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L i k e U s ! ! !

WHAT IS CENTRAL ABOUT HUMANS?


The newspaper I read regularly carried a story on June 20th, 2007, from Cox News Service, under the byline of a Bill Hendrick, reporting on a finding at Emory University's primate center that "the local customs that define human cultures also exist in the world of chimpanzees."

The story goes on to say, "That means that humans aren't the only animals with culture, said Frans de Waal...." The evidence for this is that when a couple of chimps began to use a new method for mutual cleansing, in a while the entire group adopted the method but chimps outside the group kept to the old ways.

The first question is, is the report itself accurate-

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PUTIN’S GREAT LEAP BACKWARD


"Vladimir - I call him Vladimir", explained President George W. Bush, "you should not fear the missile defense system... the Cold War is over. Why don't you cooperate with us on the missile defense system? Why don't you participate with us?"

The answer is: because Cold War is over for some, but not for others. And because Russia does not trust the United States and feels psychologically more comfortable in confrontation with it.

When Jan Grzebski, the Polish rail worker, awoke on June 1st from being in a coma for 19 years, two things he noticed, which did not change since 1988. The name of the US President is still George Bush, and Russia is still talking Cold War.

It feels sometimes like Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin did not exist.

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WE’RE ALL CRIMINALS NOW

I’m writing this from a place called Mea Culpa City. It’s not a lot of fun being here, but it’s where I have to live until I finish this essay. It turns out that I have wronged a friend. The silver - well, pewter - lining is that in attempting to rectify it I learned how easy it has become for the Federales to turn any of us into criminals.

The Cato Institute in Washington has just published a book on this:
Go Directly To Jail: The Criminalization Of Almost Everything. It documents how the federal government now views its jurisdiction as limitless - which means almost anything you or your business does can be a federal crime. The Cato book paints a frightening picture - but the truth is, it’s much worse.

It’s worse because of the depraved collusion between politicians and their buddies in the media to demonize and criminalize someone on the front pages of newspapers. This of course is not exclusive to Washington. States are on to the game as well. New York’s Elliot Spitzer has turned the State Attorney General’s office into his private Gestapo. But he’s New York’s problem. Federal agents and federal politicians are a problem for all of us.

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THE FORGOTTEN LESSONS OF THE SIX DAY WAR


On June 5th the world will commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Israel's victory in the Six Day War. This was one of the most convincing conventional military accomplishments of the twentieth century, one which removed the threat of annihilation from the Jewish State for the following four decades.

During May 1967, Egypt's dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser and the leaders of Syria, apparently misled by carefully fed Soviet disinformation, mobilized their armies, and kicked out UN peacekeepers from Sinai. Nasser proclaimed that "the Jews would be thrown into the Mediterranean." "Our basic objective will be to destroy Israel," he vowed on May 26.

Against all odds, tiny Israel triumphed over the combined armed forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

The key to Israel's victory was recognition that the survival of the nation was at stake.  This led to full mobilization of the state and the people; and creation of a government of national unity. Both the people and its leaders had no choice but to become heroes overnight.

Israel's continued existence depends on its leaders remembering and not forgetting the lessons of the Six Day War.

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SAVING SHANGRI-LA




This is Takshang, the Tiger’s Nest Monastery in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. It is as close a place to the Shangri-La of James Hilton’s 1933 classic “Lost Horizon” as you’ll find on earth today. I took this picture in 1990.

About three-quarters the size of West Virginia, wedged between China (more accurately: Chinese-Occupied Tibet) and India, the crest of the Himalayas (highest peak: Kula Kangri at 24,773ft.) forming the northern border and steamy jungles the south, Bhutan is known as the Land of the Thunder Dragon. It is almost a mystical experience to drive and trek across Bhutan, to visit its temples and dzongs (castles), to come over the top of a pass and see a village in the valley below surrounded by brilliant green rice fields, the homes with bright red roofs as they are covered with peppers drying in the sun.

Bhutanese culture is a unique mix of the ancient Himalyan animism called Bon and Tibetan Lama Buddhism. All Bhutanese men wear a distinctive robe called a gho, while women wear a female version called a kira. There are few people on our planet more peaceful and gentle than the Bhutanese. They love their country and wish above all for it and their culture to be preserved. They are thus at a loss to comprehend a vicious international campaign to destroy it.

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ILLEGALS AND IMMORALITY


A guest on Neil Cavuto's Fox News TV program this week, claiming that every illegal immigrant will eventually impose a $2.2 million burden on US taxpayers, said that it is "immoral to make American taxpayers shoulder this burden." 

True or not, it is important to understand that the immorality here is not putting illegal immigrants on the welfare rolls or transferring to them costly services at the expense of American citizens.

The immorality lies in the welfare state itself, in the government's policy of coercive wealth redistribution.

In fact, if there were any moral justification to such wealth redistribution, having the wealth go to illegal immigrants could be considered far more morally defensible than having it go to American citizens or legal immigrants. 

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A CHRISTMAS LETTER TO ANTI-CHRISTIANS

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 soul.

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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!"

