Last week, Anne Morse and I had the great privilege of attending a meeting of Socrates in the City, at which Baroness Caroline Cox spoke. Baroness Cox, as some of you may remember, received BreakPoint's Wilberforce Award in 1995. She is Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords; a courageous humanitarian; and a consistent opponent to radical Islam, Marxism, and other plagues of our age. Many of the problems that she's dealing with are familiar to most of us, but what's truly inspiring is to know that there actually are Europeans fighting these battles. (It was particularly delightful to me to hear that comedian Rowan Atkinson testified in support of one of her bills defending freedom of speech. Three cheers for Mr. Bean/Edmund Blackadder!)

Baroness Cox's speech from a 2005 Socrates event, "The 'West,' Islam, and Islamism: Is Ideological Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy?" is available on CD for $10. Her speech from last week will be up soon too, I believe. But in the meantime, if the 2005 speech is as good as last week's, and I expect it is, it'll be the best $10 you've spent in a long time.