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L i k e U s ! ! !

SPAIN JUST OPENED EVERY COUNTRY TO ISLAMIST MIGRANTS

The Reconquista is being reversed. Call it the Re-Reconquista, in which Muslims invade Spain hundreds of years after they were finally defeated by Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinance of Castile and Aragon in 1492, the same year that Columbus sailed to the North American continent.

Muslims had invaded Spain in the 8th century, and it took 7 centuries of struggle and warfare for the Christians to defeat the Muslim invaders.

Pedro Sánchez, the Prime Minister of Spain, is inviting the Muslims to take Spain back, and by extension, the entire continent of Europe. Because modern Europe, you see, is all part of the Schengen Zone, in which borders are rendered irrelevant for travel and even settlement within the zone.

“The Spanish government and its partners openly state that the reason for legalising more than half a million migrants is to "defeat the far right." This is literally weaponised demography.”

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TRUMP, IRAN, AND THE THEATER OF MORAL PANIC

Pearl clutchers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your credibility.

A week ago, on Easter Sunday — Easter Sunday, forsooth! — President Trump horrified delicate souls by issuing this minatory post on Truth Social:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. That meanie used a bad word, called the Iranian mullahs “crazy bastards,” and taunted them by saying, “Praise be to Allah.” How disrespectful can you get?

There was worse to come. On Tuesday, as zero hour approached, President Trump went whole hog.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Oh, oh, oh! Can you believe it? He just threatened to destroy the storied civilization of Persia, Cyrus the Great, Darius, and the Achaemenid Empire! The collective knickers of the anti-Trump establishment were twisted tight. . . . The frenzied knot of moralizing mouthpieces competed mightily to show the world how lustrous their consciences were.

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THE PORTUGUESE RIVIERA

rh-at-portugues-rivieraA cliff-top fishing village on the Italian Riviera? Nope, Azenhas do Mar – Watermills of the Sea – is on the Portuguese Riviera. This is a magic place of fairy tale castles, thousand year-old fortresses, luxury boutique hotels, fabulous food, great wine, gorgeous beaches, and postcard-perfect scenery everywhere.

The Portuguese people are among the kindest in Europe, while Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world. Of all the planet’s First World countries, it’s hard to find one more friendly, calm, and welcoming than here.

Who’s the pretty girl? Lucky me – she’s my wife Rebel, mother of our two grown sons, my business partner, and my best friend. We’ve had a home here for many years. Rebel loves Portugal so much she taught herself to be fluent in Portuguese. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #123 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

 

 

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AS CHINA FALTERS, MEXICO RISES

China is losing its grip on global manufacturing, and one of the biggest new winners is Mexico.

That does not make Mexico a rival in the way it did China.

North America is reorganizing around American power at exactly the moment China is becoming older, costlier, riskier, and weaker.

Mexico is rising not against the United States, but because it is plugging itself more deeply into the only industrial system on Earth that is actually positioned to win.

The sheer size of the bilateral relationship is remarkable. U.S. goods trade with Mexico reached $872.8 billion in 2025, with U.S. exports at $338.0 billion and imports at $534.9 billion.

In 2023, Mexico replaced China as America’s largest source of imports, a position China had held for twenty years.

That’s a quiet revolution. For years, the world economy rested on a simple arrangement: America consumed, China manufactured, and the foreign policy class pretended this was both permanent and wise.

It was neither.

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UGLIFICATION AS CONTROL – THE ASSAULT ON BEAUTY

This morning at 4 am, something not unusual (for me) happened: I woke with an insight after falling asleep mid-chapter reading C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.

Ransom, his main character, was based on J.R.R. Tolkien, and I had been having a conversation with Professor Tolkien in my sleep.

What I wrote down was this: Triptych: Wealth. Power. Beauty.

These are the three things humans desire. Beauty is generally within our reach. Wealth and power must be worked for but are achievable in our great Western civilization. And these are precisely the things that socialist and Marxist movements, or indeed any ideology that seeks control over others, work to destroy.

It’s not that they hate the good and the beautiful so much as that the desire to dominate is more powerful. In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron and Saruman knew that domination of others is easiest when people are hungry, diminished, and surrounded by the drab and the ugly.

Of the three, I am most fascinated by beauty.

 

Power and Wealth

Everyone knows about the first panel, wealth. As socialism creeps into a system, we see more and more confiscation of wealth: progressive taxation, expensive regulatory tangles, redistributionism, and equity.

Promises of fairness harden into, as the hobbits in “The Scouring of the Shire” discovered, the powerful gathering far more than is ever shared back out. The ordinary man is “given” just enough to stay fed but hungry, kept dependent upon the government.

