Dr. Jack Wheeler
VICTORY AND CERTAINTY
At the newly-opened World War II Memorial in Washington, there are inscribed in stone these words of FDR:
No matter what else a contemporary conservative may think of FDR, he was not embarrassed to be American. It is inconceivable that a modern liberal, his brain filled with the goo of moral relativism, multicultural diversity, and the compulsion to Blame America First, could demand that America’s “righteous might” achieve “absolute victory” over its enemies. What characterizes this statement is moral certainty, the sure and certain conviction that America was in the right and the Nazis and Imperialist Japanese were in the wrong with no doubt or equivocation. The “Greatest Generation” of Americans was called such because its members were motivated by this conviction.Americans will never entrust their security to a president who doesn’t grasp this, who embraces moral relativism and rejects moral certainty - or at least seems to. If a Liberal Democrat arose to embody the undiluted patriotism of FDR, the door to the White House would be open to him - or her - especially if he - or she - could convince most folks such an embodiment was real while slyly winking to the liberal elite that it’s a con.
THE CHINESE GLASS HOUSE
This past weekend, the Chinese Communist government organized a protest demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. Under the watchful eyes of Chinese security agents and police, the young protestors were encouraged to throw stones at the embassy in protest over the latest Japanese history textbook continuing to omit mention of Japanese atrocities in China during World War II.Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, on a charm offensive in India at the time of the protest, told reporters in New Delhi that “Only a country that respects and takes responsibility for history can win over peoples’ trust, in Asia and the world at large… (the protest in Beijing) should prompt deep and profound reflection in Japan.”A Japanese response to the Chinese accusations will soon be forthcoming. There will be bland public statements, such as Prime Minister Koizumi’s to the Kyodo News Agency: “Any country can face criticism, but it is not good to let confrontation heighten because of that.” Then there will be the unofficial response, a private letter to Wen Jiabao on Koizumi’s official letterhead, which notes:
I, along with many of my fellow Japanese citizens, must admit to being astounded at your admonishing us to “take responsibility for history,” and to engage in “deep and profound reflection” on our history. Astounded because you pretend not to see how much this advice applies to you and the Communist Party of China.There is an old English proverb of which I am sure you are aware: People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. The government of the People’s Republic of China is such a glass house.The letter is going to be faxed, emailed, mass-reprinted and covertly distributed to millions of folks in the People’s Republic by Taiwan Chinese agents who have gotten a copy. Here it is in full:
HILLARY’S WAR ON DELAY
The most powerful Congressmen have, in addition to their regular offices in one of the House Office Buildings (Cannon, Longworth, or Rayburn) on the south side of Capitol Hill, a private office in the Capitol itself. It was in such an office earlier this week that I asked a member of the House leadership about the MSM (mainstream media)/Democrat vendetta against his colleague, Tom DeLay.“Hillary’s fingerprints are all over it,” came his response. “She has no intention of having to deal with an opposition party controlling the House as her husband did for six years and Ronald Reagan did for eight. She has a very clear plan for seizing control of the entire United States government, which includes orchestrating Democrat control of the House in 2006 so it is firmly in place when she is elected president in 2008.”It is, then, at Hillary’s direction that the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the entire Liberal Media apparatus are waging a relentless war upon House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
BYE-BYE BOLIVIA?
This map of Bolivia may about to become obsolete: 
For some time now, a lot of Bolivians have been conducting a “Gas War,” blocking roads, demonstrating in cities like El Alto and Cochabamba to prevent the export of Bolivian natural gas by foreign companies. The fellow coordinating the protests is Evo Morales, a Marxist prot�g� of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, the leader of the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) Party, and also the leader of coca leaf growers (the stuff that’s made into cocaine). The protests brought down the presidency of Gonzalo Sanchez do Lozada in October 2003 and continue to escalate: 820 in the last 17 months. The current government of Sanchez’s successor Carlos Mesa in teetering. There’s just one problem for Morales and Chavez. The Bolivians who are protesting are not the Bolivians who live where the gas is. Bolivia is about to split in two.
