Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast.

This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on today's show

is Bruno Mesh. He's a former foreign minister, or actually European minister for Portugal. He's a

senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and an international business consultant. He's also the author

of three of the most provocative

books of the last half decade, The Dawn of Eurasia, Belt and Road, and his new book,

which we'll discuss on today's show. It's called History Has Begun, The Birth of a New America,

and it was published recently in the United States by Oxford University Press.

Bruno's written a number of great pieces for City Journal since last year on technology,

the pandemic, and other themes. His latest essay, which appears in our brand new issue, is called

the Crypto State, how Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other technologies could point

the way to new systems of governance. That article is already available on the City

Journal website and we'll link to it in the description. But again, Bruno is here today to discuss

his fascinating new book, History Has Begun.

Bruno, thanks for taking the time to join us.

It's a pleasure, Brian.

Your book opens with a kind of meditation on history,

with a theme quite prevalent in public debate these days that America has become decadent.

The nation had its time in the sun in this view, but like ancient Rome before it, it's subject to forces that are hastening its decline and

fall. That's an old story, but for you, it's quite possibly very wrong when applied to America.

Why do you think that? I think my main intuition

there is that we are to focus on the short term on recent events, particularly since 2016.

...