TO THE POINT SUMMER RENDEZVOUS: AN INVITATION
To: Members & Friends of To The Point From: Dr. Jack Wheeler
I would like to cordially invite you to attend our To The Point Summer Rendezvous to be held in Colorado Springs, Colorado from Friday August 24th to Sunday August 26th.
Our Rendezvous in Las Vegas last February was such a success that no one wanted to wait an entire year for another.
This is not a conference. It is a rendezvous, a gathering of members of To The Point for the purpose of their spending time with each other. It is an opportunity for TTPers to meet and talk with me - and vice versa! - and with other TTP contributors such as Joel Wade, Jack Kelly, and Dagny D'Anconia.
In other words, this is a family affair, a gathering of the TTP Family. If you were at the Vegas Rendezvous, you know what I mean. TTPers share a common bond, a set of shared values that makes their being together intensely enjoyable.
That's the best description I can give for what you'll experience at the Summer Rendezvous: intensely enjoyable.
To make this possible is taking a lot of effort on the part of To The Point's General Manager, Miko Reyes, and a number of TTPers who have so kindly volunteered to assist him.
That's because I'm writing this from Antanananrivo (Tana for short), the capital of Madagascar. So Miko has to try and put everything together while I'm in the middle of the Indian Ocean. That's not easy.
Like the Vegas Rendezvous, this is "Dutch Treat" where everyone pays their own costs and nothing is added on. There will be range of places to stay from costly (like the Broadmoor) to not (like the Best Western). Whatever the costs are for dinners and activities, we'll all share.
We'll start with a reception and dinner Friday evening the 24th. A "Pre-Rendezvous" tour of the Air Force Academy that afternoon may be arranged.
Saturday, we'll hike and picnic in the spectacular and nearby Garden of the Gods. Then we'll gather again for another evening of dinner and friends.
After Sunday brunch, we'll head back home, our heads overloaded with new perspectives and heightened grasp of what is going on in our world - and with friendships you'll treasure.
To participate in the Summer Rendezvous, please contact Miko immediately at [email protected].
Only fifty - 50 - TTPers may attend. That's right, just 50.
I should mention that all those attending will receive a free one-year To The Point membership, or have their current membership extended one full year.
I really hope I see you at our Summer Rendezvous. Please let Miko know if you can join us.
Jack Wheeler
A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Marco Polo (1254-1324) knew where the end of the world was. He never went there but he heard about it. It was a "great red island" in the vast unknown sea far to the south of India, and it had a strange name: Madagascar. Although near Africa, folks here - known as Malagasy - are not from Africa. They came from Indonesia 2,000 years ago. For a thousand years they lived in isolation from the world. Then strangers started appearing on their northern coast calling themselves "Moslems." The Malagasy wanted no part of them or their strange and offensive religion. Persians ("Shirazis" from Shiraz) and Arabs were sailing in their dhows down the east coast of Africa enslaving and Islamizing as they went. But when they crossed the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar, they discovered people very different from Africans. Arabs had found the islands of Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Borneo, etc.) easy Islamic pickings for converts. Somehow, the converts' distant relatives weren't. This is an important mystery. Ever since they invented Islam, Arabs have forced their religion upon peoples throughout the world, most of the time with little or no resistance. The exceptions are among people who have a competing religion like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. It's very hard to think of any place without a strong competing religion already in place that resisted Islam. Madagascar is that place. That's one reason it is a light at the end of the world.
DEMOCRATS ARE OUTRAGED! THAT’S RICH…
"Scooter" Libby will serve as much time in prison for lying under oath to a federal grand jury as Bill Clinton served for lying under oath to a federal grand jury. Democrats in Congress were outraged. "As Independence Day nears, we are reminded that one of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under law," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. "This commutation completely tramples on that principle." Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said President Bush should be impeached for "crimes against the Constitution of the United States." That's rich, as in Marc Rich, the financier who fled the country to avoid prosecution for tax evasion, fraud and "trading with the enemy." On his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned Mr. Rich after his ex-wife, Denise (with whom Mr. Clinton reportedly had been sleeping) donated $1 million to the Democratic party and $10,000 to the Clintons' legal defense fund.
FREEDOM’S BIRTHDAY 2007
[This was originally in To The Point for July 4, 2004. This is the version for 2007. We at To The Point wish all of you an exceedingly happy Fourth of July.] July 4th is Freedom's Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which are great - that you take the time to feel good about America. You travel around the world and you see the remnants of history's great civilizations. You walk through the preserved wreckage of Rome's Imperial Forum or the Acropolis of Ancient Athens and you wonder -- what was it really like to be here when these civilizations were at their peak? You can do that today in Washington DC -- or your hometown. We Americans are privileged to live in one of history's supreme moments. We Americans are participants in one of history's greatest civilizations in its prime. Someday in some future epoch, history will have moved on, and there will be distant centuries between that time and the American Era. People will then look upon America as we do upon ancient Egypt or Greece, and will do so with same wonder and awe. I suggest you look upon America with that wonder and awe now.
