Thinking the (Little) Unthinkable

As we are confronted by the literally diabolical violence and aggression that Islamofascism inflicts upon us every day and every night--bombings, beheadings, kidnappings, hijackings, assassinations, robberies, extortions, etc.-- it's so tempting to react with a maximum response. Particularly as we witness the incredible ravings of the Iranian president, and perhaps much more troubling, the pathetic "Free World" responses to him. There is no doubt that the bulk of the European countries believe it is MUCH more important to prove that George W. Bush is a misguided, failed cowboy than it is to stop Iran from launching the 2d Holocaust against the Jews in 65 years, not to mention seizing control of the Persian Gulf.

Bush is pursuing a difficult, risky, and slow strategy: build up a free Iraq, bristling with US bases and intelligence posts, and Iran will be forced to abandon its plans. Surrounded by Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran will be indefensible to about anything the US wants to do to it. But if the US can be chased out of Iraq, then Iran's position will be enormously strengthened, rather similar to Hitler's position once he seized the Sudetenland.

What if Bush's strategy is simply, maybe unavoidably, working too slowly to be completed before Americans choose some "cut-and-runner" as President? That is what a lot of intelligent people are sensing may be in the cards. In that case, don't we need to think the "unthinkable?" Given the plans and capabilities of our enemies, isn't some kind of multi-targeted Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden thermo-nuclear attack on them called for?

That would certainly be the BIG Unthinkable. But perhaps we need to consider a much smaller Unthinkable. Rather than targeting the cities of Iran, or even its military installations, why not obliterate Iran's oil production? Simply pulverize all of its petroleum infrastructure with conventional, redundant strikes?

In one stroke, the Iranian government would lose approximately 1.5 billion dollars a week--currently a huge windfall for a third world theocracy governing 70 million people. That money would no longer be available for Iran's nuclear program, or for its little-noticed but highly important conventional military upgrade. As the weeks and months tick by and Iran's military degrades, it would likely panic and lash out in a hurried and ineffective way, making it easier for us to neutralize them, and thus push the regime faster into a political death spiral.

The Euro-cowards would suddenly lose their real motivation for coddling Tehran--the fear that its oil production would be lost (once that production truly is lost, then there is nothing left to fear). The Tehran-leaning politicians in Iraq, who lean that way either sincerely or from fear of assassination, will see the Eternal Persian Next Door suddenly bloodied, impoverished, and stunned. That can only improve their calculations as to whether to continue to cooperate with the US or not.

There is no doubt such an attack would be a shock to the world's oil and financial markets, but it pales next to the shock that would come from a nuclear attack (from either the US or Israel) on Iran, or from an Iranian anschluss with southern Iraq, or from a suicidal US withdrawal from a splitting Iraq. For that matter, it pales next to the shocks the markets have suffered since Iran's lunatic President came to power last year, or those from Hurrican Katrina. Yet somehow we all survived those shocks, the stock markets and job numbers are way up and inflation is low.

This table shows the current world oil production, country-by-country:



(Source: http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STATISTICS_DETAIL.asp?Statfile=_worldoilproduction )


As we can see, the Islamofascist Republic of Iran produces 4.4% of the total, a significant amount, but hardly an amount that is essential for the world's economies to avoid grinding to a halt. If a US President carefully prepares for such a strike, he can ensure that the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve will be topped off appropriately, and then release it so as to lessen the shock.

Perhaps most appealing about this plan is it turns on its head the Islamofascist mythology that the US/West is willing to sacrifice the lives or freedom of untold millions of Muslims on a pyre of burning petroleum. (No-one has yet detailed the measurable oil benefits we received by rescuing Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, or other Muslim states not called Kuwait). This plan explicitly minimizes any human casualties--indeed, there would appear to be the risk of a few hundred at most-- while accepting an economic cost for ourselves.

We hear a lot of talk from certain experts on the MidEast that many Gulf potentates are terrified: events have placed Iran and its Shi'a cousins in Iraq, Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Saudia's Eastern Province in a position to surround and intimidate, if not conquer, the Sunni regimes around the Arabian heartland of Islam. If this is true, then a smashing strike of Iran's oil facilities would have both the benefit of reassuring these frightened sheikhs that America has not lost its will to counter Islamofascist (and "Shi'a enemy") Iran, and a built-in insurance policy that these regimes would increase their own oil production so as to mitigate the economic and political cost to the US President who orders the strike.