NOW THERE IS ONE
We only recognize giants when they are gone, heroic ages when they are past. The day will come when America’s children will learn that the 1980s was such an age, bestrode by three giants who together rid the world of one of the great evils of history, the Soviet Union. They were Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher. Now, only one is left. We mourned the passing of Ronald Reagan last year, Pope John Paul’s this, so before we mourn Lady Thatcher’s, who turns 80 this October, let us acknowledge the incalculable debt those who live in freedom today owe to this triumvirate of truly extraordinary human beings. It is easy to believe the hand of Providence set them on history’s stage one after the other in the short space of two years, exactly at the time America and the West was on the verge of surrender to the seeming inevitability of Soviet power. Easy to believe with hindsight. But at the time,a Polish priest, an English woman commoner, and an American movie actor were about to confront the most evil power in the world. How off the wall do you want history to get? Truth is not simply stranger than fiction, it is more dramatic and awe-inspiring.
THE POPE IN CHINA
If you make your way to the northwestern tip of Yunnan province in China, drive from Dali to Baoshan, take a four-wheel drive track up the stunningly beautiful Salween River all the way to within a few miles of Tibet, then hike about three hours up into the mountains, you’ll come to the village of Baihanluo. In this incredibly remote place, you’ll come upon this: 
A Christian church. A Catholic Church to be specific, built in the 1880s by French Catholic missionaries who had trekked from French Indo-China. Still lovingly cared for by the Bai and Lizu tribespeople (not Han Chinese) who live here, it remains a place of great spiritual tranquility.
RED ZIMBABWE
It used to be called Rhodesia, named after its colonial founder, Cecil Rhodes. Before that it was Southern Rhodesia, distinguished from Northern Rhodesia, now called Zambia after the Zambezi River. It was one of the most beautiful and productive countries in the world when I was first there in the early seventies. Now it is hell on earth. It is, of course, Zimbabwe.As most all African countries, it is a national fiction, a colonial construct with no historical or cultural viability as a country. It has been run since “independence” in 1980 by one of the world’s most racist dictators on earth, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who changed Rhodesia’s name to Zimbabwe after the ruins of a stone fortress built 800 years ago by the Karanga people.All elections are completely rigged by Mugabe’s party, the ZANU-PF. The parliamentary elections held today will be no exception. It was patently rigged elections that caused the recent overthrow of the corrupt governments in Georgia, Ukraine, and last week in Kyrgyzstan. These were hailed as “velvet” revolutions, peaceful and bloodless. You can have no such hope for Zimbabwe. Africa doesn’t do bloodless.
RESPITE FROM LUNACY
I just returned from ten days on the Nile in Egypt. It was a special experience to see it once again, this time through the eyes of my 12 year-old son Jackson. A wonderful side-benefit to such an experience is that you get to ignore newspaper headlines and all the general craziness of the world, if only for a few days. I didn’t read a single paper or magazine while I was gone. So when I arrived back home to wade through those that had piled up in my absence, one lunatic event after another kept popping out at me. After plenty of goofy international headlines, my laughing fits continued with stories here in the US. 59 former State Department diplomats have written a letter demanding the Senate not confirm John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN. Among the signers were Princeton Lyman, Monteagle Stearns, and Spurgeon Keeny. These weirdo first names are not made up inner city jive monikers like Paluja Ratoomba. Only Ivy League ultra-blue-blood aristocrat pansies get names like that. I’m sure Bolton is worried sick that a bunch of over-the-hill Little Lord Fauntleroys are scared he is going to explain reality to the representatives of Third World dictatorships. But then the lunacy stopped being funny. The Bush Brothers’ refusal to prevent Terri Schiavo’s killing will do lasting political damage to them both.
EARTH TO SPACESHIP PUTIN
The White House is becoming increasingly concerned about Pootie-Poot. He actually said point-blank to one of Bush’s key advisors: “Mr. Bush is in no position to criticize me on my actions towards the Russian press - look at how he fired Dan Rather.”
