The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Thursday, April 2, 2026
The difference was made gin-clear by a recent editorial in the International Herald Tribune, wholly owned by the New York Times, sneeringly entitled The Nanny State?
The difference is this: A bank robber doesn't claim he has a moral right to steal your money. A bank robber doesn't claim his thievery makes him the moral superior over his victims.
Liberals do - which makes them far more immoral than common criminals, thugs and thieves.
According to the IHT, "The United States has long had one of the most meager tax takes in the industrial world [at least they call it ‘take,' as in ‘theft']. America's social spending [i.e., welfare programs] is almost the stingiest among industrial nations."
Such meager and stingy theft is condemned as a "moral outrage," a contemptibly "tightfisted" approach to "public needs."
It is liberal thievery that is the moral outrage - and we have a Congress in Washington run by such thieves because too few conservatives have the courage to denounce the criminality.
At his press conference last week, President Bush - echoing the public assessments from his military underlings in Iraq - gave a clear picture of the war. Remarkably, not a single political leader or pundit saw fit to notice the dimensions of the war he described:
The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that's unfolding across the region...The same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing sophisticated IEDs to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers.
The same Hezbollah terrorists who are waging war against the forces of democracy in Lebanon are training extremists to do the same against coalition forces in Iraq.
The same Syrian regime that provides support and sanctuary for Islamic jihad and Hamas has refused to close its airport in Damascus to suicide bombers headed to Iraq.
...the war against extremists and radicals is not only evident in Iraq, but it's evident in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.
A friend of mine was recently tasked to provide the entertainment for a conference, and on a tiny budget. He first thought of karaoke.
Karaoke bars are big business, and people love to ham it up in front of the screen. You don't have to come up with lame or insulting wisecracks to get people into a fun mood, and there are lots of party games you can come up with using the music and lyrics.
That's what my friend wanted for his party: people singing and dancing, having a grand old time - with him as the star for having come up with it.
The only problem - the budget! Until now, my friend would've had to go out and hire someone with an elaborate and expensive karaoke set-up to come out and run it - putting the idea of a karaoke party out of reach for him, as it is for so many others.
Until now, that is.
Transparency International recently released their Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2005. It may surprise some that China is seriously corrupt with a score of 3.2. It scored worse than Egypt, Laos and Syria.
This brings to light a real dilemma. China is one of the most seriously corrupt countries in the world. To get our trade deficit under control we must quickly sell more American products to China. However, American exporters must deal each day with corrupt government agencies and practices.
At the same time, American businessmen must contend with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). This makes it against U.S. law to give any sort of bribe, kick back or “facilitation fee” to a government official of a foreign country to obtain business or gain some advantage.
With the extent of corruption in China, it is impossible to avoid this reality to win contracts or to run China-based subsidiaries that sell U.S. made products. To make significant progress for American exports to China, it will be impossible to stay within U.S. law. Meanwhile, more American jobs are lost each day while our manufacturing industry is being hollowed out by the unfair and corrupt practices of one of our most important trading partners
Ten or fifteen years ago, when you looked at the cars on the road, how many Hyundais did you see? How many Hyundais do you see now, driven by buyers who wanted a "good enough" car for a reasonable price?
Back in my April 4/14 Half-Full Report, I referred to a nascent "Hyundaization" (hun-dye-zay-shun) trend in the global defense market. Even now, few people have noticed this.
Hyundaization has been masked by spending from high-end customers who only want top-end gear, and by global fire sales of used Western equipment. As an example of those fire sales, many of the Jordanian F-16s bombing ISIS right now recently belonged to the Dutch and Belgian air forces.
After a decade of those sales, however, there isn't much second-hand equipment left to sell. That's opening the door to new buys from new sources. A combination of technology trends, industrial policies, and a multi-polar global shift will give this trend staying power.
This is a sea change on multiple levels. "Hyundaization" is going to have profound diplomatic, military, and industrial consequences. Let's talk about them.
Boo!
Hong Kong. Why is Hong Kong succeeding while New York City is receding?
They are both world-class cities with about the same per-capita income and great natural harbors. New York is about 15 percent larger in population, while Hong Kong is about one-third larger in area (but unbuildable because of the steep terrain). Both have large immigrant populations who are seeking better lives.
Last week, I explained how much of Hong Kong's success was a result of it having the freest economy in the world, with low levels of government spending, low tax rates, a minimum of government regulation and the rule of law. There is more.
Hong Kong, like Singapore, South Korea, Chile and Switzerland are aspirational societies, rather than societies consumed with envy, like France. Work, saving and investment are not punished in aspirational societies, and there tend to be less social conflict and a higher level of civility.
