Honor is important, in golf and in life. I lead my Impromptus today with this subject. I go on to constitutional rights, the English language, the city of Cleveland, and more. Try it here.

And here is a link to a podcast — or a video? A video’d podcast? The world keeps changing, in technology and other arenas. For many years, my friend Bill Kristol and I have talked books and music. He said, “Why don’t we do a little of it on the air?” So we did. Our principal subjects: Stefan Zweig, Mario Vargas Llosa, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In 2000, Congress created the CECC: the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Its current co-chairmen are Representative Chris Smith (R., N.J.) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.). With the latter, I am not very familiar. (When I think of Oregon senators, I think of Bob Packwood and Slade Gorton!) With Chris Smith, I am well familiar. He has been in Congress since 1981. He is a human-rights champion. He favors human rights for everyone: not just the victims of left-wing regimes, not just the victims of right-wing regimes — everyone.

This is very rare, I can tell you (from long experience).

Not long ago, Smith and Merkley sent a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee:

We, the undersigned members of the United States Congress, respectfully nominate Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, ethnic Mongol activist Hada, Chinese Protestant pastor Wang Yi, journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin, and entrepreneur and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai to receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their deep commitment to human rights and peace in China. All five of these human rights leaders are arbitrarily detained, serving long sentences for exercising rights guaranteed them by international law.

Ilham Tohti and Jimmy Lai have been nominated for the Peace Prize previously, and both deserve significant global recognition as champions of peace, freedom, and human rights. We nominate the others named here for the first time, recognizing their immense courage for standing up for greater women’s rights, religious freedom, and the cultural and linguistic rights of ethnic minorities in China.

Question: Who is eligible to nominate people for the Nobel Peace Prize? The answer is, there are seven categories of eligible nominators, including “members of national assemblies and governments.” (To read more about the prize, you may wish to consult the history I wrote some years ago: Peace, They Say.)

I have thrown a number of links at you so far. I will throw a number more.

Ilham Tohti, the Uyghur scholar, leader, and political prisoner, is a marvelous man. He has a marvelous daughter, Jewer Ilham, who is campaigning for his freedom. I spoke with her in 2022 (here).

Jimmy Lai is one of the heroic figures of our age. I wrote about him, at some length, here. His friend Mark L. Clifford has written a biography. I spoke with Mark last December. He is the president of an organization that many of us admire a great deal: the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

Another question: Is the Nobel Peace Prize a human-rights award, in addition to a peace award? Yes, it is. This started in 1961, 60 years after the prize began. The prize for 1960 (conferred a year later) went to Albert John Lutuli, an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa. (Splendid, multifaceted man.) It was the first time the prize honored a freedom struggle, or human-rights struggle, within one country. The prize was originally intended to honor efforts toward peace between nations.

(This is a long discussion.)

Not until 2010 did the Norwegian Nobel Committee give its prize to a person from China. The laureate was Liu Xiaobo, the dissident and prisoner. (The award was conferred in absentia.) When the prize was announced, I wrote about it, here. Liu Xiaobo died in 2017, surrounded, as usual, by agents of the Chinese Communist Party.

A man of stunning bravery and integrity, Liu Xiaobo. In partnership with Wu Dazhi, Perry Link wrote a biography of him. Two years ago, I had a piece on both Liu Xiaobo and the formidable Professor Link, here.

One more thing to note:

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has announced that Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned Hong Kong entrepreneur and standard-bearer for freedom, is an Honorary 2025 Bradley Prize winner. . . .

The Foundation looks forward to welcoming Lai’s son, Sebastien, to receive the award on his behalf at the Bradley Prizes ceremony on Thursday, May 29th at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

(For that press release in its entirety, go here.)

Political prisoners want to be remembered; their jailers and torturers want them to be forgotten. We must remember them: in China, in Russia, in Iran, in Saudia Arabia, in Cuba, in North Korea — wherever they may be.