Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATE III (4/9): NEW COLUMN: The Wussification Of The West: Will We Ban Shakespeare For Othello And Shylock?

Argument, Comedy & Humor, Conservatism, Education, English, Free Speech, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Literature, Race, Racism, The West

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The The Argument from Freedom means arguing process, not content.–ilana

NEW COLUMN IS either “The Wussification Of The West: Will We Ban Shakespeare For Othello And Shylock?” Or, “How Tucker Could Have Crushed His Dr. Seuss Segment,” currently on WND.COM, the Unz Review,  Townhall.com.

“How Tucker Could Have Crushed His Dr. Seuss Segment” is on CNS.News, too.

And American Renaissance, where the conversation is lively.

And, the great American Greatness, the voice of next-generation conservatism.

Watch a video version of this column on YouTube.

And excerpt:

… Tucker’s mistake was his contents-driven defense of these kiddie books:

“Dr. Seuss was not a racist. He was an evangelist against bigotry,” pleaded Tucker. “He wrote an entire shelf of books against racism, and not in a subtle way. They were clearly, explicitly against racism. That was the whole point of writing them, to teach children not to be racist.”

Yawn.

Even if Dr. Seuss was the pedagogic, sanctimonious bore Tucker makes him out to be—actual racism in the targeted literature should be a peripheral issue, or no issue at all.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing process, not content.

Whether he intended it or not, the premise of Tucker’s defense of Dr. Seuss is that if we do detect “legitimate” racism in literature—there is a case for banning it. (Now, Tucker might not have meant it that way, but, this is what the structure of his argument portends.)

By contrast, freedom makes the case for an unfettered free market in ideas, good and bad. Freedom argues for politically impolite books to be published and read freely.

Banning books, moreover, assumes a lack of choice and agency among individual human beings. It’s also predicated on a higher authority that decides for the rest of us which cultural products are fit for our consumption.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing not over the contents of Mein Kampf or McElligot’s Pool, but for their publication irrespective of their content.

Which is why I say freedom’s argument is an argument from process, and not content.

Mein Kampf, and any offensive literature, needs to be available in a free society to free men and women who want it. And not because of history; so that we don’t forget it or repeat it (blah, blah, blah, as I heard it enunciated by Seattle’s radio mouth, Jason Rantz, the other day).

Alas, in the face of the cancellation of people and publications, cancelled conservatives just keep these logically weak and, frankly, loser mea culpas coming. Like the Argument from Hitler, which is a kind of “WhatAboutism”:

“Amazon and eBay sell Mein Kampf, why not Dr. Seuss? I want what Hitler got, Amazon and eBay. Me too. Boo-hoo.”

Tweeted “Musil Protégé”: “Conservatives [inadvertently] condone presentism. As Audrey says in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan: ‘Has it ever occurred to you that our world judged by the standards of Jane Austen’s time would (look ridiculous)?’”

Most great literature doesn’t meet the sub-intelligent standards of the woke illiterati, who control the intellectual means of production—the schools (primary, secondary, tertiary), the press, publishing houses, think tanks, Deep Tech and the Deep State. …

…NEW COLUMN IS either “The Wussification Of The West: Will We Ban Shakespeare For Othello And Shylock?” Or, “How Tucker Could Have Crushed His Dr. Seuss Segment,” currently on WND.COM, the Unz Review and Townhall.com.

“How Tucker Could Have Crushed His Dr. Seuss Segment” is on CNS.News and American Renaissance as well.

Watch a video version of this column on YouTube.

UPDATE II (3/16): Facebook: 
Ray McClendon:

I’m a big Tucker fan too Ilana. Your article pointing out his arguments along with others who made the same argument give rise to mixed emotions. On the one hand, he (and they) are not wrong. There is some validity to their logic. After all, truth is often multifaceted. Plus, we’re all on the same side fighting side by side as allies in a common cause. On the other hand, you perform a great service when you point out there are far more substantive, powerful, and relevant arguments to be made, reminding me of that axiom, “Great minds may think alike, but greater minds think alone.” It’s why you’ve always been in a class by yourself. Thank you…

Ilana Mercer

No! I point to he fact that the argument from racism is irreverent if one is arguing classical liberal freedoms. Tucker, whom I love, was arguing from the leftist premise. The End. No argument. You can both love Tucker, and agree he presented a weak case for freedom. I do. That’s not wrong.