AMERICA WILL PREVAIL
[In celebration of the Fourth of July, To The Point is pleased to provide this transcript of a lecture given by Dr. Lawrence Mead, Professor of Politics at New York University, delivered in Sydney, Australia on July 1st] To read the newspapers, one would believe US power was in steep decline. There are prophets of error, the many critics who believe US foreign policy has gone seriously wrong, especially in Iraq. And there are prophets of weakness, such as Yale historian Paul Kennedy, who wrote even before the end of the Cold War that the US had succumbed to "imperial overstretch". How much more are we overstretched today when we face crises in three or four places across the globe? I am skeptical about these arguments. The great fact is that the US has become a dominant nation. Even if the US fails in Iraq, there still is no other country that can replace the US in dealing with the world's problems. We have in fact returned to a world order similar to the late Victorian period, at the end of the 19th century. Then, as now, the world economy was globalizing and English was its lingua franca. Britain was the strongest single country and the US was just becoming a world power. Today, the US is first and Britain is second, but remarkably little else has changed. It is as if the 20th century, with its calamitous wars and ideological conflict, has faded away. The countries that challenged the Anglos - first Germany, then Russia, then Japan - have all fallen back. The US's challengers, such as China and India, are likely to fall back as well.
DENNIS THE WIZARD
This is sad tidings. When I returned from the Serengeti, I learned that on Friday, June 22, Dennis Turner, my friend of over 40 years and author of TTP's Dennis The Wizard column, passed away. Dennis had been in horrible pain and suffering for so long that his passing was likely a blessing. He never mentioned it in his columns, and how he wrote them in spite of it was heroic. Some years ago, he contracted an infection in his spine which caused a progressive deterioration of his spinal nerves. He lost the use of his legs, and then all the functions of his digestive system. Few of us can even imagine what it is to try and continue living like that. Yet Dennis did. He persevered, maintaining a wide range of interests and a dense network of friends. He never lost his intense intellectual curiosity and passion for life. His was a mind apart. Not surprising -- for he was a six-foot-two, 280-pound Mongolian Jew with an IQ of 180.
AFRICAN BLIZZARD
Maseru, Lesotho, Southern Africa. My son Jackson and I arrived here in a snow storm. It soon became a raging blizzard. Inches of snow, accidents all over the place, for most people here (they all belong to a tribe called Basotho) have never seen snow, much less know how to drive in it. An African blizzard may seem a joke, but that southern Africa is suffering through one of its coldest winters isn't. (Remember that it's winter now below the Equator.) It's just another one of the blizzard of problems that a place like Lesotho (luh-soo-too) is enduring, none of which is a laughing matter. In fact, There's no way around it, for Lesotho's fate is baked in the demographic cake. Lesotho is doomed. The real African Blizzard is going to sweep it away. What a tragedy - for it had such a heroic start in the 19th century...
MOSQUES ON THE RHINE
You disappear into the African bush for over two weeks, only to emerge back into the world to discover everything's the same. Bush is still commiserating over the dead horse of the immigration, people with 2-digit IQs are still paying attention to Paris Hilton, Palestinians are still killing each other in Gaza, Moslems are rioting around the world over some perceived insult to their religion of intolerance (in this case, the knighting of Salmon Rushdie by Queen Elizabeth), and good news from Iraq is not being reported. What really got my attention, though, was a news bulletin from Cologne, Germany.
COLOMBIAN BLOOD AND DRUGS ON DEMOCRATS’ HANDS
If you were a member of the U.S. Congress and you wanted to hand a victory to Fidel Castro, his buddy Hugo Chavez, and the international drug gangs, you could do so by voting to reject the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. And that is precisely what the Democrat leaders of Congress threaten to do. After the truly heroic achievements of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in weakening drug lords and corrupt officials, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some of her colleagues were downright rude to him during his trip to Washington last month, with their demands for more. Yet Mr. Uribe and his colleagues are under constant death threats for their efforts (Mr. Uribe's own father was assassinated by the left-wing terrorists). How many of Mrs. Pelosi's tribe do you think would have taken the physical risks and have been as effective as Mr. Uribe? Regarding corruption in Mr. Uribe's own ranks, as far as I know, no Colombian member of parliament has been caught with $90,000 of someone else's money in his freezer.
IRAQ IN SEPTEMBER
The word Iraq seems to derange the minds of almost all who contemplate it. Like other famous vexations in history - Carthage for the Romans, Germany for the French, the Irish for the English (and, of course, the English for the Irish) - Iraq induces in the current American mind the full range of mentalities except reason. Come September, not only Gen. David Petraeus, but many other designated experts, will deliver their report cards on Iraqi progress - or lack of it. Now, two months out, serious huffing and puffing is already building up inside Washington. Let me save you the bother of waiting for the September deluge of reports from the four corners of our government. Come September it will be the received wisdom of Washington that we need to figure a way to weasel out of Iraq. That is fine, if losing in Iraq doesn't matter much. But if losing in Iraq does matter a lot, then it is mad to use diagnoses of our current shortcomings as a death sentence, rather than as a guide to better treatment methods. It's like this conversation. Doctor: "You have a high fever and infection. You're going to die." Patient: "How about giving me some penicillin?" Doctor: "I don't have any." Patient: "Could you get some?" Doctor: "It would be quite a bother." Patient: "Oh, in that case you are right to let me die."