In 1071, Romanus IV Diogenes was the Emperor of the Christian Byzantine Empire. Despite the fall of Rome centuries before, the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, what we call Byzantium, lived on as a powerful and incredibly wealthy power in the eastern Mediterranean. In August 1071, the Byzantine army met an invading force of Seljuk Turks bent on conquest in the name of Allah and domination of the Middle East.

Diogenes was defeated. He knelt before the Turkish Sultan and kissed the ground. He paid a ransom for his release and agreed to formally become a Turkish vassal. Henceforth the Byzantines would pay an annual tribute of 360,000 gold coins to the Turks.

It was perhaps the greatest humiliation of the West by Islam in history.

Until now.

Joe Biden began his Presidency by ordering a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a matter of weeks, twenty years’ worth of effort was squandered. Our forces fled. Our allies were routed. The Taliban went house to house using our own security files and technology to identify those who had cooperated with us and haul them away to be tortured to death.

Biden and his minions assured us the Taliban were now our allies in fighting terrorism. To date, his administration has paid these jihadists $2 billion even as they harbor Al Qaida, ISIS, and other groups and provide them the platform they need to prepare fresh attacks on the United States and its allies.

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Authored by Josh Stylman via The Brownstone Institute,

Let me start by saying I loathe politics. I’ve always been drawn to liberal ideas—individual freedom, protecting the vulnerable, questioning authority, and the fundamental belief that consenting adults should be free to live their lives however they choose as long as they’re not harming others. These aren’t political positions to me; they’re basic human principles. But the game of politics itself repulses me. What I’m about to share isn’t about politics; it’s about our shared reality and how we’ve lost touch with it.

The Mindvirus

What’s truly mind-numbing to me is how people don’t see what’s happening right in front of them. The media has devolved into nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the establishment, programming people to react rather than think. I’ve experienced this firsthand: When I drew historical comparisons between vaccine mandates and 1933 Germany’s early authoritarian policies, I was instantly labeled an extremist and cancelled by my NYC community. Yet now, these same people casually call everyone at Trump’s MSG rally Nazis. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

My Liberal Foundation

I still believe deeply in core liberal principles:

• Genuine free speech, not the controlled corporate version we see today
• Standing against establishment overreach
• Opposing unchecked corporate power
• Fighting against unnecessary wars
• Complete bodily autonomy – your body, your choice, in ALL contexts
• Defending individual rights consistently, not selectively

These aren’t just political positions—they’re principles about human dignity and freedom.

The Democratic Party’s Transformation

The Democratic Party’s drift from these values didn’t happen overnight. Many of us, exhausted by Bush’s brutal wars, lies about weapons of mass destruction, and the Patriot Act’s assault on civil liberties, invested our hopes in Obama’s promise of change. But instead of the transformation we sought, we got what felt like Bush’s third and fourth terms.

Under Obama, we watched as corporate influence grew stronger, not weaker. The Snowden revelations exposed massive surveillance programs. The housing crisis devastated ordinary Americans while Wall Street got bailouts. Rather than challenging institutional power, the Democratic establishment became increasingly entangled with it.

The betrayal of liberal values became even clearer with Bernie Sanders. Like Trump, Bernie tapped into something real—a deep frustration with a system that had left ordinary Americans behind. Both men, from vastly different perspectives, recognized that working people were suffering while elites prospered. But the Democratic establishment couldn’t allow an actual progressive challenger. They used every trick in the book—from media manipulation to primary shenanigans—to block him from the nomination. Most disappointing was watching Bernie himself bend the knee to the same establishment he had railed against, leaving millions of supporters feeling betrayed and politically homeless.

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President-elect Donald Trump joined the conversation on the ongoing sightings of mysterious unidentified drones and called for the government to “shoot them down.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump questioned if the drone sightings could be “happening without” the government’s knowledge and added that the government should provide the public with answers.

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” Trump wrote in his post. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT.”

Trump’s post comes as people have reportedly seen unidentified drones in the sky in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland, among other states.

Lawmakers such as New Jersey state Sen. Jon Bramnick (R), Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-NJ), and former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) have called for the government to take action on the alleged drone sightings.

In a joint statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), both agencies stated they have “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”

“The FBI, DHS and our federal partners, in close coordination with the New Jersey State Police, continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate this situation and confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings,” the FBI and DHS added in the statement.

The Pentagon has also previously denied New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s (R) claim that the drones are coming from an Iranian mothership located off the East Coast of the United States.

“At this time, we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said. “We’re going to continue to monitor what is happening, but at no point were our installations threatened when this activity was occurring.”