UPDATE III (4/9): When Adult humor is allowed:

Ed Powell: “You are my favorite African-American.”
Me: “That’s good ‘adult humor’. I am an African-American Jew.”
MrSweetaz: “@ILANAMERCER, LOL, Hitler wouldn’t have known what the hell to do with you.”
Me: “I think he would.”

CPUKE: GOP Has The Babes. Nothing More! The Future Belongs To Prouder Boys & Girls

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Elections, Founding Fathers, Politics, Populism, Republicans

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On a frivolous note, Kristi Noem’s a pretty woman, but why the Michelle Obama arms? Too awful. All that manly weight-lifting and working out arms a woman with a man’s arms and a ropy neck, too.

On a serious note, the dull, dumb lineup at CPUKE—namely the establishment-approved stars of the GOP—only drives home that Trump alone provides any excitement (and impetus when Ivanka leaves him alone) in the moribund Republican Party. (Where in this lineup is flamethrower Marjorie Taylor Greene?)

Besides which, remember this: With control of both Chambers, the presidency and the gubernatorial scene across the country—Republicans delivered nothing much for ordinary Americans.

Time to quit buying the fiction that all you need do to have relief is vote Republican. Nonsense on stilts!

So, GOP, RIP.

The future of The Struggle belongs to men and women who speak like this:

When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

Most recently, the man to channel Thomas Jefferson—for this piercing and beautiful aphorism belongs to said Founding Father—was Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio.

The man echoed the sentiments yours truly articulated more carefully on 01/21/2021, in “A Hardcore Libertarian Take On The Storming Of The Capitol Building.”

“I’m not gonna cry about people who don’t give a crap about their constituents. I’m not going to sympathize with them,” he continued. “When they support drone-bombing children in the Middle East … [and] those people are dead and they’re just cowering because a group of misfits came into the Capitol, I’m not going to be sympathetic.”

*Image I credit here.
* Image II credit here.

UPDATE (2/28):

From LinkedIn:

Immutable truth: “With control of both Chambers, the presidency and the gubernatorial scene across the country—Republicans delivered nothing much for ordinary Americans.” Time to quit buying the fiction that all you need do to have relief is vote Republican. Nonsense on stilts!
So, GOP, RIP.”
Time to secede–dissociate from the dual-party game conducted for the benefits of Rome on the Potomac. Build self-determining societies of like-minded; seceded from politics.

MATH: The Problem With Conservatives? They Run From Racial Reality

Affirmative Action, Ancient History, Conservatism, Education, Intelligence, Race, Racism, Reason, Science, The West

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The problem with math is that it can be—how shall we put it?—mean to certain minorities. The problem with conservatives? They run from such racial realities.

Math as racist is not a new angle in the war for egalitarianism in aptitude.

Some people can do math well; others less so. Still others not at all. There are aggregate discrepancies between the sexes and between the races in the facility with mathematics.

(There has been a link to the work of La Griffe du Lion, on the ilanamercer.com Resources page (Junk Science category), since the website’s inception. His explosive work was allowed back then.)

These days, however, kids are being taught that, given enough Kale, care and instruction from formative figures—everyone has a chance at achieving a similar aptitude. “You can do anything you put your mind to,” goes the parental and pedagogic refrain.

No wonder anger rises among the less proficient when reality bites and puts the lie to the fiction of an egalitarian distribution of talent.

If some fail miserably in certain fields, why, the deficit is said to be not in the child but in the “system,” the teacher, the topic, or the particular discipline.

And if patterns of failure correlate with racial groupings; voila! It’s systemic. See, “‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?” Video included (for those who, unlike me, do not prefer text).

Anti-white activists—let us call them what they are, please—are now claiming math is a white supremacist discipline, not least because it is also an objective science with right or wrong answers. There is no relativism to it; no, “Hey Johnny, that’s an interesting answer, why don’t you try that new equation in the next bridge you design?”

Trust conservatives to never cop to the fact that complex math was the invention of Westerners. Oh, no!

As is the wont of conservatives, they apologize for any white involvement in such greatness as is math.

Tucker Carlson’s guest takes the tired conservative tack. Denounce and deprecate Western achievement:

“Math is not a white discipline, how absurd,” says Tucker’s guest.

Okay, Miss obsequious.

More advanced mathematics can be traced to ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago. Ancient mathematician Pythagoras had questions about the sides of a right triangle. His questioning, research, and testing led to a basic understanding of triangles we still study today, known as the Pythagorean Theorem.
Most experts agree that it was around this time (2,500 years ago) in ancient Greece that mathematics first became an organized science.