If the "frightened Gulf Sunnis" theory is unfounded, then the strike will at least have the salutory effect of demonstrating that post 9/11, we are truly in a New Era. For decades, the policy of any major country towards the Persian Gulf has always been focused on oil. Recall that Iran and Iraq fought a full-scale war from 1980-88, but judicious diplomacy and the US Navy ensured that oil shipments were barely effected, and the real price of oil plummeted during the war. After the US liberated Iraq, many critics seized upon the fact that the US had made it a priority to secure and preserve Iraq's oilfields--a self-evident objective considering the long-term plan to rebuild Iraq-- to argue that the operation's real goal was precisely to seize those oil fields, as laid out in the Bush/Texas/Cheney/ Halliburton/Big Oil World Hegemony MasterPlan. This conpiracy theory was preposterous, but it has fed into a general perception that the US has NOT changed its focus from securing oil supplies: if the War on Terror conflicts with Secure Oil Supplies, then we'll just have to eat a little terror.

After 9/11, there has been an explicit societal and political demand that our concern for the oil flow must have a limit, that smashing and choking off terror must take top priority. So far we haven't really been forced to choose between oil (short term) and security, but that day is coming, without a doubt. What would we do if/when a Bin Ladenite faction seizes Saudia and its oil facilities? Business as usual?

By destroying Iran's petroleum potential today, we will send a message that we are serious about fighting Islamofascism, to the point of absorbing economic pain in order to inflict much greater and more effectual pain upon them. And we will both stun and surprise our enemies, who have always planned under the operational assumption that, because they have oil, and the West needs oil, they will always have plenty of money to underwrite their bloody mayhem. The sight of US bombers making repeated runs as they incinerate the refineries at Bandar Abbas will go a long way towards shaking this smug assumption.

RESCUING GEN. PINOCHET FROM THE MEMORY-HOLE

THANK YOU, PROF. GEORGE REISMAN, for writing 100 times better than I had hoped to, about the career and meaning of the late Gen. Augosto Pinochet, former President of Chile. Gen. Pinochet's death on Dec. 10 was covered by the MSM as if he was some escaped Nazi war-criminal who evaded justice, rather than a modern Cincinnatus who stood up to save millions of his countrymen from slavery, torture, and death. He held power for 15 years, then offered his countrymen a referendum on whether he should stay in power or resign. He got 45% of the vote--how many elected Western leaders would get 45% if they had been in power for 15 years?--AND THEN QUIT. His country went from an economic basketcase at the time he moved to arrest Castro-puppet Salvador Allende in 1973, to the best economy in Latin America by a country-mile, by the early 80's. And it has STAYED strong since he left, attesting to the wisdom of his policies.

Before I turn it over to Prof. Reisman, let me say: Had Augosto Pinochet been a socialist or communist military leader, and done THE EXACT SAME THINGS he actually did, and got THE EXACT SAME RESULTS he actually got, by now the United Nations would be awarding an annual "Augosto Pinochet Prize for National Heroism," and the MSM would treat each annual winner as an icon of humanity.

Prof. Reisman, take it away:

Saturday, December 16, 2006
General Augusto Pinochet Is Dead

On Sunday, December 10, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile died, at the age of 91. General Pinochet deserves to be remembered for having rescued his country from becoming the second Soviet satellite in the Western hemisphere, after Castro’s Cuba, and, like the Soviet Union, and Cuba under Castro, a totalitarian dictatorship.

The General is denounced again and again for the death or disappearance of over 3,000 Chilean citizens and the alleged torture of thousands more. It may well be that some substantial number of innocent Chilean citizens did die or disappear or otherwise suffered brutal treatment as the result of his actions. But in a struggle to avoid the establishment of a Communist dictatorship, it is undoubtedly true that many or most of those who died or suffered were preparing to inflict a far greater number of deaths and a vastly larger scale of suffering on their fellow citizens.

Their deaths and suffering should certainly not be mourned, any more than the deaths of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, and their helpers should be mourned. Had there been a General Pinochet in Russia in 1918 or Germany in 1933, the people of those countries and of the rest of the world would have been incomparably better off, precisely by virtue of the death, disappearance, and attendant suffering of vast numbers of Communists and Nazis. Life and liberty are positively helped by the death and disappearance of such mortal enemies. Their absence from the scene means the absence of such things as concentration camps, and is thus ardently to be desired.

