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“This was the week that changed the world” was Richard Nixon’s summing up at the end of his trip to China in February 1972.1 The hyperbole was justified, for this visit to China by an American president was a turning point in the cold war. Hitherto, the Soviet Union and China had been antagonists of the US. Thereafter, both Beijing and Moscow found it in their interest to come
Last summer I took a trip to Xinyang, a rural area of wheat fields and tea plantations in central China’s Henan province. I met a pastor, a former political prisoner, and together we made a day trip to Rooster Mountain, a onetime summer retreat for Western missionaries and later for Communist officials. From its peak we looked down on China’s Central Plains, which stretch six
Mao Zedong y Lin Biao, en 1966. Israel viana Madrid, España En la monumental biografía que publicaron en 2006 la profesora Jung Chang, antigua guardia roja de la Revolución Cultural, y su marido, el prestigioso historiador Jon Halliday, aseguraban que «Mao Zedong provocó la muerte de setenta millones de chinos en tiempos de paz». Entre ellos, todavía existe hoy la duda de si se encuentra Lin Biao, el jerarca que ayudó al histórico líder comunista a concentrar todo el poder del gigante asiático en su mano, hasta convertirlo en la dictadura más grande del mundo.
Wednesday, 14 April 2021 I often feel queasy when sports leaders claim some higher purpose for the activities over which they preside. As if games that are responsible for so much simple human happiness require any further justification. Not that sport is incapable of doing good in a broader sense: as a universal idiom, a vehicle for building bridges between people of profoundly different backgrounds, nothing else comes close. But sport’s power to change the world usually seems most convincing when activated by something spontaneous, rather than a premeditated, top-down brand-building exer...
Too Many Deny the True Evils of Communism Commentary By Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU. One of the most highly regarded books of the 20th century was Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death.” Winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize, the book is regarded as a classic for its analysis of how human beings deny their mortality. But there is something people deny more than mortality: evil. Someone should write a book on the denial of evil; that would be much more important because while we cannot prevent death, we can preven...