Bret Stephens

At some point in the last 30 years, the concept of the “free world” fell out of favor. Maybe it seemed dated once the Cold War ended. Or an afterthought in an era in which economic development, not political freedom, became the primary measure of human progress. Or too smug in an American…

Is it a good idea for Joe Biden to run for re-election in 2024? And, if he runs again and wins, would it be good for the United States to have a president who is 86 — the age Biden would be at the end of a second term? I put these questions bluntly because they need to be discussed candidly, not…

It’s a shame that the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor received so little public attention. We are living in an era that holds some unpleasant resemblances to the period before the Japanese attack. And we are losing the capacity for surprise that could help us anticipate or avert a…

American history is, in many ways, a story of grand protests. They generally come in two types. There are protest movements that, even in ferocious dissent, believe that the American system is ultimately geared to fulfill its inner promises — of equality, unalienable rights, the pursuit of…

It’s been nearly 30 years since then-Gov. Bill Clinton took a break from the campaign trail to oversee the execution of death-row inmate Ricky Ray Rector. Morally, it may have been repugnant to kill a man so mentally handicapped by a failed suicide attempt that he set aside the pecan pie of his…

A "complex, coordinated and deliberate attack" was how John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, on Monday described a recent drone assault on a US military outpost in Syria that helps train local allies to fight ISIS. It was conducted with as many as five Iranian drones, launched by Iranian…

A civilization “is born stoic and dies epicurean,” wrote historian Will Durant about the Babylonians. Our civilization was born optimistic and enlightened, at least by the standards of the day. Now it feels as if it’s fading into paranoid senility. Joe Biden was supposed to be the man of the…

For years, “broken windows” policing — the idea that the best way to prevent serious crime was to enforce laws against petty crime — was derided by critics as unnecessary, unjust, even racist. So cities across America pulled back from prosecuting the supposedly small stuff, like shoplifting. Now…

In 1990, V.S. Naipaul delivered a celebrated lecture on the subject of “Our Universal Civilization.” The Berlin Wall had fallen, liberal democracy was ascendant, and Naipaul wanted to reflect on what the universal civilization — by which he meant the West — meant for someone like him, a Hindu son…

If Joe Biden isn’t careful, Donald Trump might have a new nickname for him: “Shutdown Joe.” Or maybe, “Shut Down Joe.” Those monikers came to mind after the former vice president’s biggest blunder in the campaign thus far. I’m referring to Biden’s comment, in his interview last week with ABC’s…