A local leader of the Mexican folk saint cult “La Santa Muerte” was gunned down at an altar to the skeletal figure.

The parallels between our situation and that of seventeenth-century England abound—and so do the contrasts and ironies.

Nero, who ruled from A.D. 54 to 68, is often remembered as one of history’s most notorious emperors, his reputation steeped in tales of excess and cruelty. One enduring myth claims that as a great ...