text: IF YOU WANT TO SEE WHERE AMERICA IS HEADING, LOOK TO 1453
  They say history repeats itself. Properly forewarned, it doesn’t have to.
  As Americans prepare to write a pivotal history for the ages this November—one way or another—it might be helpful to take a quick look at an earlier moment in time when a much divided, fractured world faced a pivotal challenge with one man at the barricade and the rest of the world too complacent to help.
  Constantinople, the city that Constantine the Great founded in 330 AD and that the Theodosian walls later protected, stood as the capital of the Roman Empire for 1,000 years. (What we refer to as the Byzantine Empire was back then referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire.)
  The city, surrounded by water on three sides and walls on the fourth, was thought to be impregnable.
  In 1204, Crusaders on the Fourth Crusade attacked Constantinople when they were ostensibly on their way to retake Jerusalem from the Ottomans.
  Due to dynastic and political battles between the eastern and western Roman Empire, crusaders diverted to Constantinople, sacked the city, and carved up most of the former Empire. (They never did breach the Theodosian walls.)
  The Byzantine Empire had been shrinking for centuries and, by 1400, consisted largely of Constantinople and a few Greek outposts.
  The city, however, which sat at a key point between Asia and Europe, still played a major role in the battle between the East and the West.
  Although the rising Ottoman empire, by 1500, would stretch from the modern states of Algeria to Yemen to Hungary, in 1453, Constantinople was still Christian and a major thorn in the side of Muslim Sultan Mehmed II.
  He planned to fix that.
  By late May, after besieging the city for two months and making no headway, Mehmed prepared to retreat. A small number of his advisors suggested giving the siege one last day before they withdrew.
  Mehmed agreed, and on May 29, the Ottomans threw everything they had at the city.
  Constantinople’s defenders repulsed the first three Ottoman assaults, and the Ottoman generals despaired at the prospect of defeat.
  But then one of the great turning points in history happened.
  Among the 40,000 defenders (against an Ottoman force of approximately 80,000) were 700 Genoese fighters defending the most vulnerable parts of the walls.
  The defenses stretched thin, these Genoese warriors, led by their captain Giovanni Giustiniani, had held the Turks at bay for two months.
  Through the third assault of the day, the Genoese had performed impeccably, and the smell of victory was beginning to waft through the defenses.
  At that very moment, however, just as the fourth and final assault was commencing, Giustiniani was shot.
  Wounded, Giustiniani commanded his troops to evacuate him from the city.
  Either because of a miscommunication or because they were afraid they could not succeed without Giustiniani, all 700 Genoese abandoned the walls and left the most vulnerable defenses unprotected.
  Seeing their opportunity, the Ottomans made their move before the city’s defenders could divert reinforcements, breaching the walls and taking the city.
  Mehmed would later make Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
  Giustiniani would die from his wounds two days later as he was being transported home.
  Given the timing of his injury, history posits that he may have been shot by a traitor within the walls timed to coordinate with the last assault.
  Whatever the case, Constantinople fell, and all of the West became fearful that the Ottomans were going to conquer the entirety of Europe.
  They wouldn’t, but they would haunt many a European’s nightmare for centuries.
  Ultimately, Constantinople fell because it didn’t have the resources to defend itself effectively.
  It repeatedly pleaded with Christian rulers across Europe for help repelling the Ottoman army.
  Most of the West’s caterwauling kings and nobles, however, had been too busy with their domestic concerns, dynastic infighting, and petty jealousies to bother sending support.
  As a result, a mere 700 men, or in reality, one man, were the only things that had protected what was seen as the Christian bulwark against the Muslim menace in the east.
  When they (or he) fell, the city fell.
  There are lessons to be had from the kings’ and nobles’ inaction.
  How many times have you heard pro-lifers say they can’t vote for Trump because they feel he’s soft on abortion?
  Or free-market advocates say they can’t vote for Trump because he supports tariffs?
  Or someone who says he won’t vote because everyone’s corrupt?
  We all know Trump is flawed. But the reality is that we’re all flawed.
  We know more about Trump’s flaws because he spends so much time talking—and the media spend so much time talking about him.
  I dare anyone to speak for a fraction of the time Trump does and not leave a trail of breadcrumbs that the propaganda ministry can’t use to paint you as Satan.
  But here’s the truth: All those people who say they won’t vote for Trump because of this or that are effectively casting a vote for the very thing they claim drives them away from Trump, only exponentially worse.
  That’s true whether it’s abortion, the free market, or corruption.
  And not only that, electing Harris brings with it a cart full of other things they likely don’t want.
  If Harris is elected in November, the American republic as we know it will disappear.
  Democrats will eviscerate the Supreme Court.
  They’ll add DC and Puerto Rico as states, so the GOP will never again control the Senate.
  They’ll implement a 45% capital gains tax and a 25% tax on unrealized gains.
  DEI will become the law of the land, with “equity” replacing merit as the fundamental measure upon which society is built.
  The scientific fact of men and women will be obliterated.
  They’ll outsource American foreign policy to the WEF and the economy to the climate change cultists.
  The open border will remain, and millions of 3rd world “refugees” with little appreciation for American mores or no allegiance to the United States will pour over the border and then suddenly not only be able to vote but will get houses for no money down and benefits beyond what citizens receive.
  And freedom of speech and the Second Amendment will be distant memories before the midterms.
  Given this reality, those people who say they cannot in “good conscience” vote for someone they don’t like are, in reality, not of good conscience at all. They’re cowards.
  As any parents who must discipline their kids knows sometimes adults need to make difficult decision to do things they don’t like.
  As such, when the Republic is faced with an existential threat, when the choice is between a party that wants to save it and one that seeks Communism, to choose to do nothing is a choice, a choice to empower tyranny.
  Once the Republic is gone—in fact, if not in name—all of those issues over which such men of “conscience” are wringing their hands will become moot.
  Not only will they lose out on those issues, but they will lose out on everything else.
  In a tyranny, you control nothing, from your money to your family to your voice.
  This is the most popular quote of the 20th century: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
  As pedestrian as it sounds, in 2024, it might be the most important quote of the day.
  This November, anyone who decides to sit out the election because they’re offended by an imperfect man, or worse, vote against him because of that imperfection, is literally voting to eviscerate the American republic.
  They deserve no respect; they deserve disdain, derision, and contempt.
  Vince Coyner writes for American Thinker.