LIBERAL VERBAL TRICKERY
In a mildly interesting exchange in The New Republic, between one of the magazine's senior editors, Jonathan Chait and Cato Institute scholar Brink Lindsay, the idea of a possible alliance between liberals (like Chait) and libertarians (like Lindsay) was recently debated. No one, I think, really believed in a serious prospect for this alliance but my own attention was piqued when Chait responded to Lindsay's suggestion that Social Security ought to be (somewhat) privatized as this could appeal to "younger liberals." (I must admit it always irritates me to call these folks "liberals" when they have no interest in human liberty whatsoever any longer!) Chait asks, "And why would we force retirees into the individual medical insurance market?" Focus on his use of the word "force."
CIVILIZATIONAL CONFIDENCE
Here's a tip for all of you younger folks in your 20s and 30s. If you think the world is strange now, wait ‘till you get older. For the older you get, the weirder the world looks. For me, one of the world's weirdest places is an airport. Specifically, being at an airport waiting to board an incredibly complex machine that will lift me and hundreds of other people thousands of feet into the air, and land us safely on the ground thousands of miles away in a few hours - a simply astounding achievement of reason and civilization - while a few minutes before I had to take off my shoes and had a tube of toothpaste confiscated because of fear of proto-hominid barbarians chanting Allahu akhbar who want to destroy such achievements. What is stone cold weird is that the civilization capable of such achievements tolerates the proto-hominids for a picosecond. So we come to what will emerge this new year of 2007 as the key fundamental issue of our day, the outcome of which will determine our future: civilizational confidence.
PREDICTING 2007
I am expecting a lot of things to happen in 2007. Things that I won't be surprised by if they do happen. 2007 will be a wonderful year for the death of dictators - Castro croaking at last, Saddam hung at last, and with any luck Hugo Chavez will get himself assassinated. Iran's Ahmadinutjob is not a dictator, as he serves at the whim of the ayatollahs. Their whim seems to be now that he is no longer useful, so we may soon be rid of him. With any luck, that will not prevent the Israelis from taking out Iran's nuclear facilities. With even more luck, the Israelis will be smart enough to accomplish this via sabotage rather than airstrikes. China should be on its best behavior for 2007 with no saber-rattling at Taiwan. The Chicoms don't want anything to spoil their coming-out party at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. However... I'm going to stop now and turn the tables. What I want is to ask you for your predictions. What do you think will happen in the world and in America in 2007?
LONE STAR AMERICA
I'm in a small town called St. Francisville in an obscure part of Louisiana. Visitors who come here stop briefly to gaze at the nicely preserved 19th century homes on its main street before hurrying off to the area's principal attractions nearby - magnificent ante-bellum plantation mansions like Rosewood, the Myrtles, or Oakley where Audubon stayed and painted many of his birds. Almost no tourists pay any attention to a flag that flies in front of the courthouse along with the stars and stripes and the state flag, nor have any idea what it symbolizes: 
It's the Bonnie Blue flag of the Republic of West Florida, the capital of which was here. In 1810, St. Francisville was the capital of an independent country. How it got to be, and what it may mean for America's future, is a story that goes from Spanish explorers to American rebels, from Napoleon to the Alamo, from the "Halls of Montezuma" of the Marine Hymn to the invasion of America by illegal aliens from Mexico. So curl up and get cozy in your favorite chair during a winter weekend evening, and let me tell you the story. It starts with a man named Hernando de Soto.
THE GIFT OF TO THE POINT
We've just made it really easy to give a friend the enlightening gift of a subscription to To The Point. There's a new option on our subscription page: a one month only non-recurring gift subscription for $9.99. Now what could you give a friend that could more open his or her eyes to the world and give them more insight upon it than this - and for less than ten bucks? It's also the way to bring a currently non-member friend to the To The Point Rendezvous in Las Vegas next month (see Rendezvous at Mandalay). Here's how it works.
