I have found through my constant exposure to them through the years that the EU’s intellectual cheerleaders among geopolitical analysts — funded as they so often are by the very institution they are supposed to be impartially analyzing — are as numerous as they are clueless.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the Conservative establishment having lined up squarely behind her opponent, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is in pole position to emerge as the new Tory leader and next prime minister of Great Britain.

One of my favorite “angry young man” books is former New York Times correspondent David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” a devastating portrayal of the American elite who set in motion the tragedy of the Vietnam War.

As a historian, I have always found the end of Percy Shelley’s magnificent poem “Ozymandias” almost unbearably moving as it makes plain that even towering greatness has a finite shelf life. Shelley’s conclusion goes like this:

“And on the pedestal, these words appear: