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THE DOORMAT OF EMPIRES |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 24 June 2010 |
I couldn't agree with Jack Kelly
more
in his approval of Zero's firing General McChrystal.
Stanley McChrystal is an insufferably arrogant putz whose
criminally stupid Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan
deserve more than being relieved of his command.
They deserve a court-martial and prison. His "courageous
restraint" ROE's are directly responsible for getting our
soldiers killed. He thinks the lives of
Afghans are more important to save than Americans. As of
last week, one of those Americans
fighting and risking their lives to bring freedom to Afghanistan - and
one of
those lives McChrystal's political correctness is jeopardizing - is my
son.
Afghanistan
is personal - for me, and because of 9/11, it should be for all
Americans.
Here we'll dispense with the idiotically ignorant myth that Afghanistan
is the "Graveyard of Empires." Afghanistan
has been steamrollered by conquerors for millennia. Then,
next week, we'll discuss how easy it
would be for us to do so and why it's important that we do.
In 327 BC, Alexander the Great married a beautiful princess
named Roxanne in Balkh, capital of Bactria. She was the
daughter of the King of Bactria,
Oxyartes, and Alexander had just conquered his kingdom. Bactria
is
now northern Afghanistan
- Alexander's wife was Afghan.
At this moment, US and NATO forces are preparing to secure Afghanistan's
second largest city, Kandahar. The city was founded by
Alexander in 330 BC
and is in fact named after him, from the original Iskandaria
(Alexandria
- Iskander being the Persian
pronunciation of Alexander's name).
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AMPUTATE OR DIE |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 17 June 2010 |
It was a sobering dinner party last night (6/16). Hosted by a London billionaire in his exquisite home - a Boccaccio hung on the wall behind me - the wine flowed liberally, but the conversation between the ten of us was stone-cold serious.
There were lighter moments, as when I proposed a toast to "a great hero of Europe - Geert Wilders." Every one raised their glass in a smile, but the biggest smile was that of a spectacularly gorgeous super-model (you've seen her in many a high-fashion ad). She was from Holland.
Then a well-known Hollywood producer raised his glass to toast his hero - Ronald Reagan. "We need him again," he commented. I guarantee you've watched one of his TV shows.
But when a self-made billionaire with an 11-figure private equity fund and a clear grasp of Austrian economics starts to talk about America's prospects, you listen. So we all listened.
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DEMOCRAT WEEDS IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL GARDEN |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 10 June 2010 |
Here is the great conundrum of our day: Why can't
conservatives and Republicans be as
ruthlessly and passionately focused on reducing government power as
liberals
and Democrats are on expanding it?
Until a solution to this is found, government guns and
bureaucrats will relentlessly continue to control ever more of our
lives, as
they have for generations. The most that
can be achieved, such as under President Reagan, is to marginally slow
down the
continuing advance of fascism.
Here's a metaphor.
Suppose you had a beautiful garden and you let the weeds grow in
it. The only gardening you did was
half-hearted because you had to work to make a living and couldn't take
the
time - or you were just too lazy - to trim and prune and de-weed
adequately.
How would your garden look after a few years? After a
hundred years? Would the folks who originally created the
garden recognize it? No - of course not,
it would be an overgrown morass of weeds and brambles that had choked
the
garden out of existence.
Democrats are the weeds in America's
garden of government. Republicans are
supposed to be the gardeners - and they've done such a lousy job they've
let
the weeds take over. The problem is not
so much that too many of them are RINOs or insufficiently principled.
It's that they don't understand the job Republicans
are supposed to do.
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OBAMA IN OKINAWA |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 03 June 2010 |
Yukio Hatoyama is a weird guy, so weird his countrymen have
nicknamed him "E.T.", the Extraterrestrial.
What possessed the
people of Japan to, 8½ months
ago (Sept. 2009),
select Yukio Hatoyama as their Prime Minister is a mystery for
historians to
unravel. He screwed things up so badly
with such a massive mix of incompetence and corruption that yesterday
(6/02) he
resigned.
The excuse he gave
was Okinawa.
Yes, Okinawa. No one in mainland Japan really cares about Okinawa. No
one, certainly, in Hatoyama's party - the DJP (Democratic Party of
Japan) - which
won a landslide victory that sent the long-ruling LDP (Liberal
Democratic
Party) into the political wilderness last September.
What DJP
politicians care about is preserving their power - which they look sure
to lose
in the upcoming elections next month, July 11.
Heading towards electoral disaster, they threw Hatoyama under the
bus. Okinawa is just the cover
story.
Now - do you know
of any other political party that won a landslide victory in their
country's
last election, and is now staring Electoral Armageddon in the face
because of
the gargantuan incompetence, corruption, and unpopularity of its leader?
Any party, any leader, any country come to
mind?
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COMMENCEMENT 2010 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Wednesday, 02 June 2010 |
[This commencement address was originally published five
years ago. We rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite
free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.]
Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty,
Honored Graduates, Families and Friends:
It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all
reached
the finish line: college, goodbye, we're outta here. Yet of course,
"commencement" means a beginning, not an end.
But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this
by
saying funny things. So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable
movies. If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the
biggest movie star in Hollywood a
long time ago. His most famous movie was Gone With The Wind.
He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as
his
girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy. It's a pretty ordinary Western
flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the
bad guy,
and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems
lost.
Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs. Gable makes his
exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never
forget.
Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you
least
expect it. Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian
dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan
turns
to his men and says:
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