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RESUSCITATING RUSSIA

The Soviet Union was merely the Imperialist Empire of Czarist Russia with Marxism-Leninism as its religious justification. This is why the hope that Russians would embrace freedom and democracy once liberated from Communist tyranny in 1991 was delusional. Their egos, so dependent upon being imperialist masters, collapsed once their colonial subjects were free to stop taking their orders.

Yet, the frustrating yet, is that anyone who has spent time with individual Russians knows what wonderful people they can be, what good friends they can be. They can be an enigma wrapped in a riddle, as Churchill observed, but they are nonetheless a Western people, a Christian people belonging to Western Civilization. And for that reason, as well as for our own national security, we must now come to their rescue.

If we don’t, China will take over most of what is now Russia. A Chinese Siberia will face us across the Bering Straits.

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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.

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WE’RE ALL WINNERS

Just like Al Gore, John Kerry’s most human moment during his entire campaign for the presidency was his concession speech. As I sat crying in relief that it was over and we had won, I heard him say something I will never forget.

He said that no matter who you voted for, we’re all winners:

In an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans. And that is the greatest privilege and the most remarkable good fortune that can come to us on earth.

That is one of the most moving statements I have ever heard from any politician, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, right or left.

All my life, I have always thought it was the coolest thing on planet Earth to be an American. I have been to something close to 200 countries and political jurisdictions in the world, and whenever someone asks me, “Where are you from?” it is a special thrill to be able to answer, “America - I’m an American.”

Thanksgiving is the unique American holiday. We share Christmas and Easter with every other Christian nation. Most every country celebrates its Independence Day, and the birthdays of their founding heroes. Thanksgiving is ours, where we give our deepest thanks to Providence for the extraordinary gift of America to mankind.

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CHESHIRE-CHEESE-EATING BRITISH SURRENDER MONKEYS


It was a fitting image of the 14 wimps and a sob sister arriving back in the United Kingdom yesterday: skulking away with pink goody bags in hand.

The color was no accident - although yellow would've been more appropriate.

The released hostages weren't allowed to make any more statements. Apparently, the Blair government feared they'd repeat their lavish praise of their Iranian captors.

Look, we're all glad they're home safe, if not necessarily sound. But why on earth is Britain, the land of the legendary stiff upper lip, celebrating cowards who clambered over one another to shame their country?

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ON A ROLL FROM KABUL TO BAGHDAD

I had a chance to visit with Porter Goss after he returned from Afghanistan last week. He was there to make personally sure everything was solidly OK for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to attend Karzai’s inaugural in Kabul.

He got the biggest kick when I told him there’s a name in town for what he’s doing to the CIA: Gossification. I got a big thumbs up when I said, “Now we have to make sure Condi gossifies the State Department.”

Then he gave his assessment of how we’re doing in Afghanistan: “Jack, I’m telling you, the place is humming, it’s sizzling. People have so much energy, they are so excited about their future. We have a fantastic success story in the making here, a tremendous victory for America and for the Afghan people. Funny how you never hear about it in the media, huh?”

Yes, big surprise to the both of us. All we hear about is the latest disasters in Iraq, and nothing about Afghanistan any more - because we’re winning.

Porter easily read my mind. “You know, Jack, it’s going to be the same in Iraq. We’re winning - and the media can’t stand it that we’re on a roll from Kabul to Baghdad.”

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THE LIBERAL GHETTO OF HATE


Last week my former boss, Newt Gingrich, threw a much-needed conceptual bomb into the jejune public dialogue of presidential aspirants. Amid the platitudes, banalities and evasions that constitute pre-presidential debate these days, Newt argued (in a speech last weekend) that bilingual education only encourages students to be linguistically "living in a ghetto."

Predictably, the PC riot squad screeched into the media to suppress such clarity of language. Peter Zamora, co-chairman of the Hispanic Education Coalition, intoned: "The tone of his comments were [sic] very hateful."

Someone needs to tell Mr. Zamora that it is hateful of ideological "civil-rights" activists to try to intimidate any politician who would dare to liberate kids from the linguistic ghetto that serves to preserve their political power.

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FIXING THE BLUE STATES

We’ve all had a good laugh at the moonbat barking of Blue State Liberals about seceding from Red State America. To keep the fun going, let’s flip the secession meme around and talk about red counties seceding from the blue states in which they are politically imprisoned. For it turns out that part of one state can secede from that state and be annexed by another.

Think of what this could portend. Red counties in blue states could tell their neighbor blue counties they don’t have to put up with bible-thumping racist redneck homophobe ignoramuses too dense not to understand that liberals are a superior form of human evolution with the moral authority to demand blind obedience. California, Oregon, and Washington would be coastal strips, with the rest of these states happily in low-tax Nevada or Idaho. Or the other way around, maybe Chicago could bail from Illinois and leave the rest of the state alone, just as New York City could with New York.

At the very least, such possibilities could sober up Blue Staters regarding silly secessionist threats. What should sober them up further is how the Republicans are going to shrink the number of blue counties.

Here’s the post-election analysis of Karl Rove’s Inner Circle:

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