As for the innocent victims in Chile, their fate should overwhelmingly be laid at the door of the Communist plotters of totalitarian dictatorship. People have an absolute right to rise up and defend their lives, liberty, and property against a Communist takeover. In the process, they cannot be expected to make the distinctions present in a judicial process. They must act quickly and decisively to remove what threatens them. That is the nature of war. The fate of innocent bystanders, largely those who cannot be readily distinguished from the enemy, is the responsibility of the Communists. Had they not attempted to impose their totalitarian dictatorship, there would not have been any need to use force and violence to prevent them, and thus the innocent would not have suffered.

Contrary to the attitude of so many of today’s intellectuals, Communists do not have a right to murder tens of millions of innocent people and then to complain when their intended victims prevent their takeover and in the process kill some of them.

General Pinochet was undoubtedly no angel. No soldier can be. But he certainly was also no devil. In fact, if any comparison applies, it may well be one drawn from antiquity, namely, that of Cincinnatus, who saved the Roman Republic by temporarily becoming its dictator. Like Cincinnatus, General Pinochet voluntarily relinquished his dictatorship. He did so after both preventing a Communist takeover and imposing major pro-free-market reforms, inspired largely by Milton Friedman (who in large part was himself inspired by Ludwig von Mises). The effect of these reforms was to make Chile's the most prosperous and rapidly progressing economy in Latin America, Thereafter, in the words of his New York Times’—largely hostile—obituary, he used his remaining power to “set limits, for example, on economic policy debates with frequent warnings that he would not tolerate a return to statist measures.”

General Pinochet was thus one of the most extraordinary dictators in history, a dictator who stood for major limits on the power of the state, who imposed such limits, and who sought to maintain such limits after voluntarily giving up his dictatorship.

When General Pinochet stepped down, he did so with a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for his actions while in power. However, the present and previous regime in Chile violated this agreement and sought to ensnare the General in a web of legal actions and law suits, making the last years of his life a period of turmoil. This was a clear violation of contract, comparable to the seizure of property in violation of contract. Not surprisingly the regimes in question were avowedly socialist. As a result of their breach, it is now considerably less likely that the world will soon see any other dictator voluntarily relinquish his power. The Chilean socialists will have taught him that to be secure, he must remain in power until he dies.

*****

Dictatorship, like war, is always an evil. Like war, it can be justified only when it is necessary to prevent a far greater evil, namely, as in this case, the imposition of the far more comprehensive and severe, permanent totalitarian dictatorship of the Communists.

Despite the fact that General Pinochet was able to use his powers as dictator to enact major pro-free-market reforms, dictatorship should never be seen as justified merely as a means of instituting such reforms, however necessary and desirable they may be. Dictatorship is the most dangerous of political institutions and easily produces catastrophic results. This is because a dictator is not restrained by any need for public discussion and debate and thus can easily leap headlong into disasters that would have been avoided had there been the freedom to criticize his proposed actions and to oppose them. And even when his policies may be right, the fact that they are imposed in defiance of public opinion operates greatly to add to their unpopularity and thus to make permanent change all the more difficult.

On the basis of such considerations, when asked many years ago what he would do if he were appointed dictator, von Mises replied, “I would resign.”


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. George Reisman, who's website is www.capitalism.net, is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

http://georgereisman.com/blog/2006/12/general-augusto-pinochet-is-dead.html

STRAIGHT FROM THE HEROES' MOUTHS

Wow, 2 superb articles from Bill Roggio at the Fourth Rail today--you gotta see 'em!

And Capt. Coulson, what more can you say about him? THE BEST!

www.billroggio.com

WITH WOMEN LIKE THIS ON OUR SIDE, ALL IS **NOT** LOST

Just learned of an excellent blog by some people with the real WILL-TO-WIN...Here is the first of what I'm sure will be many links to "Jewish Russian Telegraph":

December 17, 2006
Tatiana Menaker: Russian Jews, American Jews, and Traifn Bleet

From JRT: Walter, dear friend, this is for you. Great chance to educate yourself in a variety of cultures. You can learn about Russians, Russian Jews, and even, indirectly, about Muslims. Perhaps not all cultures are the same, and perhaps, there should be alternatives to nice quiet talks.

Tatiana Menaker:

When I arrived to the Unites States twenty years ago, one thing befuddled me the most. How Americans with all their mighty Central Intelligence, FBI, think tanks, scientific centers, dozens of universities’ Russian departments and thousands of professors studying the Soviet Union could stay so ignorant about Russians, their national mentality, especially considering that the Soviet Union at the moment was the main military adversary of the United States.