If it’s me, I’m owning it.

Beginning in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, with Greek mathematics the Ancient Greeks began a systematic study of mathematics as a subject in its own right. Around 300 BC, Euclid introduced the axiomatic method still used in mathematics today, consisting of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof.

Wikipedia.

Next, Miss Millennial parrots the exhausted cliche about “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations,” namely the “myth” that students of color can’t achieve to standards, and therefore the standards must be lowered.

Both host and guest feel safe in their sanctimony, ignoring the well-established and enduring “racial achievement gap in the United States” in mathematics.

 

UPDATED (2/22): NTSB, so nerdy and white.

 

NEW COLUMN: Still Addicted To That Rush: Revisiting The ‘09 CPAC Speech

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Economy, Neoconservatism, Republicans, The Establishment, War, Welfare

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NEW COLUMN, “Still Addicted To That Rush: Revisiting The ‘09 CPAC Speech,” is now WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Excerpt:

Rush Limbaugh died on February the 17th. In the encomiums to conservatism’s radio king, mention was made of his 2009 address at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

CPAC for short, or CPUKE before Trump.

At the time, I had surveyed the perennial, Republican Party dynamics surrounding the event. “Addicted to that Rush,” the March 6, 2009 column’s title, came not from Rush’s brief addiction to painkillers, following surgery, but from an eponymous hit by the band Mr. Big. (It, in turn, came from an earlier time when the American music scene produced not pornographers like Cardi B, but musicians like Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan.)

Nevertheless, that title alluded to one of Rush’s missed opportunities: Speaking against a war into which he was involuntarily drafted and by which he was almost destroyed: The War on Drugs.

Still, how petty does that war, in all its depredations, seem now?! How unimaginably remote do the issues Rush spoke to, in 2009, seem in light of a country that has come a cropper in the course of one year, due to an unprecedented consolidation of state power around COVID, compounded by an amped up, institutionalized campaign against white America. And, in particular, against white Trump voters.

Other than champion tax cuts and globalization, the Rovian cadre of the GOP had been doing what it has always done: Calling for a more upbeat, inclusive and diverse party. Michael Steele, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, today an “analyst” for MSNBC, had derided Rush as a mere entertainer, describing “The Rush Limbaugh Show” as incendiary and ugly.

Then as now, Steele’s main concerns were not those of main-street Americans. Rather, Steele’s cares were “conciliatory.” The Rovians, like the Never Trumpers and the Lincoln-Project perverts, believed in the urgent need to broaden the Republican Party’s base and “appeal” to traditionally hostile minorities, when in fact the GOP had been courting traditional Democratic constituents with every trick possible, with little success, all the while sticking it to the base.

The Steele-Limbaugh spat fell into Barack Obama’s lap. The former president was losing it—throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the thing he called “the economy,” but which is really no more than the trillions upon trillions of voluntary, capitalistic acts individuals perform in order to make a living.

Introduce government force and coercion into this synchronized spontaneous order, and it starts to splutter. The economy responds poorly to economic planning and planners. BHO had imagined that he could walk on water. America facilitated his fantasy. The former president was realizing that he was not the magic man he imagined he was. Desperate times called for desperate distractions.

In short succession, Democratic henchmen—Paul Begala, Stanley Greenberg, James Carville, and Robert Gibbs—began picking on Limbaugh. Strong-armed too by the Obama administration was CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, who led a revolt from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange against the bailout billions for mortgage delinquents. Little wonder, then, that the contents of Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC garnered less attention than the characters involved.

Rush spoke stirringly. He railed against the enormous expansion of government in the first few, frightening weeks of the Obama presidency.

But, as I noted at the time, not a word did one hear against the man who began what Barack was just completing. George Bush set the scene for Barack. Stimulus, bailouts, a house for every Hispanic—these were Bush’s babies. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights had been abandoned well before the fist-bumping Obamas moved into the White House. …

…  As rousing as his speech was, not a word did Limbaugh devote to the Warfare State, every bit as corrupt, corrupting, and bankrupting as the Welfare State. As I observed, at the time, over $1 trillion was being spent yearly on imperial expeditions that were awash in American blood, but offered few benefits to the sacrificed, stateside and abroad.

Besides, I asked, “what kind of a nation neglects its own borders while defending to the death borders not its own?” …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN, “Still Addicted To That Rush: Revisiting The ‘09 CPAC Speech,” is now WND.COM and The Unz Review.