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Sunday, August 30, 2026

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. The Sine Qua Non Sequitur is spending the day critiquing pasta shapes with a traveling group of avant-garde bison groomers.

This will probably be a recurring variation on a theme here at the Briefing between now and when the final votes of the midterms are counted during halftime of the Super Bowl next February. It is important to remind ourselves of the fighting chance that Republican candidates have while President Trump is still leading this party. More on that in a bit.

As I have written many times, President Trump is trying to teach the Republican Party not only to want to win more, but how to go about doing so. Pre-Trump, the GOP was willing to take its victories on whichever schedule that historical trends dictated it should. If there had been a Democrat in the White House for two terms, then it was the Republicans' turn, for example. Conventional wisdom regarding historical electoral trends has been roughed up a bit in the Trump era. I'm not saying that none of it applies; I'm saying that maybe those trends aren't worth betting on anymore, even if you're drunk, flush with cash, and lacking inhibition.

If President Trump wants to apply his efforts to an election and make it interesting, he will. He made the Senate Republican primary runoff in South Carolina interesting, which Rick wrote about yesterday:

Graham made an unforced, rookie mistake in the one debate between her and her primary opponent, Rep. Ralph Norman, last week. She admitted she didn't know a lot about foreign policy, specifically Taiwan.
Norman must have thought the electoral gods were on his side. "By her choice, she's running for the United States Senate. It's a six-year term. You need to get fully versed in what issues you're going to be dealing with. This isn't a get training on the job, you can't do that."
After that gaffe, some political observers believed it would take a miracle for Graham to pull off a victory.
Enter a miracle.
Donald Trump rode to Graham's rescue on Friday, showing up at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center and, before an enthusiastic house, gave a ringing endorsement for Darline. He defended her debate gaffe by arguing that she was simply "being honest" rather than offering a typical politician's response.

Rick sets all of that up by covering some of the negative press and polling that the Trump mystique is dealing with. The Democrats' flying monkeys in the mainstream media and the Nate Silvers of the world want Trump supporters to despair. This kind of negativity worked wonders for them in the past — few things in politics used to be easier than getting emo Republicans and conservatives to not vote.

The hardcore MAGA faithful won't fall for the garbage "woe is Trump" approach, of course. What the Dems are hoping to do with it is win back some disaffected Democrats and/or get independent voters who were in Trump's corner in 2024 to go full Eeyore and not bother. This is why I say it's critical that we keep thinking of all the narratives and negative polling that Trump has triumphed over before.

"But Kruiser, President Trump isn't on the ballot in November."

I wrote this in the Briefing earlier in the month:

In my latest column, I wrote that the Democrats are acting as if President Trump is on the ballot in November. The DNC types have been pretty open about wanting to tie every Republican candidate to the president. They seem to believe that if they say "MAGA" over and over, the voters won't know that they're out of ideas.
The bad news for the Democrats, but great news for the Republicans, is that President Trump will be campaigning for GOP candidates as if he were on the ballot. He's already warming up.

After helping Darline Graham pull an electoral rabbit out of the hat, he's running red hot now.

President Trump isn't out there trying to help Republican candidates out of some tired sense of obligation. He's on a mission, and has been since he first ran for office. He has been trying to remake the GOP and has had a lot of success doing so. He also knows that there is a lot of work to do, and that his time to do it is running out.

The mission isn't just about ego, as his detractors would have us believe. Yes, he has a big ego; it's a common trait in people who achieve great things. It is a tool in his arsenal, though, not the thing that gets him out of bed in the morning. More than any man alive, President Trump knows that this country can't survive suffering through an extended run of the Dems being in charge. He's the one who has been trying to repair the monumental damage done by Joe Biden and his puppet masters. Saving the country from more of that is why he wants Republicans to win.

No matter what the media hacks say, Trump's looming presence in this midterm year is in no way a liability. His willingness and ability to fight can't guarantee election success, of course, but they give the GOP reason for hope.

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2026/08/27/the-morning-briefing-trump-might-just-have-enough-spine-for-the-entire-gop-n4956568/?utm_campaign=nl_pm&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pjmediambvip

Mr. Jefferson and Our Two Criminal Enemies

Mr. Jefferson and Our Two Criminal Enemies

by Mark Lewis

“The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”—Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, as he nearly always did, nailed the point exactly. History shows that, as government grows, human liberty decreases. There is a metaphysical reason for this, and our Founders based the American system upon it. It runs like this.

