom. Christians who believe […]

“What Would Jesus Do” has increasingly become more than an evangelical movement, equipped with wrist bands, urging young people to exercise better ethical choices. Some conservative Republicans have previously suggested that they know Jesus would be a card-carrying Republican and thus support things like opposition to labor unions and certain liberal government programs designed to assist the poor. (I also oppose some of these same programs but not because I know what Jesus would do in this case. My views are rooted in a political philosophy that I believe is the best one; thus I believe my views are the ones that best offer a reasonable opportunity for the poor to actually succeed.) Many on the political left have justly criticized this iconic use of the name Jesus by the Republican right. I strongly agree with this criticism.

I wonder, however, what these same folks on the left will now do since Hillary Clinton has made it clear that Jesus would favor illegal immigrants flooding into America as a demonstration of real compassion. She told a press gathering today that she thinks […]

Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the Netherlands today. I can’t say I am profoundly saddened by this news. The former president of Yugoslavia, sometimes called “the butcher of the Balkans,” was one of the most brutal killers in the 20th century. He was on international trial for genocide, facing 66 counts of crime against the people, for the decade of bloodshed that he unleashed during the breakup of his country in the 1990s.

When one thinks of “ethnic cleansing,” a politically correct term if there ever was one, this man’s name will always come to mind. Sadly, the completion of his trial would have brought some historical closure and consensus that will not take place now that he is gone.

Milosevic once called himself the “Ayatollah Khomeini of Serbia," assuring his prime minister, Milan Panic, that the “Serbs will follow me no matter what.” Milosevic was clearly full of himself and of his warped view of the world. What made him so dangerous was that he had the power and the will to follow his distorted dreams. […]