LOOK WHAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION DID FOR ROME
Many believe that illegal immigration is reaching such levels that it threatens our national security, and perhaps even our national survival. Others believe that we should give legal status to those who already illegally in our country. We have already done this once, in 1986, and the result was that millions more, seeing that there was hope for eventual legal status, came here illegally, hoping for amnesty. We now have two and one half times more illegals in the country than we did in 1986. If we continue to do this eventually we will reach a point, if we haven't already, where there are so many aliens in the country that they will not adopt our culture, they will not learn our customs, and they will never become Americans. It has happened before. Just ask the Romans.
ASIA MINOR (Part Two)
Comfortable? Frosty mug of Midas Touch Golden Elixir at hand? (After all, you've had a week to find where you can get it.) Okay, here we go, off again to the "Crossroads of history" that is Asia Minor and has become modern-day Turkey. We left off at the Ottoman Turks' defeat at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. That year saw the greatest extent of the Ottoman Empire. Let's recapitulate its expansion since 1300 and gasp at its enormity: [See map in the main article] The first thing that startles Westerners is the giant piece of Europe the Ottomans seized and Moslemized, all of the present-day countries of: Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and parts of southern Ukraine and Russia. What a tribute it is to the peoples of these countries that, with the exception of Albania, the majority of all of them refused to submit and retained their Christianity. The same applies to Armenia and Georgia (south of the Caucasus, they are in Asia.) Look again at the map and you see how much of the entire Arab world of the time was ruled by the Ottoman Turks: present day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, eastern and western Saudi Arabia, western Yemen, Egypt, northern Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. Recall that the Arabs had lost their capital of Baghdad to the Seljuks in 1055, and their Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina to the Ottomans in 1500. The inventors of Islam had been treated as subservient üntermenschen by the Turks for centuries and would continue to be for centuries more. Store that away, for we'll return to these folks later in our story. Now let's get back to Europe and the aftermath of 1683.
THE BLUE DOG HOPE
White House spokesman Tony Snow and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff both were at a meeting I attended this week, attempting to allay fear and anger over the immigration reform bill. I have to tell you they were very persuasive. I am convinced they are both honest, that they are genuinely trying to solve a seemingly intractable problem with good patriotic intentions, that they believe this bill is an unprecedented ("Underline that word three times," said Tony) commitment to secure our southern border, to effect employer enforcement, and replace chain migration with a merit system. Chertoff and Snow are two decent men arguing from principle and integrity. Both are smart - Chertoff is very smart. And both are, with innocent naiveté, being taken to the Destruction of America Cleaners by Teddy Kennedy. You can't make a deal with the devil. You'll always get screwed, no matter how many amendments and marvelous provisions you stick into the deal.
JOHN MCCAIN AS THE PERFECT LIBERAL
My friend and Marine ‘Nam vet Bill Gregory is just blown away by the User Forum comments regarding Thompson Bummer. "What an intelligent, insightful group of people you have as subscribers!" he effuses, and I can only agree. He was especially impressed with a new commentator with the wonderful forum name of "melliefluous," and those of such regulars as John Nehring (johnwss), Chris Baldi (cephran), Marco, "gary," and "prosenberg," among many others. "Great thought-provoking exchanges," notes Bill. Our TTP Salon is turning out to be a terrific place to discuss the pros and cons of the 2008 presidential candidates (mostly the Republicans, for what, really, is there to say about the goofy folks the Dems are serving up?). I have to say my disappointment with Fred Thompson at his speech last Saturday (5/12) was tempered a bit with his devastating quick put-down of Michael Moore on YouTube. I would still love to see him declare and participate in the GOP candidate debates. The debate last Tuesday (5/15) in South Carolina (here is the transcript) was intensely revealing. Folks saw that Duncan Hunter would be A President to Watch America's Six, and that Ron Paul, like all libertarians, is not. But what the debate most clearly exposed is John McCain as the Perfect Liberal.
KILLERS IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
What was the motive behind 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui's killing of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech? Why was he consumed with hate, resentment, and bitterness? Cho was an English Department major and senior. As a frequent lecturer on college campuses, I have discovered that the English Departments are often the weirdest and/or the most leftwing. A look at the websites of Virginia Tech's English Department and of its professors reveals their mindset. We don't yet know which courses Cho took, but it could have been any of these. Did Cho get evil egotistical notions from Professor Shoshana Milgram Knapp's senior seminar called "The Self-Justifying Criminal in Literature?" Indeed, that could serve as his own self-portrait. Did Cho take a course from Professor Paul Heilker, author of another peculiar piece called "Textual Androgyny, the Rhetoric of the Essay, and the Politics of Identity in Composition (or The Struggle to Be a Girly-Man in a World of Gladiator Pumpitude)?" Or maybe Cho preferred the undiluted Marxism espoused by English instructor Allen Brizee, who wrote: "Everyday, the capitalist system exploits millions of people. ... Our role in the capitalist system makes us guilty of oppression!"
