Category Archives: Democracy

Definitive Text On Democratic South Africa Reviewed @ Townhall.com

Conservatism, Democracy, Republicans, South-Africa

Why is Jack Kerwick’s review of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” at Townhall.com, so extraordinary? Here’s why (excerpted from the book under review):

South Africa was just one more issue on which Republicans had slipped between the sheets with the fashionable left. Members of America’s delinquent duopoly stood against the gradualism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, vis-à-vis South Africa. Pushing revolutionary radicalism on the Old South Africa was the goal not only in high diplomatic circles, but among most Republicans. With a few exceptions. As is documented in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot”:

“For advocating ‘constructive engagement’ with South Africa, members of his Republican Party issued a coruscating attack on Ronald Reagan. … Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., in particular, stated: ‘For this moment, at least, President Reagan has become an irrelevancy to the ideals, heartfelt and spoken, of America.'”

AND, who other than the extraordinary Jack Kerwick could pull off such a review? Jack is not only brilliant; he actually cares—this deep thinker cares deeply about the fate of the imperiled minority of South Africa and about the implications for his country and countrymen. Writes Dr. Kerwick:

“… But it would be a grave mistake to think that Cannibal is only about South Africa. It is not. As its author describes it, and as its subtitle makes clear, it is a ‘labor of love’ to her homelands old and new. Mercer is determined to spare America the same fate that befell South Africa. Furthermore, it would be as equally egregious a mistake to think that Cannibal is only, or even primarily, about race. There are larger issues to which Mercer speaks, issues with which conservatives have grappled from at least the time that their ‘patron saint,’ Edmund Burke, first articulated them.

“Though Mercer insists that she is no conservative, there are similarities, striking similarities, between her and Burke. The latter made an impassioned defense of his 18th century England against the radicalism of the French Revolution that he feared would soon enough ravage his country. It was in response to these ideological excesses that conservatism first emerged as a distinctive tradition of thought. Mercer carries on this estimable tradition inasmuch as she seeks to defend her new country, America, against the ravenous radicalisms that threaten it.”

“The forces that imperiled France and England in Burke’s day are the same forces that consumed South Africa and that imperil America in our own. These forces boil down to a lust, an insatiable lust, for revolutionary change and the ideological abstractions that inspire it. …”

“… However, it isn’t just the usual suspects—leftists or Democrats—who have an ardent affection for radical change and abstract ideals. The GOP and ‘the conservative press’ have had more than their share of true believers as well.”

“It was, after all, ‘conservatives’—or, more accurately, neoconservatives—that most rigorously supported George W. Bush’s campaign to ‘fundamentally transform’ the Middle East into an oasis of ‘Democracy.’ Noting that abstract ideals like Democracy are not timeless principles written in ‘human nature’ but the hard-earned gains of a civilization that has been millennia in the making, Mercer was among those who argued mightily against this fool’s errand from the outset. Though she fell out of favor with some notable ‘conservative’ media personalities for doing so, time has vindicated her while indicting her critics.”

“Like Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Ilana Mercer’s “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is at once timeless and all so timely. …”

Read on. “The Future of the Conservative Movement” is on Townhall.com.

(“The Cannibal” is available from Amazon. More editorial reviews are here. Please Like “The Cannibal”—and further its cause—on Facebook.)

Debt-Ceiling Derangement

Debt, Democracy, Economy

Here are some salient points I’ve picked from Anthony de Jasay’s essay, “Shall We Borrow from the Children?”:

* Government expenditure rises first, “with revenue seldom if ever catching up. The money never runs out, for unlike households, the government can always borrow whatever it needs to cover the deficit, almost regardless of how large it is. It owns a sort of widow’s curse whose magic lies in the state’s power to raise the taxes in the future that it has no stomach to raise in the present. The day of reckoning need never come, for old borrowing is always refinanced from new borrowing.”

* “… the markets tolerate high ratios for unsecured government borrowing whilst they would demand individual debtors to put up some security.”

* “Governments buy support by spending money, not by siphoning it away in taxes. Spending now and deferring the matching taxes to an indefinite future is dictated by the most elementary political know how and it should not surprise nor shock anyone to see it happen again and again, especially when elections approach and politicians start getting desperate. They are not wicked [I disagree], they are just playing by the democratic rules. That the electorate is quite content with these rules, or at least does not try to alter them is perhaps more difficult to explain. It may be that the bulk of the electorate just does not see the connection and cannot be bothered to think about it.” [Or perhaps they are “wicked”?]