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EVEREST BASE CAMP

jw-at-everest-base-camp

I’m at 17,500 feet with the Khumbu Ice Fall behind me.  To the left in the photo is the West Shoulder of Everest, to the right is a flank of Nuptse.  Climbers begin from where I am to ascend the Icefall, thousands of gigantic ice blocks all shifting and moving, reaching Camp I at the top, up a steep glacier-filled valley called the Western Cwm to Camp II, up the even steeper face of Lhotse that adjoins Everest to Camp III, then on to the saddle between Lhotse and Everest called the South Col at Camp IV.  To summit, they start at night up the Southeast Ridge hoping to beat the crowd standing in line at the summit ridge.

The irony of being at “EBC” where I am is that you never see Everest itself – it’s hidden behind the West Shoulder.  Unless you’re a climber doing all the above, the only way to see the world’s highest mountain is on one our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions (HHE). We fly over the Khumbu Ice Fall and into the Western Cwm where we see the entire Southwest Face of Everest from summit (29,028 feet) to base and the entire face of Lhotse as well.  There are no words adequate to describe the experience. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #267 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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EUROPE HAS A NEW LEADER

[This Monday’s Archive was first published in TTP on March 25, 2016. The ten years that elapsed since that date and that of yesterday (April 12, 2026) are vivid testimony to how power corrupts so much that an inspiring advocate of freedom can become an advocate of crushing it. There is irony in the title given the events of yesterday.]

TTP, March 25, 2016

In May of 1989, I had a cup of coffee with a young man in a café in Nickelsdorf, Austria.

In his mid-twenties, he had crossed an unguarded section of the border with Hungary just two hundred yards away to meet me.  There was mud on his shoes from the fields he had crossed.

He was a founder of an Anti-Communist freedom movement in Budapest called Fidesz (the Hungarian acronym for Alliance of Young Democrats).  Since 1983, I had made it my business to meet people such as him.

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TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIAN HEROISM

 

This is where is started in 722, the Holy Cave of Covadonga, where the Virgin Mary told Christian Knights to reconquer their country stolen from them by Moslem invaders.

 

This is where it ended in 1492, where the last remaining Moslem ruler, Boabdil of Granada, surrendered to King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile.

It took 780 years for generation upon generation of Christian Knights to fulfill their pledge to Holy Mary.  This October, Rebel and I with your fellow TTPers will retrace and relive from start to finish this epic triumph of Christian heroism known as The Reconquista.

 

To entice you to join us, just for this week – as we have to secure airline flights within Spain for everyone – we offer $500 off if you place your deposit by Friday (4/17).

To avail of the $500 off.. You just enter the code: 4SPAINSPECIAL

All the details, descriptions, and photos are here:  Triumph of Christianity: The Reconquista of Spain - October 9-19, 2026 .

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HALF-FULL REPORT 04/10/26

Overmorrow, Sunday April 12, Hungarian voters will overwhelmingly choose Magyar over Orban. The first question is: will Orban accept defeat, or will he refuse? Odds are on the latter.

The second question is: will the crowds cheering for Magyar filling towns and cities all over the country be so large that Orban will fire up the document shredders, instead of ordering his police to fire upon the celebrants? Let’s really hope the odds are on the former.

Polls in Hungary have consistently shown Magyar ahead of Orban, but in the last few days they simply exploded in his favor. As of today (4/10), Polymarket odds are Magyar 71%/Orban 29%; Magyar’s TISZA (Respect & Freedom) Party to win Parliament majority 77%, Orban’s Fidesz 24%.

What just happened to cause this?  JD Vance.

Lot’s more to come in this HFR – saddle up for a great ride!

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TRUMP DERANGEMENT IS ALL THE DEMOCRATS HAVE

trump-derangement[This Monday’s Archive was originally in TTP on June 30, 2017. There’s a saying, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” This saying may describe the Democrats better than any other. Nine years later, four of which they controlled, and it’s STILL All Trump, All the Time. Enjoy this trip down memory lane while you consider what Trump has accomplished in the last year and a bit!]

TTP, June 30, 2017

If they weren’t trying to destroy the president, Democrats would have to focus on an agenda most Americans don’t support.

By 1968, voters had tired of the failed Great Society of Lyndon Johnson. Four years later, the 1972 Nixon reelection re-emphasized that a doubled-down McGovern liberalism was even less of a viable agenda.

In that context, in 1974, obsessing on Watergate and a demonized Nixon were wise liberal alternatives to running on a positive left-wing vision, given the growing conservative backlash of the 1970s.  After Watergate and the Ford pardon, Jimmy Carter squeaked to a close victory and a one-term presidency — before the country tired of his strident liberalism poorly cloaked in conservative clothing.