CLEOPATRA WAS A BLONDE
No, this is not a blonde joke. If you want one of those, go to this week’s Humor File. Cleopatra was in fact a blonde. That’s because she was not Egyptian. She was a Macedonian Greek, with hair as blonde as Alexander’s. Alexander conquered Egypt in 332 BC, then went on to subdue all of the Middle East. When he died nine years later, his just-conquered empire was fought over and carved up by his generals. The one who ended up running Egypt was Ptolemy (367-283 BC). Declaring himself Pharaoh, he founded the Ptolemaic Dynasty, with twelve Ptolemies in succession, many of whom had wives named Cleopatra. The Cleopatra we know, lover of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, was the daughter of Ptolemy XII, and entitled Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC). There was not a drop of Egyptian blood in the Ptolemies. They remained 100% Greek, including the Queen of the Nile herself Cleopatra. Can you imagine Elizabeth Taylor as a blonde? It kind of shakes up your image of history. I am writing this overlooking the Nile in Cairo. The Pyramids of Giza are in the distance. If there is one thing omnipresent in Egypt it’s history - and most all of that history is old, in more ways than one. For 3,000 years, Egypt has been a sleeping giant. Now it may be about to reawaken.
WORTH IT IN BAGHDAD
Major General Peter Chiarelli, head of US military’s Task Force Baghdad and commander of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, spoke a few days ago at a AUSA (Association of the United States Army) meeting at the Ft. Hood (Texas) Officer’s Club. A friend of To The Point’s took notes. This is how it really is.*Baghdad is about the same size, geographically, as Texas’ capital of Austin, with ten times the folks: 700,000 for Austin, 7 million for Baghdad.*Baghdad’s main problem area has been a huge slum called Sadr City. Last fall, there was an average of 160 terrorist attacks per week. For the last three months, they have flatlined: five to zero a week.*The media blared in front-page headlines about the 100 Iraqis killed in Baghdad as they were lined up to enlist in the police and security service. It was never reported that the next day, there were 300 lined up in the same place.
FRUITCAKE FASCISTS
The decision by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer this week that withholding marriage licenses from homosexuals is somehow unconstitutional is the latest example of America’s retreat from democracy. The type of government America is moving towards is a krytocracy.Remember the word. American democracy has been superceded, replaced, by a krytocracy - a government of judges. Unelected judges.America’s Constitution and the laws passed by Congress under its authority no longer have any meaning. The Constitution’s only - only - meaning is what judges say it has. We live in an era of krytocratic tyranny: rule by the arbitrary feelings and whims of judges.But it’s worse than that. The Kramer decision is yet another example of the seizure, the wholesale theft, of American culture by a tiny fraction of Americans. Less than 2% of Americans are homosexual, engaging in practices the vast majority of Americans find abnormal and perverse if not morally repugnant - yet are willing to tolerate and ignore. Yet being tolerated and left alone is not good enough. Despite the fact that no culture in human history has ever looked upon homosexuality as psychologically normal and made no legal, moral, or cultural distinction between its activities and those of normal folks, homosexuals are waging a war upon America to force her to do so. That’s why they have become Fruitcake Fascists.
THE REAL LOCKBOX
So now Alan Greenspan says the “lockbox” the Democrats pretend to advocate for Social Security must be “real.” Addressing the Senate Committee on Aging this Tuesday the 15th, he proclaimed:
In addressing Social Security's imbalances, we need to ensure that measures taken now to finance future benefit commitments represent real additions to national saving. We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes' around the trust fund real.It’s going to be very interesting to watch Democrats squirm - and a lot of squishy Republicans - when conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill take Greenspan’s demand seriously.They are going to advocate something called The Real Lockbox. It puts the Dems in a lockbox without a key.There are some very smart Congressional Republicans getting behind The Real Lockbox concept, which is far superior to President Bush's own private accounts plan. Whether they end up in a tug-of-war with the Bushistas, or the latter admit to the flaws of their initial proposal, is going to be a major political drama this spring.
RUSSIA LOSES ANOTHER ONE
A friend of mine whose name you know but is embarrassed to have his name mentioned and I will never forget standing on a street corner in Kishinev, Moldavia. We stood there looking like fools trying to keep our jaws from dropping open and our necks from snapping back and forth - for everywhere we looked, we saw another stunningly beautiful woman walk by. Between the two of us, we had been to just about every country in Europe, and we agreed: the most beautiful women on the European continent were right here. Kishinev left Paris in the dust.That was back in 1990, and the place was still part of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Stalin decided to move the USSR-Romania border westward, from the Dniester River to the Prut River, and called the territory he had seized the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia. The smallest of the USSR’s 15 republics (at 13,000 square miles, slightly larger than Maryland), it along with the others declared independence in 1991, changing its name to Moldova and its capital to Chisinau. Except there was this one little problem.