(It was U.S. venture capitalist Terry Anker who first used the term "aspirational society" to describe Hong Kong during our meetings in this glorious city this past week. It is a more inclusive term than "opportunity society" that Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp frequently used to describe their vision for the United States.)
The United States used to be an aspirational society, but has increasingly become an envious society.
Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began last Thursday (7/17) night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem. It cannot be allowed to fester or grow anymore.
As an example, Hamas tunnels have been found with shafts rigged with bombs located directly under Israeli kindergartens.
As a member of the Moslem Brotherhood, Hamas is not a stand-alone terror group. It is part of a much larger web of Islamic jihadist terror groups including al-Qaida and its affiliates as well as the Shi'ite Hezbollah. Like Hamas, all of these threaten several major Sunni Arab states.
Due to their recognition of the threat Hamas and its allies pose to the survivability of their regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken the unprecedented step of supporting Israel's efforts to defeat Hamas.
Israel is making good progress. But it hasn't completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting. Recognizing this, Israel's newfound Moslem allies - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE - have not been pushing for a cease-fire.
In contrast, the Obama administration is coming to Hamas' rescue by insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately.
TTPers are readers and thinkers. A number of you have asked what I've been reading lately. I thought that now would be a good time, as we start a new year, to answer. It's also a chance to take a break from the general insanity of current events.
What follows is not advice for you. Your interests are specifically yours, and none of these books may ring your bell. But they all rang mine to various degrees. There are too many to provide reviews. The link for each is to the listing on Amazon containing a multitude of comments and quotes.
The list here is the books I read in 2012. Most of them, I bought the Kindle version and read them on my iPad. I really recommend this.
Yet I also re-read favorites ensconced in my library - such as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (the link is to the Kindle edition, at $4.27). Also on Kindle now is Ludwig von Mises' compact classic, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. This should be required reading for every conservative.
About once a decade I complete Will Durant's entire The Story of Civilization. This takes some time, as it's eleven volumes, 10,000 pages, and four million words. I've had the set in my library for 40 years, and last year I finished it once again. Amazon has The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set) in hardcover for $439 - but the Kindle edition is only $12.74 per volume.
OK, so here we go - one year's reading. I think you'll find at least some things here that will intrigue you. And now, please tell us what your favorite books are on the Forum!
Last week I asked you to define three things: Something you want to stop doing; something you want to start doing - or do more of; and a longer term goal that you want to reach.
Today I want to give you the beginning of a training regimen that will strengthen your ability to achieve those three things (also largely courtesy of Kelly McGonigal from her book, The Willpower Instinct).
Whenever you strengthen your capacity for willpower in a specific way, you strengthen your capacity for willpower in general. Since there are three different applications of willpower, reflected in three different parts of your brain, let's practice strengthening each of these.
Any denizen of the TTP User Forum will instantly recognize "Cephren," the all-time champion poster. And any participant in previous TTP Rendezvous, such as last month's in Boston, knows Cephren is Chris Baldi, a hail-and-hearty fellow you'd have to try very hard to dislike.
At Boston, everyone agreed that the Winter Rendezvous had to be someplace where there isn't winter, someplace warm, and that it should be out West. Last February it was in the East, in Sarasota.
We had a wonderful time in Sarasota, and Chris promises us all an equally good time where he lives. Thus we hereby announce the Southwest Winter Rendezvous in Phoenix, Arizona, January 23-25.
In 1966, The Beatles wrote Hillary Clinton's theme song.
The quote that most perfectly encapsulates her philosophy of government was delivered on June 28, 2004 at a San Francisco fundraiser for fellow senator Barbara Boxer in which she announced to her wealthy listeners and all Americans in general:
We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
The underlying philosophy of the Democrat Party as personified by the PIAPS is fascist thuggery posing as humanitarian compassion. Witness her project of giving $5000 to every child born in the US (legal or illegal). "Giving" is not the right term of course - it would only be if it were her money.
What she is in fact proposing is to steal at the point of a gun money from people who have earned it and hand it over to those who have not. That's called theft, not "giving" or "being compassionate."
Thus Hillary's Theme Song, the first track on the 1966 Revolver album. The Beatles had Hillary and her fascist ilk in mind when they wrote it.
It's called The Taxman:
It's hard to think of a more dreadful action against the Almighty than the orgy around the golden calf, while Moses received the tablets of the Law. No wonder, then, that Moses ordered the Levites to draw their swords and kill all the idolators.
Yet, as our rabbi reminded us last Sabbath, many Jewish scholars believe the Israelites en route to the Holy Land performed an even greater sin when they believed ten of their twelve spies who said that the inhabitants of the land of Canaan were too strong, and that any effort to conquer them was doomed to failure. The other two, Joshua and Caleb, said that victory was possible.