* “The US has tried to stem [the deficit and public debt problem] by placing a ceiling on the federal debt, a measure whose only effect is to oblige the Congress to raise the debt ceiling every time the rising debt catches up with it.”

[SNIP]

The “contrast between [the electorate’s] collective and private behavior” is evident in the polls, if they are to be believed. “Americans strongly oppose government shutdown,” yet “the majority of Americans [also] oppose President Obama’s demand that Congress raise the debt ceiling without any spending cuts—by a margin of nearly two to one.” [Heritage]

UPDATE II: On Syria (And All Else), It’s ‘Us’ Against ‘Them’ (The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Military, War

“On Syria (And All Else), It’s ‘Us’ Against ‘Them'” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The “Us” of this column’s title needs no explaining. The “Them,” however, does. We the American people are up against an entity far more sinister than the traditional, inchoate enemy—terrorism—around which we are instructed to unite in purpose.

The debate over whether to strafe Syria or to stay out of that country pits us against the military-congressional-industrial complex, whose interests run counter to ours. …

… Prominent among a new breed of military man turned lawmaker to stalk the people’s House is Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger. A “veteran of the military,” who still serves as a military pilot in the National Guard, is how Kinzinger bills himself. War weary though he purports to be Kinzinger is not. The verbally flatulent representative from Illinois loved it when his ilk flew sorties over the Old Stable Iraq, and seeks a repeat performance over Syria. He appears to see no limits to the role the U.S. should play in rolling back evil around the world, out of “the goodness of our heart.” Yes, the constitutional principle Rep. Adam Kinzinger invokes to justify war against the wishes and interests of the American people is “The Goodness of Our Heart” Clause.

But then, a “Global Force for Good” is how the Navy promises to fulfill “The Goodness of Our Heart” Clause of the U.S. Constitution, on its frightful, promotional website. You see, members of the U.S. military do not regard themselves as defenders of the realm—unless by “realm” one means empire. They’ve been brainwashed to be foot soldiers for the federal government, whenever, wherever.

Imagine what America’s Founding Fathers would think of a military that straddles the planet, having assumed the unauthorized role of a “global force for good.” Those sages opposed the idea of a standing army. They understood that “a standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

The magnificent Robert E. Lee, on the other hand, had it right. To this American hero, local was beautiful. Gen. Lee saw himself as a Virginian first. Rep. Kinzinger is a Syrian first.

Baseless too is the idea that someone who’s seen war will be especially judicious in sending others to war. John McCain had suffered in war and has not stopped advocating for it ever since. John Kerry voted to go into Iraq. Ditto Chuck Hagel. …

Read the complete column. “On Syria (And All Else), It’s ‘Us’ Against ‘Them'” is now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “Most lawmakers undecided on Syria.”

“By CNN’s count, 59 senators and more than 280 representatives aren’t sure how they’ll vote on President Obama’s request for a military strike on Syria.” FULL STORY

UPDATE II (9/8): The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened.

… phones are bouncing off the hook, and almost unanimously people are saying do not get involved in a bloody and chaotic civil war in Syria

Miss Mubarak Yet?

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East

Sadly, and as this writer wrote on October 18, 2011, when Mohamed Husni Mubarak was ousted, the Egyptian Christian Coptic community lost a protector.

Yes, how is the Lotus Revolution working out? That was how the West had dubbed the mess in Egypt. With few exceptions, the American media slobbered mightily over the revolution in Egypt.

So, you had the Beltway libertarians joining Anderson Cooper (CNN), Neil Cavuto (Fox News), and Christiane Amanpour (ABC) in spirit at Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate Egypt’s democratic spring; you had America’s female journos rushing to the mainly macho scene to show solidarity with the generic freedom fighters, who, it turned out, doubled up as common-or-garden gropers and rapists.

At the time, this writer wrote about the impossibility of a happy ending “in a country that has become progressively more Islamic since the 1950s.” I added that, “Mubarak’s dictatorial powers were directed, unjustly indubitably, against the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim brotherhood.” Unjustly, but probably quite usefully.

“This is about freedom,” said the immensely silly Lara Logan before the freedom fighters piled up on top of her.

Indeed.

In touting the sea-change underway in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world, our moron media interviewed 0.1% of the country’s population, the intelligentsia, to extrapolate to the majority. And there was also the a central stupidity, so prevalent in the US, whereby all human beings are said to be the same under the skin, with an equal “civilizing potential.”