Category Archives: Conservatism

Interview: Ilana Mercer, Part 1: Roots, Writing, & Resistance

Canada, Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Etiquette, Family, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

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Interview: Ilana Mercer, part 1: Roots, writing, & resistance, By Dissident Mama on Friday, September 25, 2020.

I gave an interview to an up-and-coming young star, Dissident Mama, aka Rebecca Dillingham. She writes:

“It’s been a long time in the making, but here it is: the first installment of my two-part interview with the always provocative and poignant Ilana Mercer. Part 2 should be published on Monday. Keep your eyes wide open for that – it promises to be explosive!”

The tagline at Ilana Mercer’s website is “Verbal swordplay for civilization.” Ain’t that the truth. The self-described paleolibertarian has been wielding words and fighting the good fight since well before I even thought about fleeing the clutches of feminism-atheism-socialism. She’s both provocative and poignant – a difficult thing to pull off anytime, much less in our postmodern dystopia.

I remember first stumbling upon Mercer at World Net Daily back in my neocon “daze” in the early 2000s. I recall being moved by not only her tenacity, but her cerebral style. Being such a prolific essayist, I then found her articles during my libertarian/ancap phase. And again, her writing spoke to me. Now, I’m what you’d call a paleoconservative/Southern traditionalist, and yet, there she is again: writing articles that say things we all want to say but don’t know how, or planting seeds for new thinking.

Now, I don’t always agree with Mercer. I’d say she speaks my language on most matters, but that’s really not what draws me to her work. When you read Mercer, you know that she’s coming to her conclusions through principled inquiry, deep research, a passion for justice, and an impatience with the insanity. In other words, she’s rational but on fire!

And Mercer can see through so many of the charades. Perhaps this is due to her years of experience or because, as Jack Kerwick says, “Ilana is in much greater supply of that ‘manly virtue’ than are most male writers today.”

As Southern stalwart Dr. Clyde Wilson explains of Mercer, “This is one libertarian who knows that the market is wonderful, but it is not everything.” Intellectual honesty like that is hard to come by these days, and that’s why Mercer’s writing is so damn good: it’s fearless and succinct. Bold and challenging. Accessible and engrossing.

Moreover, anyone who’s forever banned from Facebook, pegged as a hater by the SPLC, and given accolades by everyone from Peter Brimelow and Vox Day, to Tom Woods and Paul Gottfried, well, they’re pretty cool in my book. Plus, Mercer has become what I would call a mentor and a friend. So, for those of you who don’t already know her, please meet the never-to-be-duplicated Ilana Mercer. And folks who are already familiar with her and her independent streak, get ready to have your socks knocked off.

MORE… Ilana Mercer, part 1: Roots, writing, & resistance, By Dissident Mama on Friday, September 25, 2020.

 

 

UPDATE (9/29): Amy Coney Barrett And Life On Earth

Abortion, Conservatism, Constitution, Justice, Law, The Courts

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“The restoration of law and order and the reverence for private property rights are the most powerful principles with which to unite main-street America, left and right, in the ramp-up to the November election.” (“Law and Order Unites Main Street America.“)

“This is what Republicans must remember, before they scamper down the judicial rabbit hole of abortion.” The kind of “reasoning” that could unseat Trump is if the credentialed conservative elites press the abortion issue. That would be political suicide.

And it may be upon us with the nomination of “Amy Coney Barrett, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 7th Circuit, as President Trump’s nomination to the seat vacated by the death of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” (Fox News)

Via Revolver News (which has replaced Drudge):

According to this think piece in Revolver:

Amy Coney Barrett may appear to promise the shock we all know the system deserves, but her nomination risks reframing the precarious Trump reelection effort from a winning battle over law and order, immigration, and left-wing political violence to a messy and poorly timed slog through well-worn battles that would be better and more effectively fought after Trump wins re-election.

It’s too late, but READ “The Case for Judge Bridget Bade.”

UPDATED (9/29):

Russian Interference? How About American ‘Color Revolutions’ The World Over?

Argument, Conservatism, Democracy, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Globalism, Law, Neoconservatism, Race, Racism, Republicans

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Regime change abroad is not the purview of the Deep State alone; it’s the practice of the American State, Republican and Democratic administrations:

… both the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute “are chartered to promote democracy abroad with [ostensibly] nonpartisan training and election monitoring.” “Loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties,” these institutes “were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations.”

