Category Archives: Political Philosophy

A July 4th Toast To Thomas Jefferson, Author of The Declaration, And The Anglo-Saxon Tradition

Classical Liberalism, English, Founding Fathers, Government, History, Political Philosophy

‘Let us … toast Thomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him’ILANA MERCER, July 4, 2019

The Declaration of Independence—whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate—has been mocked out of meaning.

To be fair to the liberal Establishment, ordinary Americans are not entirely blameless. For most, Independence Day means firecrackers and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. In fact, contemporary Americans are less likely to read it now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. Printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet,” recounts historian David Hackett Fischer in Liberty And Freedom. And President (of the Continental Congress) John Hancock urged that the “people be universally informed.”

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it “an expression of the American Mind.” An examination of Jefferson‘s constitutional thought makes plain that he would no longer consider the mind of the collective mentality of the D.C. establishment “American” in any meaningful way. For the Jeffersonian mind was that of an avowed Whig—an American Whig whose roots were in the English Whig political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

By “all men are created equal,” Jefferson, who also wrote in praise of a “Natural Aristocracy,” did not imply that all men were similarly endowed. Or that they were entitled to healthcare, education, amnesty, and a decent wage, à la Obama.

Rather, Jefferson was affirming the natural right of “all men” to be secure in their enjoyment of their “life, liberty and possessions.”

This is the very philosophy Hillary Clinton explicitly disavowed during one of the mindless presidential debates of 2007. Asked by a YouTubester to define “liberal,” Hillary revealed she knew full-well that the word originally denoted the classical liberalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But she then settled on “progressive” as the appropriate label for her Fabian socialist plank.

Contra Clinton, as David N. Mayer explains in The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson, colonial Americans were steeped in the writings of English Whigs—John Locke, Algernon Sidney, Paul Rapin, Thomas Gordon and others. The essence of this “pattern of ideas and attitudes,” almost completely lost today, was a view of government as an inherent threat to liberty and the necessity for eternal vigilance.

Jefferson, in particular, was adamant about the imperative “to be watchful of those in power,” a watchfulness another Whig philosopher explained thus: “Considering what sort of Creature Man is, it is scarce possible to put him under too many Restraints, when he is possessed of great Power.”

“As Jefferson saw it,” expounds Mayer, “the Whig, zealously guarding liberty, was suspicious of the use of government power,” and assumed “not only that government power was inherently dangerous to individual liberty but also that, as Jefferson put it, ‘the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.’”

For this reason, the philosophy of government that Jefferson articulated in the Declaration radically shifted sovereignty from parliament to the people.

But Jefferson‘s muse for the “American Mind” is even older.

The Whig tradition is undeniably Anglo-Saxon. Our founding fathers’ political philosophy originated with their Saxon forefathers, and the ancient rights guaranteed by the Saxon constitution. With the Declaration, Jefferson told Henry Lee in 1825, he was also protesting England‘s violation of her own ancient tradition of natural rights. As Jefferson saw it, the Colonies were upholding a tradition the Crown had abrogated.

Philosophical purist that he was, moreover, Jefferson considered the Norman Conquest to have tainted this English tradition with the taint of feudalism. “To the Whig historian,” writes Mayer, “the whole of English constitutional history since the Conquest was the story of a perpetual claim kept up by the English nation for a restoration of Saxon laws and the ancient rights guaranteed by those laws.”

If Jefferson begrudged the malign influence of the Normans on the natural law he cherished, imagine how he’d view our contemporary cultural conquistadors from the South, whose customs preclude natural rights and natural reason!

Naturally, Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.

The settlers spilt their own blood “in acquiring lands for their settlement,” he wrote with pride in A Summary View of the Rights of British America. “For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold.” Thus they were “entitled to govern those lands and themselves.”

And, notwithstanding the claims of the multicultural noise machine, the Declaration was as mono-cultural as its author.

Let us, then, toast Thomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him.

©2019 ILANA MERCER
Originally
: “A July Fourth Toast To Thomas Jefferson—And The Declaration,” by Ilana Mercer, July 4, 2019

UPDATED (5/3): NEW COLUMN: First, They Came For Tucker Carlson; Next Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

COVID-19, Democrats, IMMIGRATION, Military, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans, The State, War

Democrat Party is the part of ‘fear, war and censorship… neocons with woke bobble-heads’  ~Robert F. Kennedy

NEW COLUMN is “First, They Came For Tucker Carlson; Next Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” It is currently featured on The New American, WND.COM, The Unz Review, and Townhall.com

The column can now be read on IlanaMercer.com.

