No state or system has a monopoly on curbing liberty, as Amnesty (perhaps a tad grudgingly) agrees

FOR an organisation that has tried to broaden the definition of human rights, Amnesty International has a lot to say about violations of the old-fashioned sort. Its latest report on the state of civil liberties round the world is a ghastly tale of torture, state terror, the suppression of free speech and the curtailing of due process, under regimes of every ideological stripe.

With its cautious, empirical approach to researching abuse, “The State of the World’s Human Rights” is a tome with moral power—as useful a work of reference as the American State Department’s annual reports (on human rights and more specific matters like human trafficking and religious freedom) and those of fellow NGOs like Freedom House and Human Rights Watch. …