The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Government Power is Devolving!
This was an amazing week for the good guys. Roe vs. Wade is no more, gun rights are returning, school prayer is now a thing, and the entire global warming, carbon credit, power grab by the Federal Government is reversed.
Astounding.
But what does it mean?
The Fourth Turning, so often discussed, is turning out to be a return to federalism and away from centralized, authoritarian government. They went too far, too fast.
Come join the Independence Day HFR. Liberty is busting out all over.
A festering rot of racial animosity exists in our society that we willfully ignore socially and politically. It is a rot that eats away at the flesh of our civil society and spoils the greatness of our multicultural nation.
Progressives continually tell us we have blinders on when it comes to racism in American society. They’ve shoved their ideological solution of anti-racism to force us to “deconstruct” what they believe is an inherently deep-seated racist nation.
I, as a black American, am supposed to rejoice in the presence of our self-appointed saviors, but I peeked behind the veil and saw who they really are.
The post-Soviet transformation took Russia from a fledgling democracy to a corrupt autocracy.
But, since the start of the war against Ukraine, the Kremlin has taken a new turn, which amounts to a resolute top-down effort at reversing what progress has been achieved in modernizing the state system, economy and society.
The paradox of resorting to the old Soviet way of war based on the massive application of force, while having neither the human resources nor the industrial base necessary to carry it out, undercuts whatever small gains Russian forces are able to make in Donbas (Svoboda.org, June 24).
With every delivery of Western weapon systems, the Armed Forces of Ukraine take a step forward in modernization, while the Russian military falls back to unsustainable World War II patterns (Republic.ru, June 24).
We are that generation. And we have an accounting with nature’s limitations, given there is always a corrective, not a nice one, but remediation nonetheless for every excess.
There is an antidote. But it seems well beyond this generation’s capacity.
As TTPers have learned, overturning Roe v. Wade may not be the Supreme Court’s most dramatic decision this year.
Instead, its ruling on West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency could prove far more consequential. It could literally upend how our government works.
For the better.
WV v EPA asks whether important policies that impact the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected D.C. bureaucrats or by Congress. This SCOTUS could well decide that ruling by executive agency fiat is no longer acceptable.
We’re all familiar of course with the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch; but we have another whole world of sensation that is often overlooked… and it’s central to our power to change our habits – and our lives - for the better.
You’re already familiar with this “sixth sense,” and though it may still hold plenty of mystery for you, what I’m talking about is not something mystical or hypothetical. It is our felt sense.
You know it when you say things like:
Because his mind is gone; Xiden is demented now, and it’s getting worse rapidly:
Joe Biden Instructive Note Card from Staff: YOU Enter the Room, 'YOU Take YOUR Seat'
Turley on overturning Roe and its wider consequences:
The Dobbs Decision Unleashes Rage And Revisionism
The Ukraine war has shown that America is no longer capable of supplying the ammunition needed for a long war - or even for a relatively short one. Russia is even less so:
June 15, 1961. It was quite a shock to me when I was the surprise guest on Ralph Edwards’ famous television show. My “Life” at age 17? How could that be? The show’s producers were intrigued by a recent Life Magazine story of my swimming the Hellespont as did Leander in Greek mythology (December 12, 1960 issue) that also had photos of me on top of the Matterhorn and with a Jivaro headhunter.
Without my knowing, they flew my guide for the Hellespont swim, Huseyin Uluarslan, from Turkey to LA, the same for my guide on the Matterhorn, Alfons Franzen, from Switzerland, to be on the show. Most amazing of all, they got the Chief Prefect of Police for Ecuador, Jaime Duran, to pick up Tangamashi (the Jivaro who adopted me) and his brother Naita by helicopter from their Amazon encampment, then fly them from Quito to LA.
I was dumbfounded. So there we are in the photo, left to right: Ralph Edwards, Jaime Duran, Tangamashi, Naita, a very young yours truly, and Ralph Ferguson, son of medical researcher Dr. Wilburn Ferguson who translated for Tangamashi. Quite a moment for a 17 year-old boy – and no doubt for Tangamashi! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #10)
Famboun, Cameroon. This is a Ndiki Drum. It is used by the Sultan of Bamoun to call his subjects to their end-of the-year Nguon festival over which he presides. It can be heard for miles.
