O who of man the ſtory will unfold, / Ere victory and empire wrought annoy, / In that elyſian age (miſnamed of gold) / The age of love, and innocence and joy, […]

According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.

Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue — a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue — became a mark of liberal softheadedness?

If the Ukrainer possessed the art of pleasing, Potemkin knew how to render himself useful; his talents, more analogous to the genius of Catherine, uninterruptedly preserved their ascendant.