“People power” is called liberty—the right to do what one wishes (in harmony with virtue and the laws of God). “Government power,” when abused, is called tyranny. Government becomes necessary when people misuse their “power,” their liberty, by living unvirtuous lives, which infringe on the rights of others. Thus, for that reason, government becomes necessary. But government power always limits somebody’s “liberty”—and again, sometimes, necessarily so. But the principle is the same—government power restricts liberty, and too much government power, when it infringes on people’s true rights, becomes “tyranny.” Our Founding Fathers did everything they could to prevent the American government from becoming tyrannical. That is, as Jefferson stated above, the purpose of the Constitution.

The problem is that “power” in a political system is a zero-sum game, and the only place government can get more of it is by taking it from the liberties of the people. And so, what Jefferson said here is historically and metaphysically true. The course of history demonstrates that as government grows, the liberties of the people decline. We want the “liberties” of criminals to decline; that’s why we create government in the first place. Government must restrict some abuses of the people. But then, it is up to the people to restrict government so that government will not do what it has always done in history, i.e., become tyrannical.

Just like government writes laws telling the people what they cannot do (infringe upon the life, liberty, and property of other citizens), “We, the People” wrote a Constitution to tell government what it could and could not do. Criminals—“people” criminals and “government” criminals—must be protected against. Frankly, “We the People” have done a very, very poor job of protecting against the criminality of the government. Let’s analyze this a little further so that we can understand fully what Mr. Jefferson was talking about.

We are endowed by our Creator with certain “natural rights”—life, liberty, and property (or, “pursuit of happiness,” in the Jeffersonian phrase). There is only one way to have a truly “free” society, so that all citizens can pursue the life, liberty, and property of their choice, and that is if the people are virtuous, that is, respectful of the life, liberty, and property of others, and don’t invade others’ rights. When people “freely” choose to do that, then that is true freedom—it’s a free choice people make. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Edmund Burke concurred: “Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.”

The criminal class, which has always existed in every society throughout human history, is not virtuous or moral, and therefore, because of their unvirtuous selfishness, trespasses upon the rights of the virtuous and free. They are, as Jefferson said, “enemies of the people” because they seek to rob the people of their right to “life, liberty, and property.” Thus, government becomes necessary to protect us against this class of people. That is the legitimate function of government: “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men” (Declaration of Independence). Not to give us our rights, as Virginia Democrat Senator Tim Kaine abominably said a few months ago, but to protect our rights from the unvirtuous (“criminals”) who would try to take them from us. Governments, obviously, must have a certain amount of “power” in order to do this effectively, and we, the people, sacrifice certain of our rights, transfer those rights to government, in order that government can perform its legitimate function of protecting us from “criminals,” domestic and foreign. Sadly, this is necessary because not all men are virtuous. “If all men were angels,” James Madison wrote, “we wouldn’t need government.”

But government has been deemed necessary down through history to restrain the criminal’s “power” to take freedom from citizens. Government restricts the criminal’s power to rob freedom. But how is “government power” restrained so that it won’t take freedom from citizens?

As noted above, per Jefferson’s quote, “We, the People” wrote a Constitution that tells the government what it can and cannot do. The Constitution informs the government of the rights “we, the people” have sacrificed to it, clearly specifying, defining, and limiting those government “rights.” “Government, you can do these things, and nothing else.” Has the American government, down through our history, abided by that contract between the people and itself?

Don’t make me laugh.

“The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” The problem we face in America today, folks, is that we have a major political party that wants government to grow and individual liberty to decrease. The Democrats, as Tim Kaine said, believe that government gives us our rights; that is the system in Communist China and is a definition of totalitarian government, the very thing the Democrats want. It’s not freedom, it’s slavery. Any right government gives, it can take away, so what protection do we have from these government “criminals”? None whatsoever—if the Democrats get their way.

So, yes, two “enemies” exist in America today, and the purpose of both species is to take liberties away from people and give them to themselves. The government criminal (“enemy”) is by far the worst; it has power that George Floyd never dreamed of having.

Well, we were warned.

https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/07/16/mr-jefferson-and-our-two-criminal-enemies-n2679543?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-dphqkdWed8&utm_term=&_nlid=dphqkdWed8&_nhids=ncNAxF17I4lNls

The Lie That Keeps People Voting for Democrats

The Lie That Keeps People Voting for Democrats

David Strom

I shouldn't say "THE lie," I suppose, since there are many lies that keep fairly normal people voting for Democrats.

