Freedom of the Press

On the twelfth anniversary of the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Turkey, deputies from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) rejected in January a parliamentary motion from a deputy of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) that aimed to shed light on the murder.

After reading Secretary Tillerson’s recent address, which tried to explain how “this administration’s policies of ‘America first’ fit into our foreign policy,” I am struck not so much by Tillerson’s attempt to decouple American interests and ideals, but by the chasm separating this speech from one given more than 75 years ago.

Had Castro been executed while in prison, history may indeed have absolved him for his role in attempting to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Instead, Castro would live to become an even more brutal and ruthless despot than the one he replaced.

Samuel Moyn’s Christian Human Rights argues that human rights should not be associated exclusively with the secular liberal left and liberal politics when the Christian right was historically involved with this project.

Kasparov argues in Winter is Coming that Putin and his kleptocratic government poses serious risks for the world’s democracies as the oligarchs maintain their wealth and power by any means necessary.

The earliest champions of a free press were not Enlightenment philosophes. They were dissenting Christians, most of them Protestants, battling the political and religious authoritarians of the day.