Simple messages are powerful. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a heroine of our times (and an old friend), offered one at the Heritage Foundation this past week. Delivering the annual Russell Kirk Lecture, she urged the great and good majority to “take courage.”

In her talk, titled, “Defining Civilization Down,” Hirsi Ali said unflinchingly that the traditional civilization of America and the wider West is “superior” to the one being foisted upon it by the Left. And she rightly argued that it must be saved by people refusing to be brow-beaten into silence, and instead speaking up without equivocation in defense of its history and precepts.