But this is one of the most important: 'It's not happening, and anybody who says otherwise is lying."

It's not a lie told about one thing; it's told all the time to keep people who should know better from leaving the fold, despite opposing almost everything the Democrats are doing these days.

I can't say when I first noticed this becoming one of the central lies being pushed by advocates of the Democrats, but until recently the most common version had been the "late-term abortions don't happen unless the life of the mother is at stake."

This is a lie, and one that has an exclamation point put after it by the wave of states that have legalized abortion until birth. The fact is that late-term abortions are a relatively small fraction of all abortions, but they are hardly uncommon, and abortion activists have been determined to keep extending the time frame in which abortions for any reason are legal.

And when they succeed, they celebrate. They positively beam with joy at the fact that they can kill a child moments before its head crowns outside the womb.

I know many people who are nominally pro-choice who also believe that abortions should not take place after, at least, viability, and for most, the time frame is generally 12 weeks or less, except in extraordinary circumstances.

So how do they reconcile their deeply held views with what Democrats are doing?

"It's not happening." "No mother would ever do that." "No doctor would ever do that." They don't look at the facts; they simply repeat the mantra.

You encounter this time and again, whether it is justifying legalizing prostitution, the Biden administration trafficking children, pornography in schools, Biden's decline, which we could all see with our own eyes, or the transing of children.

"It's not happening" becomes a substitute for dealing with reality, because the reality is so sickening that it doesn't bear thinking about.

I've had this very conversation about late-term abortions with a friend, and he insisted it didn't happen. So I handed him this article in The Atlantic about late-term abortionist Warren Hern, and he literally had to stop reading it. It was too disturbing because he simultaneously couldn't support it, but also couldn't vote against it because he is a die-hard Democrat.

Better to believe the lie than face the truth.

When liberals think of public schools, they romanticize them and refuse to believe that they are indoctrination centers obsessed with turning kids into radical left-wing, gender-confused zombies, despite the fact that it's obviously the case that they are.

Rather than face the uncomfortable facts, they say, "It's not happening," and accuse you of starting a culture war. The truth is that the culture war is happening, and we are the ones being attacked, but the "It's not happening" lie works wonders on people who really, really don't want to believe that it is.

I can't tell you how many times I have confronted people so desperate to believe the lie that they simply refuse to look the truth in the eye.

During COVID, it didn't take a genius to see that we were being gaslit, but the response I ran across daily was nothing more sophisticated than "It's not happening." You could show people as many facts as you like, but there was no way to break down the mental barrier because people WANT to believe the lies.

Even today, when the lies are laid bare, vast numbers of people simply ignore the facts and excuse lies as "mistakes" or were even a good thing.

It's the meme, and even when it is easily identified and pointed out, the truth has no impact on people who want to believe the lies.

Obviously, the people who choose to believe those lies — and in most cases, they are choosing to shut off their rational faculties — are the biggest part of the problem, but another key component of the problem is that too many people see through the lies and decide to avoid confrontation and let the lies slide.

Telling the truth should not be an act of courage, and the only reason why it is is that most people won't do it. The people who do are like whistleblowers who face enormous obstacles and pay a very high price, but only because their colleagues who also saw the wrongdoing kept their heads down.

In many ways, they are the key part of the phenomenon that keeps the lies going. They refuse to push the boundaries of the Overton Window, and as a consequence, they become accomplices to the liars.

In Massachusetts, Nine House Democrats broke ranks with their colleagues on the late-term abortion bill, and it was an act of enormous courage to do so. But it shouldn't have been. Surely many others who voted for the bill knew it was wrong, but they refused to buck their leadership and colleagues and say, "This is wrong."

Of all the people in these situations, they bear the most responsibility in my mind, because if they stood up they could actually move the Overton Window. Rather than nodding along when people say "It's not happening," they have the best chance of popping the bubble and making people face reality.

We can't. We are the bad guys in their world. Only fellow Democrats can.