QUELLING QUALMS ABOUT RUDY
I'm against abortion under most circumstances. So why does Rudy Giuliani's firm declaration of support for a procedure I abominate make me more likely to support him for the Republican nomination for president? I'll be a single issue voter in 2008. If we don't win the war on Islamic terror, nothing else will matter very much. All of the "top tier" Republicans who seem today to have a realistic chance of winning say the right things about the war on terror. So does George W. Bush. Mr. Bush is an honest, brave, compassionate man whose heart is in the right place. But his head's been somewhere else. The mistakes his administration have made have put our mission in Iraq in serious jeopardy. After over six years of the Bush administration, I yearn for competence in the White House. I want a president who will run the government, instead of being intimidated by his own bureaucracies. I want a president who will appoint competent people to key positions, not the likes of Alberto Gonzales or Michael Brown. I want a president who not only understands what's at stake in the war on Islamic terror, but who can communicate those stakes effectively to the American people. Which is why I'm attracted to Rudy.
A PRESIDENTIAL FREAK SHOW?
A nosy, hectoring, busy-body, anti-smoking, anti-trans fat, social engineering, lifestyle blue-nosing, freedom-crushing, nanny-state enthusiast announced this week he's ready to spend a billion dollars of his vast wealth to run for president of our country. Currently Michael Bloomberg is Mayor of New York. The leading Democrat contender is Hillary Milhous Clinton, an anti-military radical feminist Euro-Socialist-cum-Trotskyite who is masquerading as a pro-military, pro-free-market, religious centrist. But should Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. surprisingly get the Democratic nomination, then we would substitute for the secret leftist/publicly centrist Hillary Milhous a completely inexperienced African-American possibly former Moslem, partially Indonesian-raised, Harvard-trained ersatz Kennedyesque candidate. This is turning into a freak show. And I haven't even started with the Republicans.
ASIA MINOR (Part One)
The appropriate way to read this article is print it out, then take it in hand and relax in your favorite reading chair with your feet up on the settee. Most important, be sure you have a glass of your favorite fermented beverage at hand. Now, if you really want to do this right, make it a glass of Midas Touch Golden Elixir produced by the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware. You'll be drinking history while you read it. You remember from Greek mythology the legend of King Midas, to whom the god Dionysius mischievously granted his wish that everything he touched turn to gold? Well, he really lived. His tomb has been discovered, his bones excavated, together with the residues of the funerary feast held by his mourners. It turns out they drank a lot of booze. The residue was enough for molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern (author of Ancient Wine) to figure out the formula, a combination of honey mead, wine, and beer. After a bottle of Golden Elixir, you'll agree. 2,700 years ago, they knew how to make really good stuff. I'm enjoying a glass of it as I write this, and I can assure you that's true. Let me warn you, though - at 9%, it packs a marvelous wallop. Midas was King of Phrygia, venerated as the founder of the city of Ankyra (Greek for anchor) in 700 BC. But the place was already old by his time, for the Bronze Age Hittites in 1400 BC knew it as Ankuwash. Today, it's called Ankara - the capital of Turkey.
A PRESIDENT TO WATCH AMERICA’S SIX
Last Friday (5/11), I had dinner with a friend. Ever hear of the expression, "Watch your six"? It's a fighter-jock term, meaning watch for enemies behind your back (directionally "six o'clock"). If there is anyone I would trust to watch America's Six, it would be my friend. Good grief, I wish Duncan Hunter could get elected President of the United States. I've known him for over 20 years. We still talk about the time we went quail hunting back in the 80s - he even remembers the location (near Mount Palomar north of San Diego). He was in his second term as a Congressman then. Now he's into his 14th, and last. In 2008, expect his son, Duncan D., a US Marine now on his third tour of active duty in Iraq, to succeed him. Duncan is the real McCoy, a true man's man. He's the antithesis of the left's cartoon caricature of masculinity, as afraid of masculinity as the feminized left is. Talking with Duncan is always fun because he's quick and bright, street-smart shrewd, and never pulls a punch - he says what he thinks.
THOMPSON BUMMER
Say goodnight, Fred. Last night, Saturday (5/12), in a huge ballroom at a hotel in Washington I can't name at a meeting of a group I can't mention, Fred Thompson was the dinner speaker to 500 of conservatism's crème de la crème. The energy in the room was crackling. Here's the guy, everyone was either thinking or hoping - the big man who could fill Reagan's shoes, a true conservative who could electrify Republicans and sweep them to victory in 2008. There were cheers and yells when he was introduced, as everyone stood in sustained applause, then sat down in quiet excited anticipation. I'm not at liberty to reveal what he said, as this was a closed meeting, a private off the record address. But I can tell you my reaction and that of the several dozen folks I talked to afterwards. What a bummer.