Economist Vito Tanzi grew up in Italy, gained a Harvard Ph.D., became a senior staff member of the International Monetary Fund for 27 years, and is now honorary president of the International Institute of Public Finance. Here are edited excerpts of our interview.

Despite all the dire forecasts about millennial religious views, Tim Clydesdale and Kathleen Garces-Foley’s The Twenty­something Soul (Oxford, 2019) offers optimism. Christians overwhelmingly want to have children, and “over 70% of Nominal Evangelical twentysomethings and over 80% of Active Evangelicals plan to join churches when they have children.” The authors’ forecast: “We expect this branch of American Christianity will maintain its 30% share of the young adult population.” But will those parents emphasize believing as well as belonging?

Last Saturday, we examined the prostitution-abortion connection in America before the Civil War (see also “Abortion and legal minimalism”) but abortion was growing within another population group. Many observers commented about abortion among married women during the 1840s and 1850s.

Many American journalists report battles within our government but don’t recognize fissures in the regimes of Iran, China, and other countries. I spoke Sunday evening (audio here) with international affairs strategist George Friedman, chairman of Geopolitical Futures, and asked him how his background in intelligence and international strategy influenced his perception of last Friday’s sensational report from Iraq. His edited responses are below.

We are mourning this month the Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade decision that led to an abortion surge, but we should remember that abortion was not unknown in America even before the Supreme Court’s full-frontal legalization.

Hadley Arkes, my oldest academic friend, turns 80 this year. We met when he was 40 and I was a 30-year-old at DuPont headquarters in Delaware. Part of my job was to bring in scholars to meet with up-and-coming DuPont executives. The goal: Let the future corporate leaders see how the other half thinks, and learn which could match wits with the academic elite.

“Who controls the past controls the future,” George Orwell wrote. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun constructed his 1973 Roe v. Wade decision with historical rebar provided by an NYU law professor, Cyril Means, who just happened to be the lawyer of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.