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/08/26/the-lie-that-keeps-people-voting-for-democrats-n3818360?utm_source=twdailyamvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Get Ready for the Democrats’ Season of Bloodthirst

Get Ready for the Democrats’ Season of Bloodthirst

Tim O'Brien

In order for the Democrats to take control of the culture and ultimately the government, people have to die. It’s just a fact. As much as the left likes to blame conservatives for killing people for not wearing masks, not getting vaccinated, and for ignoring the lies of climate change and transgenderism, the movement that is fully reliant on violence and death is the left, and more specifically the 2026 version of the Democrat Party.

In the coming weeks, you’re going to be treated to unapologetic displays from the left, celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the radical Islamic attacks on America from 25 years ago on 9/11. For every sober and respectful commemoration event, it will feel like there are two or more disgusting displays from the left that can only appeal to the savage instincts of its base.

This has already started. My colleague David Manney wrote about a recent Hasan Piker event, where he sang a song in celebration of the murder of Kirk, sparking the leftist crowd in attendance to cheer.

“During a live performance of his Fear& podcast, Piker led a packed theater in a mocking rendition of ‘We Are Charlie Kirk,’ a tribute song that appeared after Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University last Sept. 10.

His co-hosts laughed, the audience cheered and sang along, and Piker later posted a photo from the show with the caption, ‘Carried the flame in.’”

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat nominee for the Michigan Senate race, is trying to create some separation from one of his best political friends, allies, and operatives, Hasan Piker, on the issue of 9/11. He’s not doing it because he had a change of heart. He’s doing it because his political advisors are telling him that Americans still aren’t all that receptive to Piker’s and the left’s views on 9/11. Piker has famously said that “America deserved 9/11.”

Still, in trying to distance himself from Piker’s comments, El-Sayed sent a neat and tidy dog whistle to his own base, which loves it some bloodlust.

Politico reported what El-Sayed had to say about those 9/11 comments: “’Of course it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement,’ El-Sayed said. ‘He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’”

El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a ‘gotcha game.’
‘I’m not here to disavow people’s views,’ El-Sayed said at the time.

For those of you in the back row checking your phones, the dog whistle in this case is where El-Sayed has gone on record saying, "I'm not here to disavow people's views."

Of course, the left is not limiting its enjoyment of bloodletting to the Kirk assassination and the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It has other more recent murderous events to celebrate, like its sickening displays of joy and satisfaction at the trial of Lindsay Clancy. You may know her as the woman who strangled all three of her children, killing them in her home’s basement. She then, apparently, tried to kill herself by cutting her wrists and jumping from the window of an upstairs bedroom.

This is Charles Manson stuff. As bad as the crime is, culturally what’s worse is that a significant segment of the left and others have come out in support of Clancy, the admitted killer.

Sorry for repeated use of this word, but there is no other. You can see the bloodlust in their eyes, can’t you? These people are far more than political actors, but in the context of this political time of the year, you have to know that these are people of the left. This is the left.

Then there is the case of Luigi Mangione, who has pleaded guilty to the cold-blooded assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In committing the premeditated murder, the privileged rich kid established himself as an almost mythical hero to leftists everywhere.

CNN reported on June 5, 2025, “In the months since the fatal shooting of Thompson, Mangione has become a cult-like figure. There has been a massive outpouring of support on social media and at his court appearances from people with deep frustration and anger at the American for-profit health care system. They see the American health insurance industry as broken, overly expensive and quick to deny coverage.”

The one thing the woke cable network’s article left out was that Mangione only became a “cult-like figure” to Democrats and leftists, not simply “people with deep frustration.”

If you're wondering whether those of us on the right are working too hard to connect the dots, Hasan Piker will put those wonders to rest. As Piker goes, so goes the left, and in the process so goes the Democrat Party. This is Piker providing some continuity to the left's now predictable support for murder as a political tactic, along with some New York Times operatives nodding in approval. In the Democrats' world, the killer is the victim.

Add to these high-profile cases the recent spate of mass murder events committed by one of the Democrats’ most important protected classes – transgender individuals.

It must be noted that alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson had some obvious transgender influences in his life. Before that, in 2025, a gender-confused male who changed his name from Robert to Robin Westman shot up the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. In the process, he killed two children and seriously wounded others, including children.

My colleague Eric Florack dug into the whole relationship between transgenderism and mass shootings, and his findings are disturbing.

Then, of course, there is the Democrats’ bread-and-butter issue that not only centers on death, but it uses the killing of innocents as one of the left's sacred sacrifices – abortion.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey recently signed into law nearly total unrestricted ability to murder babies in the womb right up until birth, long after the baby has become viable and capable of living and breathing outside the womb among us. All the mother needs is to determine she doesn’t want the baby and an abortionist with a medical license who will consent to snuff the baby’s life out.

