with that join me in welcoming sohrab amari. >> thank you all for being here. i should start by saying i am grateful to the american conservative for cosponsoring this gathering. thanks to emile's steadfast support for my work and thanks to the other panelists, not least senator rubio who has shown leadership in pushing my party to reclaim its dogma. both to endorse this book and not to taketime out of a busy legislative schedule . so to begin, i'd like to pan out to a global picture. four years now defenders of freedom have been warning of a democratic recession. beginning in the 1970s, and then especially after the collapse of the soviet union dozens of societies built on coercion gave way to one built on consent. more recently however, coercion had made a depressing come back with many regions back flooding into kleppe tock receipt, authoritarianism and ideological dictatorships . o to see the severity of freedoms global fund consider a single news story from china where the leading democratic horizons opened up by earlier market reforms s have been shuttere