The chief mistake in their approach was that they treated Russians as Americans except for living with less perfect outdoor plumbing and in a different geographical zone and climate. So Americans, while calculating their international moves, always contemplated what they would do in the similar situation.

Wrong! While in 1985 in majority of American cities people kept houses open and sometimes, while shopping, even leaving car keys in the ignitions for hours, in Russia shoes would get stolen if left unattended for 20 minutes. Americans were totally incomprehensive of the general cheapness of human life in the Soviet Union and didn’t realize that a huge part of the Soviet population, “kolhozniks” (the collective farm workers) were virtually the slaves of the state until the collapse of the Soviet Union. They had no passports, no rights move out of the “kokhoz” of their birthplace or to choose the place of work or. Instead of money they were paid in “labor days” which translated into food supplies, amount of which they couldn’t negotiate. What else is slavery if not forced labor, with no money paid and with no freedom to leave?

Even with tremendous army of Russian experts, Americans barely knew the life of miniscule Soviet elite, a tiny dissident circle, and the Soviet government apparatus. The gap between American knowledge of Soviet reality and reality itself could be measured in millions of miles.

Now imagine the huge gap between reality of Arab Muslim life and American knowledge of it, when even in times of “hot” war, there is a shortage of Arabic language specialists.

This is why Walter Ruby’s statement that “Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians are all human beings and as human beings have many of the same desires and hopes, for peace, security, success and prosperity” is so laughable.

Fortunately for him, Mr. Ruby doesn’t have an experience of living among people whom my grandmother called in Yiddish “Traifn bleet” (Unkosher Blood.) She saw drunk “Black Hundreds’” pogromschiks who hammered nails in the eyes of Jewish infants in 1903. Unfortunately for us, Russian Jews, we lived among such people. We lived among people, whose parents during Nazi occupation volunteered to murder helpless Jewish elders, women and children with such passion and lust that Germans couldn’t come close to compete with them. We lived among people who, would kill not because you are just a dirty Jew, but for the plain pleasure to kill.

This is the main difference in mentality of American and Russian Jews. American Jews had the luxury to live in the country where general population, raised and educated on the Bible for the last 300 hundred years, lived by the Bible. We lived among the population of illiterate slaves in a country where Christianity was not really preached. The first words, they learned to read, were the words of socialist propaganda a.k.a. hatred toward “the rich.” With enthusiasm they succumbed to Pagan socialism, with millions lost to human sacrifice.

Mr. Ruby’s statement just shows how gullible majority of American Jews are regarding “Palestinian desire for peace.” Asked what they want to do when they grow up, Palestinian kids answer ”Kill the Jews!” They don’t know what to do with peace. They are raised to kill Jews. Did Mr. Ruby see the video as peaceful crowd of Palestinian Arabs danced holding the intestines of two Israeli reservists whom they lynched in Gaza? I doubt that Jews are capable of tearing of their enemies’ human flesh and dancing with it, leaking dripping blood.

I spent four years looking in the eye of a Palestinian “peaceniks” screaming, “Kill the Jews!” and “Hitler didn’t finish the job!” at anti-Israel rallies in San Francisco State University. Out of a hundred Palestinian Arabs, given chance to murder hundred Jews with impunity, ninety eight would do it immediately. The remaining two would even pay with their own lives for such a pleasure. I bet that with Jews given chance to kill Arabs, the count will be different.

I was raised and lived until the age of 20 in the dirty communal apartment in Leningrad where eight families fought for a place in the kitchen, waited in line for the only toilet, and where people were forced to live, deprived of any privacy, with disgusting strangers as with close relatives, and watched those strangers’ lives. It was the best life lesson I ever had.

A few of my girlfriends, who had the luxury of living in apartments of their own, never learned how low human beings could fall. They never saw husbands beating their wives’ heads against the tiled stoves and hot radiators, they never saw men having sex with their neighbors’ wives while husbands slept dead drunk, they never saw families where people were stealing from each other, informing on each other to the police and sending each other to prison, and 20 year olds drowning in bathtubs from too much vodka.

My delusional girlfriends expected people to be good to them and to each other as their own loving mothers and grandmas. They were as delusional about people as Mr. Ruby and majority of American Jews are delusional about Palestinians and Muslims. They never lived among barbarians and never dealt with their cruelty. Russian Jews did. And we know that barbarians respect nothing besides force and cruelty much worse than their own.