ADIOS AHMADINEJAD
The first step toward understanding the Iranian "elections" last Monday (12/18) is that they weren't. Elections, that is, at least in our common understanding of the term, namely the people vote and the counters count those votes and so we find out what the people want. That's not what happens in Iran, where both the candidates and the results are determined well in advance of the casting of ballots. Yes, people get mobilized and go to the polls and mark their ballots and put them in the ballot box. But then Groucho Marx comes into play: "I've got ballots. And if you don't like them, I've got other ballots." So, as usual, candidates (featuring, as usual, the unfortunate Mehdi Karubi, the eternal loser who nonetheless remains at the top of the mullah's power mountain) complain that ballot boxes disappeared, and new ones magically appeared, and numbers change, and counters are replaced. It's all part of the ritual. Which is not to say they weren't significant. They certainly were. They mean that Mr. Ahmadinejad usefulness to Iran's real rulers may have run its course.
PRESIDENT BUSH AND CAPTAIN PATRIQUIN
Sir Thomas Gresham noted that: "bad money drives out good." A kind of Gresham's Law applies in politics and journalism. Bad advice drives out good. The recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (composed of 10 famous people who know next to nothing about either the military or the Middle East) received enormous attention from the news media. But the report last week from people who actually know what they're talking about received little. Aside from the surreal recommendation that we ask our enemies, Iran and Syria, for help in quelling the violence they are largely responsible for fomenting, the ISG recommended, essentially, that we do more of what hasn't worked very well. President Bush has been asking a lot of people what he should do next in Iraq. But he should have consulted with Travis Patriquin.
A CHRISTMAS LETTER TO ANTI-CHRISTIANS: 2006
A version of this was first written for Christmas 2004. It is addressed to members of the ACLU and other Anti-Christian Liberals. It is obviously not addressed to TTP members! But feel free to send this to any ACLU member should you happen to know one. Merry Christmas. If that offends you, why should I care? It's your problem, not mine. Let me explain your problem a little more fully. America is a Christian country. It's your job to deal with that, because you're not going to change this fact. America has always been a Christian country, and - open wide now, because you're going to have to swallow this - it will continue to be. It will continue to be because most Americans aren't Euroweenies. They haven't lost the moral courage to be proud of their country and their civilization. Notice the "most" - which you are not a part of. You are anti-Christian because you are anti-American. You are anti-American because you are anti-Western Civilization. You are anti-Western Civilization because you are afraid of and intimidated by the envy of the world's impotent. Fear of being envied defines your liberal soul.
HOW CONSERVATIVES ARE GOING TO GET IN BED WITH NANCY PELOSI
How many times have you heard that old adage, "politics makes for strange bedfellows"? But no matter how many times that's been, you're not going to believe how many conservative Republican Members of Congress are about to jump in bed with Speaker Pelosi. One of the things that most drives these folks around the bend is the sell-out of their party's principles to Country Club Corporate America. They can't stand Big Business's addiction to cheap labor. It's an addiction that blocks effective attempts to stem the flood of illegal alien immigration from Mexico, or to stem the flood of trade deficit dollars to China. The list of issues that conservatives in the House will oppose Pelosi on seems endless, and amnesty for illegals plus refusing to fence them out is certainly one of them. But there is one issue not on that list, an issue of the gravest national security on which they are sure cooperation with her is possible. That issue is...
OPENING THE DOORS OF ISLAM
It has become a commonplace observation that Islam today requires a Reformation with an Islamic Martin Luther. This is the absolute last thing Islam needs now, the triumph of faith over reason with resultant bloodshed and sectarian slaughter lasting over a century (ca. 1520-1648) and costing the lives of millions. That horror was the Reformation. What Islam needs instead is an Enlightenment. It turns out there is a term in Arabic for enlightenment, for analysis and interpretation through reason, that has an honorable tradition in Islamic jurisprudence and thought. Get to know the word, for it is the salvation of Islam: Ijtihad.
For every verse in the Koran the moderates can cite, the Islamofascists can refute them with a dozen. There is no possibility of women’s rights in Islam or an end to Islamic terrorism, for example, until verses like Sura 4:34 that condone wife-beating, or those that condone slavery and killing infidels and spreading Islam with violence, on and on, are challenged as not being the true words of Allah.
That they are being challenged by a growing number of Moslem scholars, that there is an emerging Ijtihad Movement stirring within Islam, is the best hope for an Islamic Enlightenment.