YOU PREDICT
In reading the profusion of predictions for 2007 so many of you were kind enough to send in this past week, what became most obvious is the individuality of To The Point members. TTPers think for themselves. Thus it has been such an enjoyable experience to read them all. I want to thank you so much for every one. I hope you'll understand that there are too many to discuss, that I have to pick and choose. I also won't quote anyone with their full name - with one exception. Bill Gregory informs me that his wife Carole, after a wee dram or two of 18 year-old single malt, predicts that Hillary Clinton will remove herself from the 2008 presidential race after discovering she has testicular cancer. So seriously, folks.... All the rest were in fact serious. Some were so pessimistic that, should they prove true, we'll need to be heavily fortified with single malt ourselves just to get through the year. Yet others are equally optimistic. Here's a compendium of what you predict for 2007.
THE AUDACITY OF APOSTASY
One of the most entertaining opportunities that will emerge in 2007 will be using Barack Obama to fight Islamofascism. He is the product of a black Moslem from Kenya, Barrack Hussein Obama, and a white atheist from Kansas, Shirley Ann Dunham, who met at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. That is why his middle name is the same as Saddam's: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His first name is taken from the Islamic term in Arabic for "blessed," baraka, used in the Koran. His father deserted the family when Barack Jr. was two and returned to Kenya. His mother then married another Moslem studying at UH, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia. He moved with his mother and stepfather to Jakarta when he was six, where he attended a Moslem medressa (religious school). That makes him a Moslem. That he denies that he ever was and is a Christian instead makes him, in Moslem eyes, also something much worse: an apostate. Apostasy in Islam is punishable by death.
A DIFFICULT YEAR
2006 is coming to an end much as it began: with war, terrorism, bloodshed and moral confusion. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia in the Horn of Africa, warfare continues between regular military establishments and irregular radical Islamist forces - which range from straight-out terrorist groups to private militias, death squads, war lords and criminal elements. On Christmas Eve the Associated Press reported from London that: "Islamic militants want to attack the Channel Tunnel between England and France during the holiday season, a British newspaper said Sunday, citing French and U.S. security sources. The Observer said the French foreign intelligence service, DGSE, warned the French government of the threat in a Dec. 19 report after a tip-off from the CIA." Of course, rumors of terrorist attacks have become the background noise of our times -- to such an extent that they are largely discounted by most of the public. Also in that background noise of civic life is the growing assertiveness of many Moslems in the West.
GRUDGING ACCEPTANCE
Con Coughlin is one of the best British journalists on the military/intelligence/national security beat, and he is privy to the thinking of top policy people and field commanders. In the London Telegraph (12/22), he reveals that both Washington and London are grudgingly coming to accept the fact that Iran is waging war against us in Afghanistan and Iraq. This reluctance was obviously peculiar to anyone who knew anything about Iran's real activities in the region. Commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan always knew that the Iranians had helped "orchestrate the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many soldiers," and are "actively supporting and providing equipment to Taliban-related groups" in Afghanistan. It's quite a change, and a welcome one, although there was never any excuse for the willful and deliberate refusal to see what Iran has been up to since 2001.
THE NEXT WAR FOR OIL
On Christmas day this week, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report which indicates Iranian oil production is about to plunge. Iran currently earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. Oil profits account for about 65 percent of Iranian government revenues. But Iranian oil exports could decline by half within five years, and virtually disappear within ten, said the report's author Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The effect on Iran would be catastrophic. Thanks to mismanagement by the mullahs, and corruption on a scale so vast as to make even an Iraqi blush, Iran's economy is already a basket case. Here's an example: Iran, one of the world's largest oil producers, has to import 35% of its gasoline. The fools haven't built new refineries and can't operate efficiently the ones they have. So they have to import refined gasoline for their cars. Get ready for the next War For Oil in the Middle East.
LIBERAL VERBAL TRICKERY
In a mildly interesting exchange in The New Republic, between one of the magazine's senior editors, Jonathan Chait and Cato Institute scholar Brink Lindsay, the idea of a possible alliance between liberals (like Chait) and libertarians (like Lindsay) was recently debated. No one, I think, really believed in a serious prospect for this alliance but my own attention was piqued when Chait responded to Lindsay's suggestion that Social Security ought to be (somewhat) privatized as this could appeal to "younger liberals." (I must admit it always irritates me to call these folks "liberals" when they have no interest in human liberty whatsoever any longer!) Chait asks, "And why would we force retirees into the individual medical insurance market?" Focus on his use of the word "force."
CIVILIZATIONAL CONFIDENCE
Here's a tip for all of you younger folks in your 20s and 30s. If you think the world is strange now, wait ‘till you get older. For the older you get, the weirder the world looks. For me, one of the world's weirdest places is an airport. Specifically, being at an airport waiting to board an incredibly complex machine that will lift me and hundreds of other people thousands of feet into the air, and land us safely on the ground thousands of miles away in a few hours - a simply astounding achievement of reason and civilization - while a few minutes before I had to take off my shoes and had a tube of toothpaste confiscated because of fear of proto-hominid barbarians chanting Allahu akhbar who want to destroy such achievements. What is stone cold weird is that the civilization capable of such achievements tolerates the proto-hominids for a picosecond. So we come to what will emerge this new year of 2007 as the key fundamental issue of our day, the outcome of which will determine our future: civilizational confidence.
PREDICTING 2007
I am expecting a lot of things to happen in 2007. Things that I won't be surprised by if they do happen. 2007 will be a wonderful year for the death of dictators - Castro croaking at last, Saddam hung at last, and with any luck Hugo Chavez will get himself assassinated. Iran's Ahmadinutjob is not a dictator, as he serves at the whim of the ayatollahs. Their whim seems to be now that he is no longer useful, so we may soon be rid of him. With any luck, that will not prevent the Israelis from taking out Iran's nuclear facilities. With even more luck, the Israelis will be smart enough to accomplish this via sabotage rather than airstrikes. China should be on its best behavior for 2007 with no saber-rattling at Taiwan. The Chicoms don't want anything to spoil their coming-out party at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. However... I'm going to stop now and turn the tables. What I want is to ask you for your predictions. What do you think will happen in the world and in America in 2007?
LONE STAR AMERICA
I'm in a small town called St. Francisville in an obscure part of Louisiana. Visitors who come here stop briefly to gaze at the nicely preserved 19th century homes on its main street before hurrying off to the area's principal attractions nearby - magnificent ante-bellum plantation mansions like Rosewood, the Myrtles, or Oakley where Audubon stayed and painted many of his birds. Almost no tourists pay any attention to a flag that flies in front of the courthouse along with the stars and stripes and the state flag, nor have any idea what it symbolizes: 
It's the Bonnie Blue flag of the Republic of West Florida, the capital of which was here. In 1810, St. Francisville was the capital of an independent country. How it got to be, and what it may mean for America's future, is a story that goes from Spanish explorers to American rebels, from Napoleon to the Alamo, from the "Halls of Montezuma" of the Marine Hymn to the invasion of America by illegal aliens from Mexico. So curl up and get cozy in your favorite chair during a winter weekend evening, and let me tell you the story. It starts with a man named Hernando de Soto.
THE GIFT OF TO THE POINT
We've just made it really easy to give a friend the enlightening gift of a subscription to To The Point. There's a new option on our subscription page: a one month only non-recurring gift subscription for $9.99. Now what could you give a friend that could more open his or her eyes to the world and give them more insight upon it than this - and for less than ten bucks? It's also the way to bring a currently non-member friend to the To The Point Rendezvous in Las Vegas next month (see Rendezvous at Mandalay). Here's how it works.