Excerpt:

Fix News is finished, having just fired their only attraction, Tucker Carlson. As a writer who put in years of sustained antiwar writing against Genghis Bush and the neocon coterie—who burned (and consequently burnt-out) as hot as a Babylonian kiln against invasions backed 100 percent by Faux New and its blond war-porn flank—something just short of total extinction seems a fitting fate for Fox. The foolish firing of their top rated host, and one of the highest-ranking cable news shows in the country, is sure to hasten the death rattle of the War Porn channel.

Evil And Envy

Fox News has thus cemented its unimpeachable credentials as lickspittle of the Republican Party, which it always was until Tucker. Just so there’s no confusion: the Party is exulting in Tucker’s ousting.

The intuitive and likely most base reason for the ouster of Tucker tracks with human nature: evil and envy strive for mediocrity.

The instinct of man is evil from his youth ~Genesis 8:21

Or, in the language of statistics, it’s the regression toward the mean; the quest in America for mediocrity:

“Tocqueville in the 19th century, and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th, noted that conformity of thought is powerfully prevalent among Americans,” observed my friend Clyde Wilson, professor of history at the University of South Carolina and the foremost scholar of John C. Calhoun.

So, too, do the responses from the mediocre media—and I flatter them—where one sees nothing but schadenfreude (“joy derived from the misfortunes of others”), track with the theory of evil and envy.

Fox News is an echo of the Republican Party, which serves the deep, warfare, industry-captured state.

Robert F. Kennedy, on the other hand, is “a choice, not an echo.”

One need not agree with every word Kennedy spoke in a pellucid address announcing for president, almost two hours long, delivered extemporaneously, to grasp that, on the defining issues of our time, almost all of which Kennedy addressed in depth and in detail, Robert F. Kennedy is right and righteous.

Of the welter of words spoken so very beautifully—for a man with a disorder of the vocal cords—Kennedy, Jr underplayed perhaps two issues and failed to mention but one crucial matter, while delivering a riveting information-dense address, at once deep and philosophical, yet wise and pragmatic, undergirded by historic and constitutional truth. Tactical to boot.

Against The Deep, Warfare, Woke, Industry-Captured State

The overarching impetus of  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s announcement is this:

Americans live and labor under an illiberal, unconstitutional, oppressive administrative state. Our representatives are meant to make law. How, then, has this vast bureaucracy, captured by globe-straddling industries, acquired tyrannical law-making powers! Most certainly not constitutionally.

Candidate Kennedy astutely connects the corrupt merger of state and corporate power with the events, stateside and abroad; past and present, unfolding around us—from the collapse of the dollar, the murder of the middle-class via Covid crackdowns and lockdowns (courtesy of the pharma-state), to inflation (Federal Reserve Bank), to the sundering of individual and constitutional rights, to war forevermore (in service of the military-industrial-complex against which Dwight Eisenhower and John Quincy forewarned). …

…THE REST. “First, They Came For Tucker Carlson; Next Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” It is currently featured on The New American, WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com

* Image as screen picture courtesy Kenny Powers @MattRyan0070

UPDATED (5/3):  From my April 27, 2023 column, “First, They Came For Tucker Carlson; Next Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.“:

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will need to address the border, as that by-now meaningless phrase goes. He has not. If he cares about the poor of his country, he must convince them that he is not part of the Ted Kennedy Fifth Column, which, in 1965, wrote the multicultural legislation that altered America forever. Kennedy Jr. will need to plug the border down South and, ideally, expel Biden’s legions of foreign invaders. If you are championing the middle-class and the working poor you cannot swamp their country with an unending supply of labor”

RFK, Jr., did so today, May 3:

While this isn’t nearly enough—RFK, Jr’s promise on immigration is no less than the Republicans have ever offered, and failed to deliver while in control of the presidency, both chambers and the gubernatorial landscape.

