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When Publius Licinus Valerianus (known to history as Valerian) became emperor in 253 AD, the Roman Empire was in the midst of the ‘Crisis of the Third Century’— plagues, inflation, escalating conflicts, growing social tensions, rising crime, declining trade, and a struggling economy. But Valerian had decades of political experience, so everyone thought
Tim Sheehy is a former Navy SEAL who graduated from the United States Naval Academy and served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He earned a Bronze Star with Valor for his distinguished service and a Purple Heart for his wounds. And after leaving the Navy, he started a successful aerial firefighting
I have written to you more times than I can count about how the US government’s own budget officials forecast a $20 trillion increase in national debt over the next ten years. Remember, this isn’t some wild conspiracy theory. This was from an official projection released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) back
Unlike Joe Biden, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin was at the top of his game and still making incredible contributions to the United States. It was the spring of 1787– five and a half years since the last major battle of the American Revolution– yet still more than two years before the Constitution would take
The blood was barely dry in the streets outside of the Bastille when the brand-new government of revolutionary France started confiscating assets. It was November 2, 1789. And by a margin of 508 to 346, France’s fledgling legislators– on both the Left and the Right– voted to nationalize all of the real estate
Rumor has it the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Lina “Genghis” Khan, has set her wrath on a major US liquor distributor for the egregious crime of selling in bulk. The company in the path Khan’s fury is called Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits; they distribute alcohol to bars and restaurants
“Americans are feeling uneasy for reasons that are hard to pin down,” quipped economist Paul Krugman in a New York Times interview published earlier this week. Reasons that are hard to pin down? Bear in mind that this man received a Nobel Prize– our society’s most prominent award for intellectual achievement. Yet he
There is a well-known modern proverb (often attributed to the novelist G. Michael Hopf) that goes, “Weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men.” The saying sums up the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of societies– and it’s a
On the 1st of October 1791, the 755 freshly elected members of France’s brand-new Legislative Assembly took their seats for the first time in Paris’s famous Salle du Manege– an indoor horse-riding arena that had been converted into a giant meeting hall. While there were numerous political parties in France at the time
It was March 23, 2010, when Barack Obama signed his infamous “Affordable Care Act” into law. And in theory it was a nice idea. Healthcare in the US was incredibly expensive, and he wanted to bring costs down. But the execution was abysmal. Since 2010, the number of uninsured Americans is still far,
This entire week has been full of eye-rolling— borderline eye-gouging— cowardice and deceit in the halls of Congress. It started on Monday when none other than Dr. Anthony “the Science” Fauci appeared in front of the House Oversight Committee for two days of testimony. And every time the guy opened his mouth, we
Next month will mark 80 years since the US dollar was formally anointed as the world’s reserve currency. It was July 1944. And with the war in Europe near its denouement, governments were already trying to plan what the postwar world would look like. Most urgently, they needed to figure out how to
On August 4, 2017, the most hated person in the world was sentenced to seven years in prison. You may remember the case: his name is Martin Shkreli. Shkreli had quite infamously taken over a pharmaceutical company and jacked up the price of a medication by 50x, practically overnight. Media outrage ensued, and
In 2007, Giuseppe Ferrarello found himself facing a monumental challenge as the newly-elected mayor of Gangi, Italy — an incredibly picturesque yet dwindling town nestled in the mountains of Sicily. Like many rural communities across Italy and beyond, the village of Gangi was grappling with depopulation and economic decline. Once home to 15,000
In the year 1712, an English ironworker and part-time Baptist preacher named Thomas Newcomen finally put the finishing touches on a new invention that had been more than a century in the making. Newcomen called it the ‘atmospheric engine’, and it was essentially a very crude, rudimentary steam engine that he used to