General Pershing understood Muslims much better than gullible American Jews. He used to dip bullets before he used them against Muslim insurgents in liquid pig fat, depriving them of coveted paradise. In a few months there was no insurgency anymore. With “generals” like Walter Ruby in a few years there will be no more Israel and no Jews.

http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2006/12/tatiana_menaker_1.html

A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOREVER...

Mmmmmmm...Porterhouse...Grilled over hardwood and natural charcoal, and of course no lighter fluid...Mmmmmmm:

ADIEU, ADIEU TO THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD

All friends of freedom lost a great champion and defender today. Let us all share a moment of silence for the passing of the late great Jeane Kirkpatrick.

IRAQ: THE CENTRAL FRONT IN ISLAMOFASCISM'S WAR AGAINST US.

Pres. Bush has summarized it with elegant accuracy, although a little less precision than it calls for, when he said: "[Zarqawi] and other terrorists know that Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040524-10.html

Of course, as many have noted over the past 62 months, the "war on terror" is a euphemism for "Islamofascism's war against the world," a probably useful euphemism since it helps responsible and normal-brained Muslims to ally with us without appearing (to normal minds) to be opposing their own faith. But here in the limpid and lucid CyberWorld, we can all call a spade a spade.

The accuracy of Pres. Bush's statement is beyond challenge. First, the capture of Baghdad in April 2003 represented a kind of "Inchon landing" for the free world in this war. Baghdad is the historical jewel city of the Muslim world. It beggars belief that the serene ideologues and field-marshalls of Islamofascism ever contemplated that their efforts would result in Prez Cowboy serving Thanksgiving turkey to the cheering troops in Baghdad in Nov. 2003. It was worse than a defeat, it was an humiliation, an embarassment. How can you pretend you are conquering the world, when 19-year-old kaffirs bark orders to learned imams on the streets of Baghdad?

Second, Iraq is critical for its oil, but not the way the "no blood for oil!" lunatics think. The oil supplies and revenues of Iraq are not important to be seized by the Allies, BUT TO BE DENIED TO THE ENEMY. Pundits with the attention-span of a fruitfly have completely forgotten that, with those billions of dollars of free oil money at his disposal every year, Saddam Hussein was responsible for thousands of conspiracies, bombings, assassinations, and subversions. Had he remained, it is ludicrous to imagine that he would not have continued, but with a greater activism due to greater Russian protection and higher oil prices. Now he is gone, and Iraq's oil revenues are being directed to nothing more dangerous than villas for its officials. But should the country fall to the Enemy, then those billions--at $50/barrel it is at least $36 billion/year--will provide an enormous jolt for their weaponry, subversion, training, "religious scholarships"...Use your imagination.

Fools like John Murtha cannot imagine that the first thing the Enemy would do would very likely be to implement an effective air-defense system ("Thank you, Mother Russia!") Then what good will that "over-the-horizon" capability be?

And why do they think the quality of our intelligence for critical air-strikes will magically become infallible once we have no forces on the ground there, losing all their component radars, drones, spies and tipsters? Strike them from OKINAWA, for God's sake? Has there ever been a more pathetic argument?

Third, and perhaps most significant, Iraq is the central objective of the Islamofascist Republic of Iran, which seeks at least to take Iraq into its sphere of influence. The greatest failing of the Bush administration in Iraq has been to fail to confront Iran and its campaign of assassinations and weapons-smuggling. Under the media radar--and apparently under the nose of British forces in south Iraq--an entire cadre of independent Shi'a leaders, journalists, scholars, and businessmen has either been wiped out or terrorized into submission. This was the campaign that American journalist Steven Vincent was documenting, and for which he was murdered.

With an ally/satrap in Iraq, Iran's power will be dramatically enhanced, to the point that it will have irresistible influence within the Gulf region. It's influence far from the Gulf will also be magnified.

As I write these words, it appears that the major Dhimmicrats are backing off from their cut and run arguments of 2005-6, and may actually have some contructive contributions to make. But that should not obscure the facts that the Dhims and their Defeatist Media allies have obsessively shouted down:

1--The seizure of Iraq was a master strategic stroke that put the Enemy immediately on the defensive, and demoralized him;

2--The handover of Iraq to the Enemy will waste the master stroke, give the Enemy a huge symbolic victory by recapturing their jewel city, put the enemy in charge of the vast financial and human resources of Iraq, make Islamofascist Iran the boss of the Gulf, and necessarily delay our victory by many years.

Oh, and let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives that will be lost, either.

