When you cut through it, political correctness is nothing more than self-censorship. It is forcing people to voluntarily stop behaving or speaking in… - Charlie Kirk

Protecting individual liberty from the tyrannical forces of government is the idea our nation was built upon. It is the only way to protect the individual’s rights, the family, local churches and schools, and other groups who can’t fight back themselves. Be skeptical of everything, especially your government. Ask questions, fight for your rights, and never surrender.

Once those two parties get comfortable, resigned to the fact that neither is ever going to completely destroy the other, they can get down to furthering shared interests — “horse trading for votes,” as the saying goes. You give my district something big at the taxpayers’ expense in the next appropriations bill, which my district will thank me for, and I’ll give your district something expensive that they’ll thank you for.

Hanson sees a similar desire to boost national morale while also getting the biggest bang for your cautiously spent buck (or your solidus, in the case of the Byzantine Empire) in many great leaders of the past, including Pericles, Alexander the Great, Justinian’s predecessors Augustus and Constantine, the later Holy Roman Emperors Charlemagne and Joseph II, Queen Elizabeth I and Churchill of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Abraham Lincoln. They were important not just because of military victories, argues Hanson. They shared a similar nationalist conviction: “They have a historical sense that decline is not a matter of exhaustion of natural resources, or it’s not predicated on enemies over the next hill. Usually, it’s internal.