For the Democrats, this era may best be described as its killing season – a time when the mask has come off, and it’s now okay to unapologetically and publicly embrace their savage, barbaric, and most vile instincts. As they seek to feed their thirst for blood, the addiction will only grow more voracious. As if in some horror movie, the Democrats’ cravings will only grow stronger, and they will seek new victims. Only this is not a movie; it's not a dream or a nightmare. It's not fiction. It's real.

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program will likely be a model for new movements to kill off America’s elderly and "non-essential" people. And it won’t stop there.

As we’ve seen, once the left gets a taste of blood, it only wants more. That’s where we are right now. Those are the forces the Republicans are up against, and they are legion. Regardless of how you feel about the price of gas or groceries, we are in a battle between good and evil. The very least you can do is make sure these people lose on Election Day and lose big.

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2026/08/25/get-ready-for-the-democrats-season-of-bloodthirst-n4956525

A Disturbing New Poll — and Dennis Prager’s Warning for America

A Disturbing New Poll — and Dennis Prager’s Warning for America

Aaron Hanscom

AP Photo/Andy Wong

“Frightening” is perhaps a word used too often by people on both sides of the political aisle when reacting to polls that seem to capture a momentous societal change. But when Dennis Prager is the one giving the warning, I listen carefully.

In a discussion with PragerU Executive Director Allen Estrin, Prager broke down a new CBS News/YouGov poll showing that 58% of Democrats view socialism favorably, while only 32% favor capitalism. This is a subject about which Prager, whose field of study in graduate school was communism, is qualified to speak. But who cares about that credential when “socialism, much less democratic socialism, is not communism," as CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins has said, right?

Prager wasted little time dispelling that argument with a brief history lesson:

The record of socialism in terms of human suffering, human death, human enslavement is the worst record in recorded history. In one—I won't even say a century, inside of about 50 years—100 million, 100 million people were murdered by socialists, by socialist/communist regimes. China, USSR, Cambodia, Vietnam—basically everywhere that socialists took over. Remember, the name of the Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. That's very important.

He told of his first trip to the Soviet Union when he was a young man. After getting off the plane, he saw a large billboard that read "Forward to Communism." Prager explained what we can learn from that: "They knew they weren't there yet. It was a socialist country. And the DSA, the so-called Democratic Socialists of America, know it."

And its members know that private property has no place in their utopian vision of America. Just as the DSA wants to abolish the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, and the Senate, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave the game away when he expressed support for abolishing private property in an interview. Prager, after noting that the Soviet Union's communist leaders hated the free market and private property, explained: "What does communal property mean? The community owns all property. That means you own nothing. Nothing. Private property is the backbone of freedom and rights and individualism."

The DSA plays a cute semantics game in an attempt to hide what its members really believe — to the surprise of many Democrats like podcaster Scott Galloway, who supported Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax but then found himself on a “wanted poster” of property owners who may owe more taxes. To avoid future surprises, easily manipulated voters like Galloway would benefit from playing the "Who Said It? Democratic Socialists vs. Communists" game that PragerU posted this week. When even a survivor of Venezuelan socialism, Franklin Camargo, has trouble distinguishing the rhetoric of Mamdani and the DSA from that of Karl Marx and Hugo Chávez, you know that the U.S. faces a grave threat.

Prager also put the lie to the argument that countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark are examples of socialist successes:

A Danish economist made a PragerU video, and he makes the point which every one of us who knows about the northern European countries knows: None of them are socialist. In fact, Swedish corporations are taxed at a lower rate than American corporations. People don't know socialism doesn't mean free university or free this or free that. That's that's a policy of liberals. That's not socialism. So do you know who knows what socialism is? All of the people running for office who call themselves democratic socialists, they know they don't want to make Denmark or Sweden in America. They want to make something much closer to communist China. That's what they want to create.

A democratic socialist not at all shy about admitting his admiration for communist China is Hasan Piker, who wore a Mao jacket while speaking to college students in July. That didn't stop Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, from campaigning with Piker at an event the following month. Prager highlighted the troubling alliance before explaining why the mind-numbing number of communism’s victims doesn’t faze its defenders:

Now, I told you that socialism is responsible for 100 million people being murdered—60 million alone in China. Oh, and by the way, Hasan, who campaigns with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Hasan, who is a popular podcaster, says that Mao is one of the greatest figures in human history. I am at a loss for words. The man was a monster. He was a barbaric, torturing tyrant monster who mass-murdered on a level unseen elsewhere.