THE UNKNOWN KING OF TERROR and the Coming Lebanon Civil War
Last week, we discussed how there could be a light at the end of the terrorist tunnel. Now let’s talk about how that light could be an oncoming train.One of the most famous quotes of America’s favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, is: “It’s never over until it’s over.” We’ve all been swept away with democracy seeming to march ineluctably forward in the Middle East, thrilled by the sea of red and white Lebanese flags waved in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square, and confidant that the Cedar Revolution will be victorious over Syrian imperialism. We need to pause now, take a deep breath, and heed Yogi’s words.I have a very bad feeling about Lebanon that this could turn out really ugly. Dispatch after dispatch, story after story, and all you read about is Syria’s getting its troops and spies out of its colony. Congressmen like Darryl Issa (R-CA) write newspaper op-eds entitled “Lebanon: Democracy’s Next Stop.” All without a word about Hezbollah. All without a word about Iran.Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is a puppet of the Mullacracy in Tehran. The people who give the orders to the Syrian troops in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley are Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran. Hezbollah was founded in 1982 among Lebanon’s Shia Moslems with money and weapons from Iran. It is run by the world’s worst terrorist, who is most decidedly not Osama Bin Laden.
RATHER DISTORTED
I write this with a Reidel glass of Rosemount Merlot at the ready, toasting the forced departure of an individual who has infested America’s airwaves for 43 years - ever since he joined CBS News in 1962. I won’t be watching Dan Rather’s final broadcast this evening, just as I haven’t watched CBS News for many years. I’ll merely sip my merlot in gratitude for all those bloggers who exposed Rather’s Memogate and did him in. And my friend Brent Bozell.
A YOUNGER BRAIN
One difference between younger and older folks is that the former feel “endless possibilities of the future,” while the latter feel the future closing in on them. Time seems repetitive - like being caught in Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. This is a significant drain on one’s mental energy. An openness to the future, on the other hand, creates a youthful mental energy. Such a feeling of endless possibilities requires new neuronal connections in the brain. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks because the dog’s brain has become static, and has lost the capacity to grow new neurons and to establish new connections between neurons old and new. Now there may be a clever way with quite sophisticated nutrients to regrow new neurons and neuronal connections, literally youthening your brain.
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TERRORIST TUNNEL
The War on Terrorism - more precisely the War on Moslem Terrorism - may have been won on March 1st, 2005. That was the day US intel folks announced they had intercepted messages from Osama Bin Laden to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, begging Zarqawi to launch terrorist attacks inside America itself. The media went into a tizzy, bombarding Homeland Security officials with demands as to how they were going to protect us from this latest threat. And maybe there is a threat. Far more likely it’s an announcement of surrender. Osama’s message was in Arabic. Let’s translate its real meaning into plain English: “Dear Abu. I’m afraid I must announce to the world that, as a pitiful schmuck hiding in a mountain cave, I am powerless to organize or conduct any more terrorist attacks on the Great Satan of America. Can you do anything? I know you’re being hunted down in every mud-hole in Iraq right now, and it might be a little difficult for you to make your way undetected to the US, create your own terrorist network since mine obviously no longer functions, and start your own terrorist war there - but do your best, OK? I am depending on you, since our Islamofascist brothers can no longer depend on me. Yours, Osama.” This is why Osama’s plea to Zarqawi should be a cause for celebration - as it proclaims his Al Qaeda no longer has the capacity to attack America any longer.
CONDI AND ARLEN
The nightmare of a PIAPS Presidency - Hillary - trumps all other considerations for me. Should she be the Democrat nominee, there is only one GOP candidate who could defeat her: Condi. For others - like my friends Rod Martin and Joe Farah - what trumps all considerations of being for Condi is that she is, however “mildly” or “reluctantly,” pro-abortion. I believe they would agree to choose Condi over Hillary any day if that were the only choice. Where we disagree is that they think some other GOP candidate, and one who is staunchly pro-life, could also beat Hillary. I have deep doubts. I think Condi is the only one who could do so. But who knows? She’s very untested as a candidate. 2008 is a long way off. What’s important is to make it unimportant what Condi’s or any other candidates’ position on abortion is. The goal should be to have new pro-life Supreme Court Justices in place by the end of GW’s second term, giving the Court a pro-life majority that the next occupant of the White House can do nothing about, and will overturn Roe v. Wade. Which brings us to Arlen Specter.