"EVERYTHING GOOD WAS INVENTED BY GREEKS"

A very funny movie came out a few years back, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." In it, the Greek dad is obsessed with proving to everyone that everything good on earth originated with the Greeks...Now he's got THE COMPUTER!! lol:


Updated:2006-11-29 13:18:18
Ancient Calculator Was Ahead of Its Time
By Patricia Reaney
Reuters
LONDON (Nov. 29) - An ancient astronomical calculator made at the end of the 2nd century BC was amazingly accurate and more complex than any instrument for the next 1,000 years, scientists said on Wednesday.

The Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest known device to contain an intricate set of gear wheels. It was retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901 but until now what it was used for has been a mystery.

Although the remains are fragmented in 82 brass pieces, scientists from Britain, Greece and the United States have reconstructed a model of it using high-resolution X-ray tomography. They believe their findings could force a rethink of the technological potential of the ancient Greeks.

"It could be described as the first known calculator," said Professor Mike Edmunds, a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in Wales.

"Our recent work has applied very modern techniques that we believe have now revealed what its actual functions were."

Staggeringly Sophisticated

The calculator could add, multiply, divide and subtract. It was also able to align the number of lunar months with years and display where the sun and the moon were in the zodiac.

Edmunds and his colleagues discovered it had a dial that predicted when there was a likely to be a lunar or solar eclipse. It also took into account the elliptical orbit of the moon.

"The actual astronomy is perfect for the period," Edmunds told Reuters.

"What is extraordinary about the thing is that they were able to make such a sophisticated technological device and to be able to put that into metal," he added.

The model of the calculator shows 37 gear wheels housed in a wooden case with inscriptions on the cover that related to the planetary movements.

Francois Charette, of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, said the findings, reported in the journal Nature, provide a wealth of data for future research.

"Newly deciphered inscriptions that relate to the planetary movements make it plausible that the mechanism originally also had gearings to predict the motion of the planets," he said in a commentary.

Edmunds described the instrument as unique, saying there is nothing like it in the history of astronomy. Similar complicated mechanisms were not been seen until the appearance of medieval cathedral clocks much later.

"What was not quite so apparent before was quite how beautifully designed this was," he said. "That beauty of design in this mechanical thing forces you to say 'Well gosh, if they can do that what else could they do?"'

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/ancient-calculator-was-ahead-of-its-time/n20061129130109990033

Rush Limbaugh is NOT a "Conservative."

Put aside your ideology or philosophy.

Put aside the political discussions you hear on his radio show.

What is Rush Limbaugh's driving force? A great, simple idea that not too long ago was overwhelmingly accepted in the American Consensus. An idea perhaps best exemplified by the work of a prodigiously successful author, lecturer, and clergyman, who popularized it world-wide:

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING. (by the late great Norman Vincent Peale).

Nothing more, nothing less.

How strange that this idea, which once inspired all successful Americans, and those who aspired to success (i.e., practically all of us), has now been demeaned and mocked and denigrated to the point that its most visible and vocal public advocate is written off as a hate-filled radical.

Rush does not advocate positive thinking because he is a conservative. Rush has turned to conservatism because he is a positive thinker. And modern liberalism has relentlessly assaulted and demoralized all true positive thinkers, with just a few highly baroque exceptions.

A new movie has come out, "The Pursuit of Happiness," about a homeless single Dad who turned his life around to become a millionaire businessman. Pretty unambiguous positive-thinking, "anything is possible in America" story, no?

NO!!

No, the liberal message factory puts a whole new spin on this story:

1--Since the Dad was black, it shows how white businessmen repress worthy black employees by refusing to employ them--"how cd such a self-evidently worthy man have been homeless unless it was thru racism?"

2--The success of this homeless man proves that our "system" (capitalism) fails to provide for the true worth of its citizens--if it wasn't for getting the right ticket in life's lottery, that Merill Lynch chairman could have turned out to be a panhandler with a crackpipe in his pocket. So why is one rewarded so well, while the other needs to sleep under a bridge?

There, NOW how do you feel about the Christopher Gardner story? Still inspired? Or even angrier at Amerika than you were before?

The problem the Left has is that humans instinctively rebel against despair and hopelessness. Not only is positive-thinking empirically effective, it is emotionally satisfying.

Which is why a self-made positive thinker like Rush Limbaugh has 20 million listeners, while a relentlessly hyped and boosted "AirAmerica" goes straight down the tubes after years of pathetic ratings.

"It was the NEGATIVE THINKING, stupid!"