In April 1994, an aircraft bearing Rwanda’s president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down and Rwanda’s majority ethnic group, the Hutus, blamed the Tutsis and began a systematic massacre of the Tutsis, killing over 800,000 in three months. The Tutsis then rebelled, killing many Hutus and thereby conquering most of Rwanda by mid-July 1994. This egregious slaughter on both sides is one of the great horrors of the 20th century.

Within the Democratic Party, especially within the Progressive Left, support for the B.D.S. Movement is growing. B.D.S. is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions initiative against Israel, seeking to exert economic, moral and political pressure on Israel. Founded in 2005 with a statement of principles, the B.D.S. “call” has been signed by more than 170 Palestinian organizations around the world.

The year 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” address, delivered at the spring commencement for the University of Michigan. Johnson’s speech remains the most ambitious call to date by any president to use the power of the national government to effect a far-reaching transformation of American society. In a broad sense, the calls of today’s Democratic socialists resemble LBJ’s call.

In mid-February 2019, The Houston Chronicle published a series of articles exposing with “painfully specific documentation,” hundreds of sexual abusers who have worked within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) over the last 20 years.

Some in the progressive left of the Democratic Party are advocating a form of “Democratic Socialism” as the solution to “the inequality in American society and to an economy rigged in the favor of vested interests.” Bernie Sanders is of course the standard bearer of this movement (and to some extent, Elizabeth Warren), but it is now being energized by more radical socialists, principally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

One of the major political struggles of our day is whether nations are embracing a democratic order, centered in the will of the people, or an authoritarian one, characterized by a strongman who satisfies the demand for a more muscular, assertive leader. After World War II, the optimistic vision was of a more democratic, open world with free trade, open borders and empowered citizens throughout the world. That vision appears to be dead. In fact, some would argue that the world is embracing a more authoritarian order.

The new term for the left wing of the Democratic Party is “progressive.” Presumably, this is less incendiary in our political culture than the term “liberal.” In many of the constituencies of the progressive left, there is a concerted effort to promote an anti-Israel, even a blatant anti-Semitic position.

Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, American civilization has been engaged in a “culture war” between those who seek to protect a woman’s right to have an abortion and those who seek to protect the rights of the fetus as a human being. There are no signs of this “war” subsiding or ending soon. Two developments at the state level indicate both the zealous emotion and the total confusion that reign supreme in our civilization over this issue.

Thirty years ago, in 1989, we in the West were convinced that a new democratic order was dawning in the world. The Berlin Wall was gone and the democratic protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China fed the hope that a new world of democracy and freedom was dawning. The old, corrupt regimes of totalitarian communism were unraveling and the passion for democracy in both the Soviet Union and Communist China would surely produce a new world in which everyone embraced the same democratic values so central to Western Civilization—and especially to the United States. Those optimistic hopes are now dashed.

One of the major developments of 2018 was the growing worldwide influence of Vladimir Putin. He has made no secret of his desire to restore the grandeur and power of Russia, not as a communist state, but as the restored Russia of the czarist mold: The Russian Orthodox Church supporting a corrupt, authoritarian state. Two recent developments buttress his vision to make Russia a global superpower.