TEHRAN ON THE BRINK?
My friends at RegimeChangeIran have just received a copy of a secret report prepared by the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s key security forces, for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It warns they would be unable to control a demonstration or rebellion in Tehran lasting longer than six hours.Here’s the report’s key confession:
Society is in an unstable state. Were certain sensitive locations in Tehran to 'explode' under these circumstances, and the capital sink into chaos, if uprisings continue unabated and grow larger for more than six hours in Tehran, the situation would become uncontrollable.You can be sure every student protestor in Iran knows about this report by now.
SHARANSKY IN TAIWAN
The ripples don’t stop. The stones hurled into the world’s political lake by the people of Ukraine and Iraq keep generating ripples washing up on the borders of ever-more countries benighted by dictatorship. Now they are about to hit the shores of China. This is thanks to a Taiwanese named Frank Hsieh who has read a book by a diminutive bald ex-Soviet dissident named Natan Sharansky. This is the book - The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror - that President Bush has absorbed and is giving out to his friends. It is destined to become the most influential book of our day. If you haven’t read it yet, you simply must. Sharansky explains the mechanics of democracy and tyranny that drive the former towards peace and freedom and the latter towards repression and the creation of external enemies. He issues a clarion call for “moral clarity” to distinguish between Free Societies and Fear Societies - an either/or with no society in between. The way to so distinguish is simple - the Town Square Test:
Can a person walk into the town square [of the society in question] and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm?If yes, that society is free, if not, it isn’t, period. Moral clarity. Does America (excluding PC university campuses) pass the town square test? Yes. Does Taiwan? Yes. Does China? No. No matter how much economic development China has experienced since Tienanmen in 1989, it remains a Fear Society. And Frank Hsieh knows it. Late last month, Frank was appointed Premier of the Taiwan Government...
IS THE SPEED OF LIGHT SLOWING DOWN?
I’ve received a number of letters regarding the constancy of the speed of light as discussed in Aristotle, Einstein, and Ayn Rand . They ask about an argument claiming that the speed of light is slowing down. The basis for asserting that the universe is billions of years old with galaxies billions of light years away is substantially based on what’s called the red-shift. It’s like a train whistle with its sound waves bunched up coming towards you, then the pitch shifts dramatically as the train passes by with the sound waves stretched out. Light waves from sources racing away from us (such as distant galaxies) are shifted towards the infra-red part of the spectrum. The amount of the shift indicates the distance the light source is from us, because the speed increases with the distance. The claim is that light from distant galaxies is not red-shifted at random but is “quantized,” grouped into “quantum bands.”
CAN PORTER TURN SYRIA ORANGE?
Immediately after the success of Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution,” all the buzz in foreign policy Washington was: to where can we next export it? Russia? Belarus? Azerbaijan? Iran? The answer became blazingly clear this week: Syria. With Syria’s assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut on February 14, Porter Goss has been handed a golden opportunity on a platinum platter to expand the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East and get rid of the Assad tyranny. The critical question: is his CIA up to it? Despite the usual denials and red herrings, only Syria could have made the professional hit on Hariri, with 700 pounds of explosives planted under the asphalt after “repairs” a few days before, blowing up his armored convoy as it passed over. The hit was conducted by a Lebanese unit of Syria’s Shu'bat al-Mukhabarat al-'Askariyya, Military Intelligence Service, on the orders of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat.
THE TRILLION DOLLAR SCAM: Kyoto leaves Oil-for-Food in the dust
One of the busiest guys on Capitol for the next six months will be Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), whom House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay have put in charge of the new subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.Dana’s assignment: Expose the entire slimy mess of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal and feed it to the fishes. Doing so will be rewarding for Dana - and frustrating at the same time. For only when his committee is finished gutting Oil-for-Food can he turn to a scandal that leaves it in the dust - the multi-trillion dollar scam of the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty.At the heart of Kyoto is criminally-prosecutable research fraud. This fraud has been used to try and scam hundreds of billions of dollars a year from you and me and all Americans, to try and irreparably damage our economy. The global warming industry is a criminal enterprise, and criminally insane to boot.
