Zurich, Switzerland — When you think of Switzerland what comes to mind?

Beautiful lakes surrounded by the Alps; a rich country with happy people; the home of milk chocolate, expensive watches and discrete bankers; a peaceful country that has not been at war in more than two centuries?

All that is true, and even more. Switzerland is at or near the top of almost every measure of a successful country, including the just released Human Freedom Index compiled by the Cato and Fraser Institutes, and others.

The world would be far better off if a majority of its countries were run like Switzerland. And in this way too: almost no one knows who the president of Switzerland is. Do you? That’s also something to emulate.

Would you vote for someone who you believe knowingly lies to you? The problem for the American people is that candidates from both parties lie on a regular basis, and so it is all too rare that a voter has a choice between someone who will honor his or her promises and someone who will not.

A substantial majority of the American people believe that Hillary Clinton is not a truth-teller — for very good reasons. The fables about Benghazi, her private email server, and the conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation are so transparent that only those who live in an alternative universe find her statements the least bit believable. Mrs. Clinton is only unusual among the Washington political class in that her fibs are so blatant and obvious.

More typical are the less-obvious broken promises of many Republicans.

Would you call yourself a “socialist”? Webster’s dictionary defines socialism as “a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, etc. in the community as a whole.”

Modern-style socialism was born during the French Revolution — with the Conspiracy of Equals. In his classic work “Heaven on Earth” about the rise and fall of socialism, Joshua Muravchik, wrote: “Once empowered, socialism refused to yield its promised rewards. The more dogged the effort to achieve it, the more the outcome mocked the humane ideals it proclaimed. Yet for a century and a half, no amount of failure dampened socialism’s appeal. Then suddenly like a rocket crashing to earth, it all collapsed. Within a couple of decades, socialism was officially repealed in half the places where it had triumphed. In the other half, it continued in name only.”

It was an ideology that claimed ...