Sadly, few of us are celebrating last week’s coup pulled off by our spy agencies precisely because we have again narrowly avoided having to watch American carnage on TV. And this allows us to get back to watching American Idol. But we should celebrate the fact that a fearless double agent, directed by both the [...]
As we watch the continuing economic implosion of socialist Europe, I would offer this thought experiment especially to those who continue to vote Democrat: Consider the fact that at his inaugural address in 1960, at the most desperate point in the nuclear standoff of the cold war, Kennedy famously challenged the nation by stating, “So [...]
The late, great William F. Buckley famously quipped: I’d rather be governed by 50 people randomly selected from the Boston phone book than 50 of the Yale faculty. Translation: no matter how pedigreed you may be, if you view the world through a collectivist, capitulationist prism, your judgment is fatally flawed. So too is the [...]
A recent national poll showed that 7 out of 10 Americans feel this country is in decline. In a California survey this month, it was 10 out of 10. Most of those that were surveyed felt if things continue in the economy and do not turn around, we are facing our own fallen civilization and [...]
Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested. In the First Punic War, during the late 240s BC, the Carthaginians grew weary of the long war with Rome and made the decision to decommission much of their fleet and to release from their employ many of their [...]
When a civilization accepts the propaganda of its enemy as truth, it has reached the far side of appeasement and capitulation is nigh. In 340 BC the Athenian ambassadors to Macedon, who had negotiated the Peace of Philocrates, returned to Athens and addressed the Assembly. They extolled the virtues and peaceful intentions of the warlord [...]
Debasing the currency always destabilizes the governing authority. During the late second century and early third centuries AD several Roman Emperors attempted to inflate the Empire’s wealth. They recalled some of the outstanding gold coinage, secretly melted it down, and reissued it with leaden cores. In each case, this tactic was nearly catastrophic. The secret [...]
With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty. After the fall of the Roman Empire of the West in AD 476, the Emperor Justinian came to power in Constantinople, the capital of the still existent Roman Empire of the East. With the help of some able generals, Justinian was able to reclaim [...]
To hold territory, a state must be populated by those loyal to the central authority. When immigration overwhelms assimilation, the fall is predicted. In the summer of 376 AD, the Roman Emperor, Valens, agreed to allow a very large tribe of Goths to settle in Thrace. He could not have imagined that this decision would [...]
When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged. Crushing taxation imposed upon the middle and lower class Romans contributed to the loss of the Roman provinces of Gaul, Iberia, and North Africa to the German invaders of the fifth century. In the second and [...]