CHENEY AND CONDI
There’s a red-breasted rumor bird that’s been flying around Washington for a while now, but recently it’s been nesting in Capitol Hill. Talk to just about any Congressional Committee Chairman and they’ll tell what this bird has whispered in their ear.
RIPOSTE TO PYONGYANG: PROVE IT
For every newspaper in the country and around the world this morning, the supersize-font headline is the same: North Korea Admits It Has Nukes!! or a variant thereof. Yet while everyone else is running around like a panicked Chicken Little, the White House remained calm. “This is unfortunate,” Condi sedately pronounced. The most White House spokesman Scott McLellan could rouse himself to say was, “It’s rhetoric we’ve heard before.”Why the insouciance? Because they think North Korea is bluffing. As Donald Rumsfeld put it when queried at NATO meeting in France, yes, the North Korean announcement was a cause for concern, “if you believe them that they have nuclear weapons.”Bush has to go beyond the initial response of calm indifference and there is a debate going on among his advisors as to what that should be. A number are arguing that it should be just two words to Pyongyang: Prove it. Declare that North Korea has to prove its claim of possessing nuclear weapons with a demonstration, and until then its claim will not be taken seriously.That means a test.
CORTEZ AND QUIXOTE
My friends at the Wall Street Journal told me that Letters Editor Ned Crabb just couldn’t handle my response to the January 25 WSJ editorial “Quixotic Journey,” celebrating the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. “Let’s say it went a little bit over his head, Jack,” was how they put it.So here it is for your enjoyment.Dear Ned, The 400th anniversary of the publication of Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” is nothing to celebrate. It would be celebrating a curse.
WHY CONDI IS NOT BLACK
Condoleezza Rice is not only not black, she is not a woman either. Not as far as the Left is concerned. For the Left, if you’re black or a woman, whatever your achievements are, they count only if you got them because you’re black or a woman - not because you deserved them on the basis of your ability. If you got to where you are in life because of your ability and talents irregardless of your race or sex, then you are, for the Left, not “really,” “truly,” or “authentically” black or a woman - like, say, Al Sharpton or Barbara Boxer. Would anybody pay any attention to Al Sharpton if he wasn’t black? Would anybody pay attention to Barbara Boxer if she wasn’t a woman? This is why, if he were alive today, Martin Luther King, Jr. would be a Republican.
BUSH IN NORWAY
It was about two years ago when I was talking to my friend Tony Blankley of the Washington Times and Fox News, and commented that someday George Bush’s greatness as a president would be compared to Ronald Reagan’s. Tony’s response floored me: “You know, Jack, someday it might be the other way around.” The trifecta of the last two weeks - the Second Inaugural Address, the elections in Iraq, the State of the Union - provide an undeniable demonstration of Tony’s prescience. Yet next December 10 in Oslo, Norway, there will be another undeniable demonstration - this one of undiluted perversity. For on that day, George W. Bush will not be there to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
ARISTOTLE, EINSTEIN, AND AYN RAND
2005 is a twin-centennial for Rand and Einstein. Today, February 2, is the centennial of Ayn Rand’s birth in 1905. This week, scientists around the world launched a series of commemorations of the centennial of the annus mirabilis, the “miraculous year” of 1905, when a 26 year-old unknown clerk in a Swiss patent office published five papers in an obscure journal that revolutionized science and changed the way we look at the universe. In one of these, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein introduced his Theory of Special Relativity. Yet this was an incredible misnomer - for what Einstein did was replace one absolute - time - with another - the speed of light. This misnomer is one of the great social tragedies of modern times.