Now, here's the problem. When I tell you that socialists murdered 100 million people, it doesn't make a big impact. And I'll tell you why. Stalin explained why. The great mass murderer Stalin, who murdered 20 to 40 million Soviet citizens, including the deliberate starvation of five to six million Ukrainians. Stalin said—and he was right—he said, “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.”

Estrin asked Prager how we got to this point, when using the word “socialist” in a campaign was once a dealbreaker for a politician. After first blaming universities, Prager said it starts even earlier:

It starts in high school. It starts with the belief that this country was born in evil and continued it. The New York Times led that with the 1619 Project. America was not founded in 1776, according to the New York Times’ 1619 Project. It was founded when the first black slave arrived in America.

In a country where young people increasingly approve of socialism, five minutes spent watching this PragerU video debunking The 1619 Project could do more good than four years at an overpriced university that teaches students to despise America.

https://pjmedia.com/aaron-hanscom/2026/08/25/a-disturbing-new-poll-and-dennis-pragers-warning-for-america-n4956542?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

America Is on the Verge of a Roman Empire-Style Collapse — One Staggering Chart Shows It All

America Is on the Verge of a Roman Empire-Style Collapse — One Staggering Chart Shows It All

By Kyle Becker

The Roman Empire was once the most powerful in the world.

It had a formidable army. An extensive system of roads. A bustling capital. A respected currency. And a people whose ingenious capacity for organization was renowned.

But the empire declined over the course of decades and ultimately fell after a wave of barbarian invasions. The true cause of its ruin became the subject of intense fascination.

What actually caused the Roman Empire to fall?

The United States of America is now facing the same historical ailment that brought the Roman Empire crashing to the ground.

Debt spending. One chart illustrates that the danger is very real.

It shows that roughly 47 percent of government expenditures now go toward some form of welfare or entitlement spending, compared with only about 8 percent devoted to national defense.

Professor Peter St. Onge put the comparison in rather stark terms.

“The welfare state is eating America — now 6 times bigger than the defense budget,” St. Onge wrote. “In Rome the political promises outran production. Inflation bought time, at the expense of collapsed production that accelerated the fall.”

Economist Andrew Follett sounded a similar alarm.

“47% of government spending is on some form of welfare. Only 8% is on defense,” he wrote. “Reducing welfare spending is profoundly difficult politically...but it must be done or we will go the way of Rome.”

Comparisons between modern America and ancient Rome may seem cliché. It became a bit of bro-culture lore that Western men ruminate about the Roman Empire.

Every empire in trouble eventually gets compared to Rome, and every budget fight seems to produce somebody warning that the Visigoths are right around the corner.

But there is one comparison that refuses to die. Rome discovered something about politics more than 2,000 years ago that Washington has never managed to unlearn: It is remarkably easy to create a government benefit and remarkably difficult to take one away.

The Roman grain dole provides one of the better examples. What began as an effort to make grain affordable gradually became an entitlement. Gaius Gracchus established a regular subsidized grain program in the late second century B.C. Later politicians expanded it. By 58 B.C., under the tribune Clodius, grain was being distributed free of charge.

And then the numbers exploded. Estimates vary depending on precisely which Roman program and period is being counted, but the basic trajectory is unmistakable. By the time Julius Caesar took power, roughly 320,000 Romans were reportedly receiving the grain distribution.

Caesar apparently looked at the books and decided this had gotten ridiculous.

He conducted a review and cut the rolls roughly in half, to around 150,000 recipients. But even Caesar couldn't make the underlying political problem disappear. The grain supply had become part of the relationship between the Roman government and the Roman population.

That is where the parallel with modern America becomes uncomfortable.

Ever since the dawn of the “Progressive Era,” the only thing that has progressed is the weakening of the dollar and the mounting national debt.

In between the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve Bank, the New Deal and the Great Society, it’s been one slippery slope ride to imperial decline.

No politician has been brave enough to stem the tide of these government entitlements. There have been brief pauses under the likes of past presidents like Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan, but the size and scope of the U.S. government continues to grow. And the appetite for government spending along with it.

