WE OWE US: The Real Case For Reparations

Late last month, on January 26, a lawsuit brought by descendants of slaves against companies whom they claimed profited from slavery was dismissed in federal court.

Unfortunately for those who thought that this act of judicial sanity will put an end to the “Reparations” cause, the case was dismissed “without prejudice,” which means the plaintiffs can file an amended complaint — which they intend to do.

Thus we are due shortly for another round of racist demands from “slave descendants” that billions of dollars be extorted from American taxpayers and deposited into their beggar bowls.

There is only one way (more…)

ENDING STALINISM IN EUROPE: The Heroic Diplomacy of John McCain

The saddest place in Europe today is the last outpost of Stalinism, the former Soviet Republic of Byelorussia now known as Belarus. It was full of hope when I was there in 1989. A freedom movement known as Adradzennie — “Resistance” — had been formed,. and I met its leader, Zenon Pazniak, in Minsk.

Zenon was sure that his country, which had suffered for so long under Russian colonialsm, would at last be a free democracy. Those hope were crushed when in July 1994, Alexander Lukashenko engineered his election as president of Belarus and proceeded to create a regime of (more…)

The WMD Guinness Book Red Herring

Even in a time of an unceasing barrage of demagogic drivel from the Bush-haters, the manufactured flap over the “missing WMD” has got to set some kind of world record for red herring chutzpah.

As any long-time reader of mine knows, I have no great regard for the competence of the CIA. Its seedy alliance with the squishes at State to oppose Ahmad Chalabi has created a political morass in Iraq (see Childishness in Iraq, TTP August 7, 2003), and its unwillingness to help the democratic opposition overthrow the Mullacracy in Iran is disgraceful. It perversely backed Islamofascist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (more…)

THE COMING PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR

Ariel Sharon’s announcement on February 4, that the 7,500 Jews hunkered down amidst 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have to leave, is giving heartburn to Israel supporters like Mort Klein, head of Zionists of America.

Mort thinks Arik (Sharon’s nickname) has lost his nerve and is selling out. The reality is that Mort only sees the settler’s trees and not a sovereign Israeli forest. Sharon is a strategic genius and just as Machiavellian as ever.

What Sharon’s critics and all supporters of Israel need to understand is this: Sharon is building his Security Fence in order to precipitate (more…)

The Great Souled Man

Today is the 93rd birthday of the greatest American of the 20th century: Ronald Reagan. More than any other American of our day, he embodied the moral ideal personified by Aristotle as the man of Megalopsychia, the Great-Souled Man

The Great-Souled Man had a character of such integrity, inspiration, and achievement in the real world that his life expressed, for Aristotle, the Kalon, Moral Beauty.

Five years ago, I wrote the following tribute to this extraordinary man. It will be published in To The Point on every February 6th from now on.

THE GREATEST
A Tribute to Ronald Reagan
February (more…)

THE CURSE OF THE XERS

To go beyond all the outraged wailing and shocked gnashing of teeth over the Super Bowl’s Nipplegate last Sunday (02/01), and understand what is really going on culturally, the place to begin is with William Strauss & Neil Howe’s 1991 book, Generations: The History of America’s Future – 1584 to 2069.

Strauss & Howe explain American cultural history as a repeating cycle of four generational types:

Idealist, motivated by abstract goals and principles;

Reactive, motivated by a cynical practicality;

Civic, motivated by a community spirit and can-do optimism;

Adaptive, motivated by the desire for compromise (more…)

You Don’t Have To Win To Win

If you were to describe in one word the Democrats fantasizing they can beat Bush in November, you would say Dean is a hothead, Clark an egomaniac, Sharpton a hustler, Edwards an ambulance-chaser, Kucinch a kook, Lieberman a moderate, and Kerry…?

The word that Democrats want to apply to Kerry is “electable.”  What does this mean?  Exactly nothing, for that’s all he is — that somehow he possesses some magical capacity to defeat GW.

The truth is that John Kerry isn’t from Massachusetts.  He’s from Oakland, California — because Gertrude Stein’s observation of Oakland applies so accurately to him: 

“The (more…)