Given this historical reminder, the current efforts at Trump character assassination may be the best — or only — progressive pathway back to political power.  Here is why – in excruciating (for Democrats) detail.

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THE A-10 “SEA-HOG”

BRRRRRT! The sound U.S. troops love to hear is now a nightmare for sailors on board Iranian IRGC fast attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz.

The A-10 Warthog, everyone’s longtime favorite tank killer, has been repurposed as a boat buster. And the results are stunning.

According to Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. forces have destroyed more than 120 naval vessels, including many fast attack boats, plus another 44 mine layers.

The A-10 is the star of the show, flying low and slow, using its devastating 30mm gun to turn IRGC fast boats into scrap metal. And as we speak, more A-10s are on their way to the Gulf.

 

The irony is rich. For years, the United States Air Force has been trying to kill the A-10. Congress has consistently refused to let it.

The pilots who actually fly the thing have always loved it, while the theory class in Washington has treated it like an embarrassing relic: too slow, too ugly, too specialized, too 1970s, too insufficiently “transformational.”

Yet here we are. The “obsolete” A-10 is back in combat, back in demand, and back where reality always sends it when the stakes are high and the target is hard: at the point of friction, where the enemy is real, the battlespace is messy, and elegant abstractions go to die.

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BAD NEWS GUYS – THE NYT SAYS WE’VE LOST THE WAR

At least it’s colorful: The Gray Lady just gave us the green light to wave the white flag.

Running in the April 7 edition of The New York Times: “The Iran War Is Turning Iran Into a Major World Power.”

The author, Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, offers the following thesis:

  1. Iran will keep control of the Strait of Hormuz for “months or years,” and there’s nothing militarily we can do about it. (Sorry, guys.)
  2. The U.S. and Europe are now in decline — and the axis of China, Russia, and Iran is ascending.
  3. Iran will emerge as a “new major world power” and the “fourth center of global power” (the other three: America, China, Russia).
But before we pulverize Professor Pape’s preposterously pessimistic proposal, here’s an earlier example of The New York Times’ piercing wisdom, courtesy of author Hans Mahncke….

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A SPIRIT OF LAWLESSNESS

We sometimes say in the law enforcement and military world that while amateurs talk hardware, professionals talk software.

If you have a fancy pistol or rifle, it doesn’t matter if you have no motivation to learn how to shoot well.

It’s long been known that military veterans tend to be more effective in battle than brand new troops; that dynamic isn’t limited to there, of course, and holds almost anywhere—even in the fast-food restaurant.

We have looked at the ascendancy of Donald Trump in America as a great thing, and have looked at the “red progress” made politically as equally good, and understandably want to be optimistic about the country’s future based on this and the superiority of conservative ideas.

Nonetheless, there is a concern that while the American hardware is good and getting better, we have a problem with the software; including in groups that we like to think are better about this, and most particularly amongst the young, who have often come out of leftist schools while listening to and absorbing left-leaning ideas on their phones for far more hours a day than they spend reading history.

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SELF-ESTEEM IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN YOU THINK

In a study by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, she found that college kids today are more likely to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, while their test scores and hours spent studying are decreasing. Their tendency toward narcissism has also increased over the last 30 years.

Today I want to look at what I consider one of the sources of this trend: the unearned self-esteem movement.

Many years ago, when I was young psychology graduate student studying with Nathaniel Branden, I remember him talking one day about how he had been invited to be part of The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, lead by California State Assemblyman John Vasconcelos.

Nathaniel couldn’t see why he would be involved in that, since he did not see a role for government in the development of self-esteem. Nonetheless, the Task Force carried on, and created guidelines for building "self-esteem" in a way that Branden would never have advocated.

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THE VINDICATION OF A WARRIOR

There are men who drift through public life like shadows cast by lesser lights and then there are men like Michael Flynn, a soldier forged in the furnace of war, a patriot tempered by decades of service, and a man whose loyalty to his country was repaid with one of the most shameful political persecutions in modern American history.

Who is Michael Flynn?

He is not merely a retired lieutenant general. He is a battlefield intelligence officer who rose through the ranks of the United States Army with distinction. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He led the Defense Intelligence Agency. He advised commanders under fire. He was entrusted with secrets that lesser men could not even comprehend. He is a husband, a father, and a man of deep faith whose life reflects discipline and devotion to the Republic. And yet this is the man they chose to destroy.

Why was Flynn targeted? Why did the machinery of government turn its gears against a decorated general whose only real crime was loyalty to Donald Trump? The answer is as obvious as it is disturbing. Flynn knew too much.

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