Look no further than the now-abated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for a glimpse at how much political capital needs to be burned to modestly slash a few programs.

The howling of government dependents is enough to make a legionnaire blink.

Eventually, reform becomes extraordinarily difficult because government spending doesn't merely distribute money. It distributes political capital.

The welfare recipient wants to keep his benefits. The government employee wants to keep his job. Contractors want to keep their contracts. NGOs want to keep the gravy train coming. And politicians are increasingly hired to represent special interests, rather than represent the voters who officially elect them.

Rome knew something about this trap. Its grain program required enormous quantities of food to be imported into the capital, drawing heavily on provinces such as Egypt and North Africa.

And once the Roman population came to expect it, interrupting the grain supply wasn't merely an economic problem. It was a political crisis.

Augustus understood the danger surprisingly well. According to Suetonius, the emperor considered abolishing the grain distributions because he believed they discouraged agriculture.

The emperor ultimately decided against it, apparently recognizing that ending an established entitlement was politically unrealistic.

Sound familiar?

The welfare program not only survived, but it also evolved. Eventually the government was distributing bread rather than simply grain, while other provisions were added to the growing list.

By the late Empire, the image had become so embedded in Roman political culture that it produced one of history's most enduring political phrases.

Panem et circenses.

Juvenal's famous sneer wasn't really about bread and circuses. It was about what happens when citizenship degenerates into a transaction: Keep the population fed, keep it entertained, and don't ask too many questions about what is happening to the culture.

There was another problem brewing. Rome had bills to pay.

The military guarded enormous borders. Imperial bureaucracies grew. Emperors purchased political loyalty and increased military spending. Wars, internal instability, and shrinking production put a tremendous strain on imperial finances.

One solution was irresistible because governments have rediscovered it throughout history: debauch the money.

Roman emperors incrementally reduced the precious-metal content of their currency. Nero infamously reduced the silver content of the denarius. Caracalla introduced the antoninianus, nominally valued above the denarius but containing nowhere near as much silver.

During the third-century economic crisis, the currency debauchery reached extremes. Coins that had once represented substantial quantities of precious metal became increasingly debased, eventually containing only traces of silver.

Before the people know it, their currency is ruined — and the government’s reputation along with it.

Leaders make promises in prosperity. Politicians discover that cutting benefits is unpopular, raising taxes is unpopular, and because they won’t live to see their empires ruined, they put their own personal fortunes above the fortunes of the empire.

So they borrow. And borrow. And borrow some more.

That is the part of the Roman analogy Americans should worry about: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.”

Thus was the verdict of the great historian Edward Gibbon.

The Roman Empire has been relegated to the ashbin of history because its leaders failed to heed the warnings of the ancient Greeks, who had a similar experience with debased currency.

Demosthenes had sounded the warning, which was consistently heeded by the Athenians:

The Greek city states adopted coinage but habitually and shamelessly debased their coins. Said Demosthenes: “the majority of states are quite open in using silver coins diluted with copper and lead.” Only Athens, excepting its one major devaluation by Solon, maintained throughout its history the purity of its coinage, a fact which does much to explain the extension of Athenian commercial and political power over all of Greece.

Aristophanes in "The Frogs" described the steady process of currency devaluation, which became the pretext for Gresham's Law ("bad money drives out good money"):

But if I am correct in discerning the life or the manners of a man, who will yet suffer for it, Cligenes the little, this ape, who now troubles us, the vilest bath-man of all, as many as are masters of soap made from adulterated soda mixed up with ashes, and of Cimolian earth, will not abide for a long time. But though he sees this, he is not for peace, lest he should one day be stripped when drunk, when walking without his cudgel.
The freedom of the city has often appeared to us to be similarly circumstanced with regard to the good and honourable citizens, as to the old coin and the new gold. For neither do we employ these at all, which are not adulterated, but the most excellent, as it appears, of all coins, and alone correctly struck, and proved by ringing every where, both among the Greeks and the barbarians, but this vile copper coin, struck but yesterday and lately with the vilest stamp...

Now, it’s America’s turn. Unless the nation turns away from the siren song of debt spending, the decline and fall of the American empire will become the next futile warning of history.

https://redstate.com/kyle-becker/2026/08/25/one-staggering-welfare-chart-shows-america-is-on-verge-of-roman-empire-scale-collapse-n2206067?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl