Category Archives: America

Thoughts And Writings At Year’s End

America, Ilana Mercer, Kids, Relationships, The Zeitgeist

LAST WEEK’S COLUMN was a reality check on American “freedoms,” in the context of Julian Assange’s travails.

It appeared on WND, Townhall.com, Unz Review, and the column’s new home: The New American. It is now available on IlanaMercer.com.

I thank all my editors for being such a pleasure to work with–especially my new, young, conservative friends, Rebecca, Rob and John. If only you lived closer to this state, WA—an exquisite place (what a joy it is to run outdoors in its lush beauty), but chock-full of the coldest, most alienating people (BC, before Covid). No amount of one-sided friendly love and good-will wins these Yankees over (as though by osmosis, the immigrants, too, assume the Yankee mien and “manners”). “Friends” here are what I’ll term calendar friends. They’ll text you once a year, and if lucky; pencil you in. After the agonies of 2020/21, such shallowness is not for me.

Thoughts about the heroic Julian Assange led to a stream-of-consciousness titled “On Being a Man.” Before the pronoun deconstruction, which all principled writers will blithely ignore, “man” also meant mankind. In other words, “On Being A Man” simply means on being a mensch, and applies equally to men and women and all entities between. To the “On Being A Man” thoughts I will add this: Brave men can FIGHT. But a man who picks fights—and feuds—with real friends is never brave. To the contrary.

It’s uncharacteristic to my writing, but as I age and as the anguish around me increases–I’ll endeavor to share with greater regularity personal insights gleaned, in case I can be of help to my readers—the young, especially. They inhabit an atomized, lonely world, where interpersonal pain is compounded by digital escapism (instead of real communication) and the evil strictures of the COVID cartel (especially pronounced in WA).

JAPAN’S Medical Authorities Understand And Honor Individual Rights

America, COVID-19, Culture, Democracy, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Logic, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property

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Our bodies are our prime real estate: all rights, property rights especially, ensue from the title one has in one’s body.–ilana

The website of Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare displays the government’s COVID-19 vaccination policy.

Consent to vaccination
Although we encourage all citizens to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, it is not compulsory or mandatory. Vaccination will be given only with the consent of the person to be vaccinated after the information provided. Please get vaccinated of your own decision, understanding both the effectiveness in preventing infectious diseases and the risk of side effects. No vaccination will be given without consent. Please do not force anyone in your workplace or those who around you to be vaccinated, and do not discriminate against those who have not been vaccinated.

In the land of the free, Japan, the government rejects compulsory vaccination, demands CONSENT on vaccination, and forbids forcing vaccination or discriminating against those who make a legitimate choice against being vaccinated. In the West it is the opposite.

These Japanese policy makers clearly understand that they are dealing with the ultimate human right, the dominion over one’s body. Alongside a policy statement evincing respect for the people’s bodily autonomy is a link to “Human Rights Counseling in foreign languages.” In other words, correct actions regarding Covid policy follow from the use of the correct language, the language of individual right.

And that language is the language of self-ownership. Our bodies are our prime real estate: all rights, property rights especially, ensue from the title one has in one’s body.

Conversely, the pied pipers at the helm of the American Covid cartel are as malevolent and they are mediocre.

Then again, the people get the leaders they deserve. That Americans are led by self-serving degenerates—morally and intellectually, left and right—is because majorities, sometimes slim, sometimes overwhelming, have ensconced them there.

UPDATED (12/20): America: Aphorisms On Conformity

America, Critique, Culture, Economy, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Pseudo-intellectualism, The Establishment

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Fred Reed, former Barely a Blog columnist, offers this insight:

“America has always had a strong economic back and weak cultural mind, being anti-intellectual and given to envy and resentment of the smart and cultivated.”

De Tocqueville, Mencken and others made similar observations. “Certainly Tocqueville in the 19th century, and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th, noted that conformity of thought is powerfully prevalent among Americans,” noted the inimical Clyde Wilson, political thinker and foremost scholar of the South.

“A glorious commonwealth of morons,” Mencken called America. “The American moron’s mind”—this “mob-man’s” mentality—is that of a “violent nationalist and patriot,” to whom ideas are a menace, and who would always opt “to keep his Ford, even at the cost of losing the Bill of Rights.”

These are all Mencken’s words, not mine. See: “H.L. Mencken: Misfit In 21st-Century America.”

UPDATED (12/20): This Facebook reader has the right approach. Relax and enjoy The Difference. Don’t be an Enforcer.