GLOBAL FREEDOM AND DRUNK COAL MINERS
Notice how quick President Bush’s father was to explain to the press that we don’t have to take seriously what his son said at his second inaugural about “ending tyranny in our world”? Thanks for sharing, Dad. What you really made clear is why you never had a second inaugural yourself.The speechwriter who wrote Bush the Elder’s first and only inaugural address (where he pledged to achieve a “kinder and gentler nation,” and Nancy Reagan exploded in anger, whispering to her husband, “Kinder and gentler than what?”), Peggy Noonan whined once again in the Wall Street Journal today about GW’s “overweening” idealism, and that his speech had no “historical context.” I guess Peggy, like her former boss, didn’t pay much attention to the news last year.Perhaps the most important story of 2004 was the achievement of democracy in so many countries. Every “realist” squish in Washington has the vapors over GW’s suddenly becoming a radically dangerous Lone Ranger cowboy - when what’s really happened is he’s acting on the old political adage that if you discover a parade that’s going where you want, get out in front and lead it. GW’s second inaugural address was the Vision Statement. What is needed now is the Business Plan, how the vision is to be actually implemented. For an insight into Bush’s Business Plan for Ending Tyranny, we can look at the drunk coal miners of Donetsk.
SHORTING THE EURO
When Ted Turner compared Fox News to Hitler this week, a Fox spokesman commented that “Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind - we wish him well.” It is time to feel such sympathy for other famous businessfolk who have similarly lost their minds - such as Warren Buffett.The legendary investment guru has allowed his newly acquired left-wing politics to idiotize him. Just like Turner, he sets up an assumed liberal populism as an envy-deflection device, ends up hating America and the capitalist system that made him wealthy - and becomes a fool in the process.To be clear: only a fool would bet long-range on the euro now.
JOHNNY AND THE TSANTSA
For years it was a fantasy of mine to be a guest on the Tonight Show. I was writing a book entitled The Adventurer’s Guide, and I fantasized I would appear on the show promoting the book by showing Johnny Carson a tsantsa, a human shrunken head. This fantasy came true on November 16, 1976. I found myself standing behind that famous multi-colored curtain, holding a small black box, and hearing Carson introducing me. Perhaps professional entertainers would not be nervous behind that curtain, but I was almost paralyzed. That old Chinese warning to be careful for what you wish for, as it might come true, hit me hard. So when the curtain parted and I stepped out into the lights, it was in a total daze that I found myself in that chair sitting next to Johnny Carson with 20 million people watching. And with one brief look by Carson into my eyes, the daze was gone. Somehow I felt comfortable and relaxed. Somehow those 20 million people weren’t there, and it was just me and this friendly fellow having a conversation. Johnny Carson had this almost magical ability to put you at ease - on national television. I believe that within almost everyone there is a dream of adventure - a dream of doing something truly memorable, thrilling, and special. Johnny Carson gave me the opportunity to provide encouragement to people so they could fulfill that dream. As millions of Americans commemorate his passing, I’d like to renew that opportunity, and encourage you to get out into the world and follow whatever dream there is inside you.
TAKING BUSH SERIOUSLY
It must have been a scatological moment for dictators around the world, as they soiled themselves watching George Bush’s inaugural address on global television. They must have known this was coming, for GW has been telegraphing his punches for a long time.That’s why they put all their hopes on GW’s defeat last November. They knew John Kerry would never come after them. Now they know George Bush will.The appropriate reaction to Bush’s Inaugural Address yesterday is: awe-struck. This was a Babe Ruth moment, pointing to where he wanted to hit the ball and swinging for the bleachers. I couldn’t help laughing when I read Peggy Noonan’s petty, small-minded essay in the Wall Street Journal this morning, grouchily complaining about Bush’s “mission inebriation.” She didn’t like the speech because it was so much better than any she wrote for Ronald Reagan.I saw three of Peggy’s former colleagues - White House speechwriters for President Reagan - at one of the Inaugural Balls last night, and they all agreed that Bush’s Second Inaugural will be seen as one of the historically greatest of any American President.So Peggy can cluck, and British newspapers can smirk, but anyone with an ounce of common sense had better start perceiving the reality behind the Left’s myth about GW. You can be sure folks like Hugo Chavez and Aleksandr Lukashenko have no such illusions.For they know, as do their fellow dictators such as Robert Mugabe, Kim Il-Sung, Than Shwe, Ayatollah Khameini, and Fidel Castro, that there is now a bulls-eye painted on them by someone scary-smart and scary-serious who happens to be the most powerful man in the world.
USE SNOPES!