UPDATE III (5/19): WATCH HARD TRUTH LIVE: Tucker Removed By Fox. Robert Kennedy Jr Against The Deep, Warfare, Woke, Industry-Captured State

COVID-19, Nationalism, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Populism, Regulation, THE ELITES, The Establishment, The State, War

Tucker, like Trump, is transformational ~ilana

UPDATE (5/19): The number of views for my latest column’s companion Hard Truth podcast-–recorded 3 weeks back with my honorable, trustworthy podcast partner David Vance—is now 29,000! Truth is timeless, especially when it’s predictive. You see, other popular podcasts have only just caught up with our insights. Namely that Fox News is doomed. Tucker and Trump were transformational. We hope against hope that RFK, Jr. will be too.

UPDATE III (4/29): On the broadcast, which now has now close to 6000 views, I disputed Megyn Kelly’s contention that, just as it happened with her; the perch (Fox News) would always outlive the host (Tucker Carlson).
Well, of course. Ms. Kelly would say so. She has a lot of cognitive dissonance to reconcile there: She is not Tucker Carlson. No sooner had she left Fox News than Tucker stepped into her stilettos—and nobody remembered Ms. Kelly. Tucker, like Trump, is transformational.

UPDATE II (4/25): Substantive and lively. I enjoyed my time with David Vance. We always go deep. 

https://rumble.com/v2kbeyc-tucker-removed-by-fox.-robert-kennedy-jr-against-the-deep-warfare-woke-indu.html

THE HARD TRUTH PODCAST with David Vance and myself will be live on Tuesday, April 25, at 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.
https://rumble.com/v2kbeyc-tucker-removed-by-fox.-robert-kennedy-jr-against-the-deep-warfare-woke-indu.html

Please join us on Rumble, and send in your comments and/or questions.

https://rumble.com/c/HardTruthPodcast

The remarkable Robert Kennedy Jr. announced his 2024 presidential campaign. One need not agree with every word Kennedy spoke in a pellucid address almost two hours long, delivered extemporaneously, to grasp that, on the defining issues of our times, most of which Kennedy addressed in depth and detail, Robert F. Kennedy is right and righteous.

DAVID AND ILANA discuss Kennedy’s analysis of corporate feudalism, the murder of the American middle-class and the deep, warfare, woke, industry-captured state.

Many thanks for SUBSCRIBING: https://rumble.com/c/HardTruthPodcast

NEW COLUMN, UPDATED (2/5/023): GOP Swallows Classified-Doc Bait, Shirks Constitutional Obligations

Argument, Constitution, COVID-19, Free Speech, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans

The US military’s triumph over a Chinese weather balloon belongs in this latest column. Alas, it was written before The Great Event.

The reader should just substitute Classified-Documents distraction with Chinese-Spy-Balloon?distraction.

Boobus Americanus cannot be helped, he will be puffed up with the rah-rah of phony patriotism, or hot air.

Patriotism is rounding-up and repatriating all 4-5 million of Biden’s criminal aliens.

AND, patriotism is all the things specified in “GOP Swallows Classified-Doc Bait, Shirks Constitutional Obligations,” now available on IlanaMercer.com

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/02/gop-swallows-classified-doc-bait-shirks-constitutional-obligations/

Thanks for reading and Subscribing to Hard Truth.

Our latest has been viewed so far by 3508 thousand good souls.

0Best to all,

ilana

NEW COLUMN is “GOP Swallows Classified-Doc Bait, Shirks Constitutional Obligations.” It’s on WND.COM, The New American, and The Unz Review.

To be on IlanaMercer.com shortly.

Excerpt:

…”The overtone window alludes to a range of ideas once considered unthinkable, but now normalized.

With their flaccid, crushingly stupid responses to most situations, for example the self-induced ‘crisis’ on the south-western border—Republicans have normalized an open border, through which millions of impoverished people may flow, are flowing.

The range of responses issuing from GOP representatives consists in nauseating treacle about a ‘humanitarian disaster,’ a ‘crisis,’ and mumbo-jumbo about cartels-in-control: Blame the cartels for the choice made by American leaderships to shirk their constitutional duty to uphold the country’s territorial integrity. …

… the Mexican crime cartels are merely filling a power vacuum willfully created by American elected traitors. The last are guilty as sin for centrally orchestrating the invasion of their country and outlawing any effective defensive counter-action. The first are not to blame.

Criminals do what law-makers allow them to do.  …

… THE REST: “GOP Swallows Classified-Doc Bait, Shirks Constitutional Obligations” is on WND.COM, The New American, and The Unz Review.

Column will be on IlanaMercer.com shortly.