Category Archives: Conservatism

The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Ethics, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

“The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The reader should know that I cringe as I write this first-person account.

Why the disclaimer?

Opinion differs about how often to use the first person pronoun in various genres of writing. Certainly its overuse in opinion writing is a cardinal sin. To get a sense of how bad someone’s writing is count the number of times he deploys the Imperial “I” on the page.

Abuse “I” when the passive-form alternative is too clumsy. Or, when the writer has earned the right to, because of her relevance to the story. The second is my excuse here.

Righting two wrongs I must.

Clichés about victors writing history aside—it has become apparent to me how easy it is to write individuals out of their place in history, however meager that place and past are.

Since history is another term for reality chronicled, it is ineluctably tied to truth. It’s crucial to tell history like it is.

The stage has been set. Onto it steps a young academic, George Hawley, who’s taken on the first assiduous investigation of an exceedingly small set of individuals: “Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism.”

There is, however, lacuna in Dr. Hawley’s work. By his own admission, Hawley has failed to mention one veteran writer who falls squarely in the even-rarer paleolibertarian subset.

She has been writing voluminously in that tradition, week-in, week-out, for close on two decades (since 1999), and is the author of two unmistakably paleolibertarian books, one of which is “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” (Oh Buddha! The Imperial “I” has now given way to third-person writing. Mea culpa, gentle reader.)

Undergirding these, and the forthcoming “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” is paleolibertarianism.

Plainly put, I (ouch) believe that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure. That’s me. That’s my work.

Another academic, author and Townhall columnist Jack Kerwick, contends the omission of one ILANA Mercer from the first academic’s book covering the dissident Right is a glaring one.

” … There are three reasons why it is imperative that Mercer be included in any discussion of paleolibertarianism,” avers Kerwick: …

… Read the rest. “The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian” is now on WND.

Kerwick: Where’s One Of Paleolibertarianism’s Most Prolific Writers In Book About Dissident Right?

Conservatism, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism

What is he thinking? Author, columnist and academic Jack Kerwick is incorrigibly honest, intellectually honest. Doesn’t he know it’ll get him nowhere?

In a column at Beliefnet.com, “Missing ‘Right-Wing Critic of American Conservatism,'” Dr. Kerwick suggests that the omission of one ilana mercer from a new book entitled Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism is a grave one.

A “discussion of ‘paleolibertarianism’—an oft-neglected variant of the classical liberal perspective from the genuine right,” ventures Kerwick, “could’ve been vastly enriched had only [its author, George Hawley], said a thing or two about a specific paleolibertarian writer whose omission from his exposition struck this author [Kerwick] as glaring.”

“That writer is Ilana Mercer.”

” … There are three reasons why it is imperative that Mercer be included in any discussion of paleolibertarianism”:

First, and most obviously, she is a paleolibertarian—and a tireless one at that. For decades, this defender of the paleolibertarian vision has published a couple of books and thousands of articles and blog posts in which she’s shattered not only leftist pieties but neocon and “libertarian-lite”(left-wing libertarian) sureties as well. Much blood, sweat, and tears, to say nothing of opportunities for professional advancement, has Mercer foregone in her campaign against the idols of our Politically Correct age.

Second, not only is Mercer a veteran paleolibertarian writer. She is unquestionably the most visible, the most widely read, of such contemporary writers. At one point, she was nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate, and for nearly the last 20 years, WorldNetDaily (WND), a site that boasts roughly 1 million visitors a month, has featured Mercer’s weekly column, “Return to Reason”—its “longest standing, exclusive, paleo-libertarian weekly column.”

In addition to WND, Mercer’s work has been showcased in a plethora of outlets, both internationally and stateside, and she’s currently a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

No paleolibertarian—to repeat, a rightist proponent of a tradition-grounded classical liberal ideal—has nearly as much exposure when it comes to scholarly and popular audiences alike as does Mercer.

Third, Ilana Mercer is a woman. Moreover, she is a Jewish woman, the daughter of a Rabbi who was raised in both South Africa and Israel. This is no insignificant detail: Mercer is a standing repudiation of the stereotype, all too easily reinforced by her exclusion from any study of “right-wing critics of American conservatism,” that such critics are exclusively elderly white men. …

OUCH.

Read the rest. “Missing ‘Right-Wing Critic of American Conservatism” is on Beliefnet.com

UPDATED: Trump Vs. The Banana Republicans

Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Republicans, Ron Paul

“Trump Vs. The Banana Republicans” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

There’s a difference between (small r) republican principles and the Republican Party’s rules of procedure. But National Review neoconservative Jonah Goldberg doesn’t see it.

Or, maybe Goldberg is using America’s founding, governing principles to piggyback the Republican Party’s oft revised and rigged rules to respectability.

Conservatives who harbor the quaint expectation that voters, not party operatives, would choose the nominee stand accused by Goldberg of fetishizing unfiltered democracy.

“America is a republic not a simple democracy,” says Goldberg, in motivating for Grand Old Party chicanery.

Goldberg’s argument is a cunning but poor one. It confuses bureaucratic rules with higher principles: the republicanism of America’s Constitution makers.

Through a Bill of Rights and a scheme that divides authority between autonomous states and a national government, American federalism aimed to secure the rights of the individual by imposing strict limits on the power of thumping majorities and a central government.

The Goldberg variations on republicanism won’t wash. The Republican Party’s arbitrary rules relate to the Founding Founders’ republicanism as the Romney Rule relates to veracity.

The Romney initiated Rule 40(b) is a recent addition to the Republican Party rule book. It stipulates that in order to win the nomination, a candidate must demonstrate he has earned a majority of delegates from at least eight different states. Rule 40 (b) was passed post-haste to thwart libertarian candidate Ron Paul.

Party crooks and their lawyers now find themselves in a pickle, because Governor John Kasich, candidate for the establishment (including the New York Times and the Huffington Post), has yet to meet the Republican rule du jour.

So, what do The Rulers do? They plan to change the rules. Again.

Pledged delegates are not supposed to act as autonomous agents. Their voting has to be tethered to the candidate whom voters have overwhelmingly chosen. But not when The Party parts company with The Voters. Then, delegates might find themselves unmoored from representing the voters.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has hinted at allowing pledged delegates the freedom to betray their pledge. …

… READ the rest. “Trump Vs. The Banana Republicans” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATE: Two people noticed the “Goldberg Variations” Bach reference. Via Facebook:

Joshua Jennings: Love the Bach reference!

Ilana Mercer Love the folks who noticed, all 2 of you, Joshua Jennings.

Ilana Mercer: The other was my editor.

‘Think About The Kids: No! F-ck The Kids. Adult Lives Matter, Too’

America, Conservatism, Family, Pop-Culture, Relatives, Socialism

“F-ck The Kids. Adult Lives Matter, Too.” That’s it. That’s my official statement about all kid-related arguments, first “articulated”—in scare quotes, because not exactly articulate—in “GOP Debate: America-First Alliance Emerges; Neoconservatives Neutralized,” scrubbed from the WND version but sensibly retained by the other editors.

After fielding another angry “Think About The Kids’ missive on a Twitter thread, I thought I should make my “position” (self-deprecating quotes) clear.

The kids are overrated. Most of them are socialists. (Their brains are not fully formed until the early 20s, or something.) Traditionalists value hierarchy (see August 14 … 2002 column). True-blue cultural conservatism doesn’t deify the effing Kids.

As the great Florence King put it, “… children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?'”

Oscar Wilde: Youth is wasted on the young.

Facebook Thread is Here.