As Americans prepare to celebrate the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should also toast the 250th anniversary of a savvy political two-step that paved the way to formally breaking with Britain the following year. “We, your Majesty’s faithful...
The likely temporary Israel-Iran ceasefire notwithstanding, if you need proof of how despicable Donald Trump is, consider this: When asked last week if he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, which had already said it would stop retaliating...
As a stampede of weasels just sought to con America into supporting another Mideast war, it is time remember America’s most underrated critic of bellicose folly. H.L. Mencken is famous for his smackdowns of politicians and ridicule of government and of much of...
Every period of history, and indeed every event, is both entirely unique and simultaneously a carbon copy of some earlier model. At the moment, the British party system is in disarray; a new insurgent populist movement is capturing the energy of a great body of...
This is reprinted from Jim Bovard's blog and expands on a post originally from 2023. Today is the 163th anniversary of the battle of Front Royal, Virginia (the town near where I was raised). On May 23, 1862, almost all the Yankee soldiers in Front Royal were captured,...
Ancient Rome’s high tax rates enabled maintenance of larger professional armies than were possible in the Middle Ages. Rome partially conquered the world through massive tax-funded government projects, such as investing in roads for their armies to move farther and...
In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. policymakers felt they faced an increasingly dire situation in China. By late 1949, Mao Zedong’s Communist forces had decisively defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (Kuomintang/KMT), pushing them off the mainland to Taiwan....
On December 11, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as one of the last things he would do at the end of his term as the European Union’s rotating president, said he had proposed a Christmas truce between Ukraine and Russia. "At the end of the Hungarian EU...
