In a rambling column otherwise focused on the November elections, Thomas Friedman revisited one of his favorite themes: his odd and unsettling affinity for autocracy.

In the shadow cast by 9/11, it was difficult to believe something could be worse than al-Qaeda 1.0. But with American nightclubs and office buildings awash in blood, with Europe under siege, with Christians and Yazidis targeted for extermination, with the Pandora’s Box of chemical warfare reopened, with the female populations of entire cities enslaved, here we are.

It was a day, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, when “the pride of our nation” began a battle…

In his remarks at Hiroshima, President Obama avoided delivering an outright apology for America’s use of atomic bombs to finally break the brutal war machine of Imperial Japan—a decision that won and ended a just war. Even so, the speech raises three unsettling issues.

Harry Wu fought the good fight and finished his leg of the race. The rest of us who believe in human freedom need to take the baton he carried.

Obama’s predecessors understood—innately, intuitively, inherently—that the free market is what works. It’s not a preference or an opinion. It’s not something that has to be tested or tried out. History proves it works. Empirical evidence proves it works. And both history and empirical evidence prove that socialism does not work.

It may come as a surprise to the president, but key members of his national-security team say America is at war.

Gen. Jim Mattis once insisted: “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.” Regarding ISIS, we’ve done little to convince them their time is ended.

Can anyone imagine Truman or Eisenhower, Johnson or Reagan responding in a similar manner if Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev complimented them? Did they praise Moscow for blockading Berlin, for crushing Hungary, for snuffing out the Prague Spring, for smothering Poland, for being strong, for killing terrorists, for keeping restive peoples in line?

CSIS has developed a new online tool for tracking major cyberattacks around the world. The website is as helpful as it is sobering.