After the West won the Cold War, democracy flourished in the world as never before. No more. The tide of political and human freedom hasn't merely slowed but in recent years has turned in the other direction. Seeing that the U.S. midwifed the post-1989 world, these trends are of more than passing interest.

Democracy's troubles are summed up in "Freedom in the World 2010," the yearly report card published today by Freedom House. We're in a "freedom recession," the advocacy group says. For the fourth consecutive year, more countries saw declines in political and civic rights than advances, the longest such period of deterioration in the 40 year history of this widely cited report.

Start with the "axis of engagement" states that President Obama sought to butter up diplomatically in his first year in office. The authoritarian regimes in Russia, Venezuela, Iran and China all became more repressive in 2009, according to Freedom House measures. America's attempts to play nice didn't make the other side any nicer.

Military coups rocked four African states. Central Asia's one democratic hope, Kyrgyzstan, was demoted this year from the "partly free" to "not free" category.

The Mideast remains the world's least fertile soil for democracy. Only one nation—Israel—qualifies as "free." Most of its Arab neighbors went further down the path of repression. There were declines even in Jordan and Morocco, whose moderate kings moved in the past year to concentrate political power.