As an example, take “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt,” detailed in my 2012 column. Americans were outraged when Egypt expelled US nationals for fomenting regime change. Egypt was right:

The Egyptian Justice Ministry, under the authority of the military council, has detained and indicted 19 American democracy activists. To listen to the malfunctioning media stateside, however, the Egyptians are being petty, picking a fight with their American benefactors for “operating in Egypt without a license.” Or, if you want “expert” opinion, courtesy of Politico.com, the Egyptian plan to prosecute these “Americans and two dozen others” “is more over the future of U.S. aid to Egypt and who controls it.”

More…

Now, Darren J. Beattie, former Trump speech writer (who should have been kept on, if the Right had any moral courage), unsparingly reminds us of the American “Color Revolution” policy. His thinking is refreshingly original, the likes of which one doesn’t often see coming out of conservative quarters, where the same talking points are constantly recycled.

(To wit, on the same Tucker Carlson show, Candace Owens provided recycled boilerplate to the effect that the US is not in a race war, and that black violence is the doing of the Democrats. Untrue. There is most certainly a racial offensive against whites, to which conservatives can’t give expression. Irrespective of the Democrats’ undeniable agitation and incitement, this enthnocidal aggression against whites would persist.)

Essentially, Beattie empirically and analytically connected the US-launched “Color Revolutions” with the “lawfare” coups against Trump. I like the “lawfare” term Beattie has coinded. Nicely done.

Note: Beattie imputes “Color Revolutions” to the “US Government,” not merely to Democrat-run administrations. 

HERE:

There is no purer embodiment of Revolver’s thesis that the very same regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to undermine or overthrow alleged “authoritarian” governments overseas, are running the very same playbook to overturn Trump’s 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets overseas—same people same playbook.

 

UPDATED (8/22/): NEW COLUMN: Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!

Conservatism, Free Speech, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Paleoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Reason

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NEW COLUMN IS “Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!” It featured on Townhall.com, WND.COM, the Unz Review, and Newsroom For American and European-Based Citizens.

It is currently a feature on American Greatness:

“Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!” It is the second in a series deconstructing the racism construct. For the first, there is also a quick YouTube primer.

Excerpt:

Racism consists of a mindset or a worldview that boils down to impolite and impolitic thoughts and words written, spoken, preached, or tweeted.

If that’s all racism is, you ask, then what was the knee on George Floyd’s neck? Was that not racism?

No, it was not.

Judging from the known facts, the knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck was a knee on a man’s neck. That’s all that can be inferred from the chilling video recording in which Floyd expired slowly as he pleaded for air.

Floyd begged to breathe. But the knee on his neck—“subdual restraint and neck compression,” in medical terms—was sustained for fully eight minutes and 46 seconds, causing “cardiopulmonary arrest.”

There are laws against what transpired between former Officer Derek Chauvin and Mr. Floyd.

And the law’s ambit is not to decide whether the offending officer is a correct-thinking individual, but whether Mr. Chauvin had committed a crime.

About Officer Chauvin’s mindset, the most the law is supposed to divine is mens rea—criminal intention: Was the officer whose knee pressed on Floyd’s neck acting with a guilty mind or not?

For fact-finding is the essence of the law. The law is not an abstract ideal of imagined social justice, that exists to salve sensitive souls.

If “racism” looks like a felony crime, then it ought to be prosecuted as nothing but a crime and debated as such. In the case of Mr. Chauvin, a mindset of depraved indifference seems to jibe with the video.

This is not to refute the reality of racially motivated crimes. These most certainly occur. It is only to refute the legal and ethical validity of a racist mindset in the prosecution of a crime.

Surely, a life taken because of racial or antisemitic animus is not worth more than life lost to spousal battery or to a home invasion.

The law, then, must mete justice, in accordance with the rules of evidence, proportionality and due process. Other than intent, references to the attendant thoughts that accompanied the commission of a crime should be irrelevant—be they racist, sexist, ageist or anti-Semitic.

Ultimately, those thoughts are known only to the perp.

To make matters worse, legions of libertarians and conservatives have joined the progressive establishment in the habit of sniffing out and purging racists, as though they were criminals.

Sniffing out thought or speech criminals is a no-no for any and all self-respecting classical conservative and libertarian. We should never persecute or prosecute thought “criminals” for utterances not to our liking (unless these threaten or portend violence). …

… READ THE REST. LATEST COLUMN IS currently a feature on American Greatness:

UPDATE (8/22/20):

Loup-Bouc:

Fine article, Ms. Mercer. Unlike all other Unz Review authors who have addressed the Floyd case, you apprehend accurately/correctly much of the pertinent law. ..I observe that you have written a fine article. Brava.

Mark Humphrey says:
August 22, 2020 at 1:51 am GMT   ?

This essay is the clearest and most effective explanation as to why racism and other bad ideas are not criminal. Of the numerous Mercer essays I have read, this is the best. Thank you.