Editor’s note: this article is a selection from Chapter 16 of Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America: “Resurrecting the American System: The Growth of Imperialism.” 

The recent migratory crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta shows no signs of lessening and international public opinion appears to be divided on this subject: from the outrage at Spain still possessing colonies in Africa and calls for sympathy towards the innocent migrants, to the looming threat of a Moroccan invasion. For the sake of intellectual honesty, it behooves addressing some of those claims and shed some light on the most contentious issues.

The United Nations has been trying for years to pin the moral blame for global slavery exclusively on European nations. The UN has conveniently forgotten that Arab and African countries traded slaves for centuries before Europeans got involved in the Trans-Atlantic trade. They are egged on in this hypocritical endeavor by the “antiracist” lobby in Europe who would love nothing better than for their countries to be denounced as morally culpable for historic crimes.

This US midterms ushered in a sweeping rejection of the Republican Party, with exit polls demonstrating passionate voter anger towards issues including affordability, foreign policy, and general political corruption. While many of these issues reflect self-inflicted damage from the administration, it is notable that voter anger ran so deep that it successfully flipped not only federal seats but entire statewide governments not directly connected to issues such as the Iran War.

A perfect storm is brewing in Europe, largely of its own making. The recent street protests in France—against the high cost of living and the poor school conditions—are the clearest expression yet of a country, and a continent, in crisis.

A development project can spend a decade and tens of millions of dollars, report success, and still teach the world almost nothing. The Millennium Villages Project is the clearest recent example. Launched in 2005 under the economist Jeffrey Sachs, it set out to prove that a large, coordinated package of aid could pull rural Africa out of poverty. What it proved instead is that aid has no built-in way of finding out when it is wrong.