| | | | Freedom has declined worldwide for the 13th consecutive year, Freedom House's annual report finds, and while some bright spots emerged in Malaysia, Armenia, Ethiopia, Angola, and Ecuador, the report cites a broad decline since the Cold War.
It reserves scathing criticism for President Trump: "No president in living memory has shown less respect for its tenets, norms, and principles," the report says, citing attacks on the press, election legitimacy, and the rule of law.
The US ranks 33rd worldwide. Freedom House's chart illustrates America's position, compared with some of its peers:
That said, the US rating remains unchanged—despite erosions, silver linings included judicial checks on Trump, protests (with an improved score for freedom of assembly), and midterm turnout—and the report points to a longer decline, starting with bulk-data surveillance and President Obama's crackdown on press leaks (chart from the original report):
 | | Fareed: Fake News Is Cultural | | In a wide-ranging interview with French daily l'Opinion, Fareed lays out the state of politics ahead of President Trump's speech: an enthusiastic Democratic base, working-class whites having fled the party, and the 2020 field still shaking out.
The state of truth is another topic, and Fareed argues "fake news" is about culture.
"The problem is not only that Trump is saying false things or attacking the media, but that 40% of the American public believes it. And this is a fact that can be observed in many other countries," Fareed says. "This revolt against the media and experts is … part of a broader cultural phenomenon: this population is rising up against those they believe are leading the world. It is not possible to answer 'please understand that two plus two equals four' because if they oppose you, it is not because of what you say, but because of who you are." | | Will Europe Join the Protectionist Wars? | | While the US and China fight a trade war, and prop up their own industries in different ways, Germany's economy minister has floated a plan to create a fund that would protect large German companies from foreign takeovers—part of a larger ambition to protect German and European corporate giants from international competition, The Financial Times reports.
Could this become a trend in Europe? Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsky argues that, if it gains support in Germany, it could—and that if Europe turns protectionist, it didn't start the fight: With the US taking a similar turn under President Trump, such a move might be inevitable. | | What to Do with ISIS's Captured Fighters? | | While the fight against ISIS isn't over in Syria, the question of what to do with detained ISIS fighters is a complicated one. The US has called on countries to repatriate ISIS fighters and prosecute them, but the idea has already caused controversy in France: Le Monde argues in an editorial that the issue is a judicial and political headache—complicated, logistically, by issues like France's broken diplomatic ties with Damascus—but that France has no choice but to bring fighters back and try them, lest they escape, disperse, and cause a greater national-security risk in the end.
A Wall Street Journal report that ISIS is now percolating in Nigeria, meanwhile, seems only to bolster the argument that after losing most of its territory in Syria, ISIS remains a threat to pop up elsewhere. | | America Needs a New Nationalism | | The broad-view study of American history has faded in academia, Jill Lepore writes in Foreign Affairs, arguing that as it has waned, so has America's sense of itself; consequently, two versions of American national identity have battled since at least the Civil War—one liberal and values based, and another illiberal and seeded by ethnic and cultural identity.
What America needs, then, is a renewed focus on itself and a new national story—one that might tout the values on which America was founded while recognizing those values have offended some among us. In the absence of such self-examination, illiberal impulses win, and a cultural slogan of "America First" becomes the mantra. | | | | | | |
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