Author Chuck DeVore profileHitler’s Nazi regime is almost universally regarded as a fully evil enterprise, with only scattered and marginalized outcasts who deny the monstrosity of the Holocaust or claim that the doctrine of Aryan racial superiority is a positive good. The Soviet Union and its seven-decade run elicit less unanimity among those who would call its reign evil — or an evil made necessary by the effort to bring communism to life.

The People’s Republic of China was once seen as evil. But then, for a time, it was a partner in trade, with that view waning such that it is now, once again, widely viewed as an evil regime — though not yet as widely as was the USSR and certainly not as was the Nazi state. …