The carved wooden forearms and hands propped up at the drum’s end are not the original drumsticks. They are symbolic for what the real drumsticks used to be. Until the British and French put an end to the custom in the 1920s, the Ndiki drumsticks were human arms, amputated at the elbow off captured slaves. Four drummers were needed to properly pound the drum, each requiring two drumsticks: eight amputated human arms in total.
The horror of slavery in Africa was ended by Western colonialists. In its place they introduced roads, railroads, electricity, an impartial rule of law instead of law favoring one tribe over another, and other benefits of civilization. They did a lot of stupid damage to African cultures, true.
But that is vastly outweighed by getting rid of slavery – exemplified by how this drum was pounded until less than 100 years ago. If you have a child or grandchild in school with woke teachers, you might have them bring this picture to class, and explain how the benefits of Western Civilization so greatly outweighs its liabilities. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #124 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
This is Temple IV at the ancient Mayan capital of Tikal, now in northern Guatemala. It was from the top of Temple IV that the shot in the original 1977 Star Wars movie was filmed of the Millennium Falcon landing (at 44 seconds) near jungle temples (Temples II and III) at the Rebel Base on the moon of Yavin 4.
Built in 740 AD, at 230 feet it is the tallest pre-Columbian structure in all the Americas. While Tikal’s earliest buildings date to the 4th century BC, it was from 300 to 800 AD that Tikal flourished as one of the Mayan Empires most powerful kingdoms.
Then decline set in, with drought, deforestation, overpopulation, and constant warfare with rival kingdoms. With Tikal abandoned by the end of the 900s, it remained covered by rainforest jungle for over a thousand years. American archaeologists began excavations in the 1950s. Today with its major temples restored, Tikal is the most impressive example you can visit of Mayan civilization. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #118 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
The Antarctic island of South Georgia is home to a million King penguins, plus countless fur seals, gigantic elephant seals, staggering numbers of seabirds such as albatrosses, amidst a backdrop of towering mountains with massive glaciers spilling off them.
Nothing can prepare you for the incomprehensible size of the penguin rookeries here, densely packed as far as the eye can see (all those white dots on the hills behind are penguins). Nor for the size of bull elephant seals weighing up to 8,000 pounds, especially when they rise up and crash their chests against each other in mating challenges emitting deafening bellows. Nor being surrounded by a thousand fur seals unafraid of you. The density of wildlife combined with the magnificent beauty of the island is completely overwhelming.
Here also is the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken where the heroic explorer Ernest Shackleton is buried. You can only get here by expedition cruise ship. South Georgia is one of the great experiences on our planet. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #96 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
You’re looking at something historically and scientifically astonishing. It is what remains of an astronomical observatory built 600 years ago – in 1420 – by a Sultan in Central Asia who loved science and mathematics more than war and conquest.
It was in Samarkand, the most fabled oasis of the Silk Road, that Sultan Ulugh Beg built his circular observatory, three stories high of white marble. All that’s left today is part of the underground sextant that you see in the photo.
For the full story of what he achieved, with many more photos, click on The Sultan Astronomer in TTP I wrote in 2020.
This Glimpse is to whet your appetite to learn about this amazing Sultan and his scientific achievements.
It’s also to whet your appetite for joining your fellow TTPers on our Heart of Central Asia expedition this September. The story of The Sultan Astronomer is but one example of what awaits you in exploring Central Asia, an enrichment of your life beyond description. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #212 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
They did it. Six to three, Roberts included. Or rather, POTUS did it, by getting Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh on the Court – even though he gave God the credit as befits such a historical triumph of good over evil.
Let’s revel in this extraordinary victory for life over murder – and also realize the extraordinary consequences beyond it: America is now clearly on the road to getting its Constitution back, to having a government that obeys the restrictions the Constitution places upon it, rather than one that flaunts it with glee and impunity.
That’s the real reason behind all the berserk rage Dems are engaging in now. They’ve suffered a grievous blow to their Cult of Death, but worse, a perhaps mortal blow to their path to fascist power through the perversion of the founding law of our nation.
