This essay is the ninth in a ten-part series being published in successive issues of The American Spectator under the general title, “The Pursuit of Liberty: Can the Ideals That Made America Great Provide a Model for the World?”

(Also in The American Spectator‘s Pursuit of Liberty series: Daniel Johnson’s “Storks Are Landing,” Fouad Ajami’s “Liberty for Strangers,” Natan Sharansky and Rod Dermer’s “The Case for Freedom,” and Victor Davis Hanson’s “Armies for Democracy — Past, Present, and Future.” To read the first five essays in the series, please click here.)