Has anyone emailed you this picture of the December 26 tsunami hitting Phuket, Thailand? It’s all over the web, yet if you’ve ever been to Phuket, you know this is a fake. The city is actually Antofagasta, Chile with phony Photoshopped waves. We all have friends with the terrible habit of forwarding some shocking claim worthy of National Enquirer on to everyone in their email list, without bothering to check its veracity out first. There’s no need to be upset at them, for they’re excited and just want to share something they think is cool - but now you can tell them how to easily find if any claim is for real or not. Just go to Snopes.
WE’RE ALL CRIMINALS NOW
I’m writing this from a place called Mea Culpa City. It’s not a lot of fun being here, but it’s where I have to live until I finish this essay. It turns out that I have wronged a friend. The silver - well, pewter - lining is that in attempting to rectify it I learned how easy it has become for the Federales to turn any of us into criminals.The Cato Institute in Washington has just published a book on this: Go Directly To Jail: The Criminalization Of Almost Everything. It documents how the federal government now views its jurisdiction as limitless - which means almost anything you or your business does can be a federal crime. The Cato book paints a frightening picture - but the truth is, it’s much worse.It’s worse because of the depraved collusion between politicians and their buddies in the media to demonize and criminalize someone on the front pages of newspapers. This of course is not exclusive to Washington. States are on to the game as well. New York’s Elliot Spitzer has turned the State Attorney General’s office into his private Gestapo. But he’s New York’s problem. Federal agents and federal politicians are a problem for all of us.
SARKO VS. EURABIA
My wife just returned from a business trip to Paris last night. She hadn’t been there in a while and was shocked at its transformation. “Where are all the French?” she asked. “Every other person I saw was Arab or North African.” Now she understands how Europe is becoming Eurabia.Yet standing in the way blocking France’s march to cultural doom is a short, wiry fellow with a distinctly un-French name. He’s the most popular politician in France, rock-star popular, married to a beautiful, glamorous model, and the odds-on favorite to be the next President of France. He’s Nicolas Sarkozy - the beloved “Sarko,” as everyone calls him, and he’s part Jewish.
ARMSTRONG AND ARNAUD
Liberal media journalists are all a-flutter about columnist Armstrong Williams being paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind program. They are whipping themselves into a moral dudgeon over a conservative black writer besmirching his journalistic ethics. TMS, the outfit that syndicates Armstrong’s column to papers throughout the country, canceled him.While they are so morally incensed, maybe now these folks can start investigating their brethren who are taking bribes from Saudi Arabia. A year ago last January, the editor-in-chief of the prominent Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh, Turki Al-Sudairi, disclosed that the Saudi government dispenses millions of dollars a year in bribes to journalists around the world to write articles sympathetic to Saudi Arabia and to attack Israel. French newspapers are virulently anti-Semitic as it is, but Saudi money insures they stay that way. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, commentators, and talking heads from scores of publications and media outlets in dozens of countries are on the Saudi payroll. It’s a very sophisticated operation, and world-wide in scope.That scope includes America - especially America.
WANT BETTER AND CHEAPER DRUGS?
The most monumental mistake of George W. Bush’s first term was his Medicare Prescription Drug bill. You have read that it is going to cost American taxpayers an estimated $6 trillion. That’s more than the entire current federal debt. But - it is much, much worse than that.Let’s begin with the asinine assumption that in order for the cost to be only six trillion over the next 40 or so years, average American life expectancy will increase by just two years. For the last 125 years, life expectancy in America has been increasing by three months per year. For the last 30 years, as infant mortality rates have shrunk to be statistically marginal, all of the increase has gone to the elderly. By 2050, Americans will be living at least 11-12 years longer than today - which doubles the time folks will collect Medicare (and Social Security) benefits. So now we’re at twelve, not six, trillion in prescription drug costs alone. Yet we are just getting started. George Bush’s bribe of prescription drug “benefits” for old folks who still refused to vote for him in the numbers he expected is going to cost our kids and their kids well over 20 trillion dollars.I can tell you what the solution is - but unless you’re a fan of Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, economists who fully understand how government regulation can ruin a market sector, it will take getting used to.
AN EAGLE CHRONOLOGY
For some set of reasons I don’t really fathom, my becoming an Eagle Scout at 12 years old disturbs certain people. Out of all the stuff in my bio, this is the thing these folks call into question. Not only do I get emails on it, but there are even debates about it on a number of internet web sites and chat rooms. So to settle this, here’s my chronology of how I made Eagle.