Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

The U.S. No Longer Owns the Future of Freedom

Democracy is worth fighting for. But only Europe can take the lead.

January 19, 2018 at 7:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Heirs apparent.
Photographer: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

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The many critics of Freedom House can finally gloat: The think tank has turned its well-calibrated guns on the U.S. in its 2018 report on "Freedom in the World":

America's "core institutions," the think tank continues, "were attacked by an administration that rejects established norms of ethical conduct across many fields of activity." They, according to Freedom House, "remained fairly resilient in 2017" but could end up weakened if the onslaught continues.