Category Archives: Democracy

Anti-Apartheid Does Not Mean Pro-Democracy

Democracy, Ethics, Etiquette, Individual Rights, Morality, South-Africa

Miguel write:

Mrs Mercer:

I purchased your book Into the Cannibal’s Pot and have just started reading it.

From your book and other sources on your website, I understand that you and your family (particularly your father) held an anti-apartheid stance.

Your book however, describes the current situation in SA, particularly after the multi-racial, democratic elections of 1994, as having resulted in a borderline lawless state.

My question to you is: Did you believe, prior to 1994, that the an end to the apartheid regime would bring a more beneficial political and quality of life process to SA.

Thanking you advance

It goes without saying that I make a point of replying to almost all letters I get, provide they’re polite. Thousands, since I began writing. As George Will once wrote, “manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related—as a foundation is related to a house—to the word civilization.”

I’ll address in a future post the issue of what failing to answer your mail says about you. For now, here’s my reply to Miguel:

Hello Miguel,

Thank you for reading Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.

I believe that nowhere in my book do I state the belief below. Moreover, from the fact that I oppose state-enforced apartheid—it does not follow that I support what I call in The Cannibal, a “raw, ripe democracy.”

By the end of the book, you will better understand this perspective. My involvement in SA as a young woman was humanitarian, not political.

You are correct in your assessment of my father’s thinking.

ILANA Mercer

McCain’s Rebels Lunch On … Enemy Lungs

Democracy, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Lebanon, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans

Senator John McCain is not working with much. He finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets. As IQ ace Steve Sailer once quipped, “To lose one plane over Vietnam may be regarded as a heroic tragedy; to lose five planes here and there looks like carelessness.”

McMussolini wants the US to go to war with Syria to support the ragtag rebels, whoever they are. (Here is a useful history of the US-Syria relationship.)

To that end, earlier this week, “US Senator John McCain,” reported Al Jazeerra, “crossed from Turkey into Syria to meet with rebel leaders in the war-torn nation.”

Via Economic Policy Journal:

When John McCain slipped into Syria the other day to meet with Islamist rebels, Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted “best wishes” to his fellow warmonger and claimed “dibs on his office if he doesn’t come back.” Leave it to Sen. Graham, who has been agitatingalong with McCain for the US to send weapons to the rebels, to joke about the untrustworthiness of the very people he wants to arm. But the rebels’ savagery is no joke: we are, after all, talking about people who eat the lungs of their enemies. …
… Here is a man who is the Republican party’s voice when it comes to foreign policy, a role he has appropriated due to his intimacy with those who book the Sunday talk shows, and yet when it comes to America’s relationship with the rest of the world his utter and complete ignorance is appalling.
He told us the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be “fairly easy.” He pontificated that the anthrax attacks were delivered by the Iraqis. His preferred policy for Afghanistan: we should “muddle through,” rather than withdraw. When the North Koreans started acting out, he averred we ought to threaten them with “extinction.” And when Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia got into an armed conflict over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, McCain announced “Today, We Are All Georgians” and demanded we go to war with Moscow. He thinks Iran is training Al Qaeda: he also thinks Iraq shares a border with Pakistan.
In short, McCain doesn’t know s%^*t about foreign policy: he has been wrong, wrong, wrong about absolutely everything. So it isn’t merely ironic that he is leading the charge in demanding we intervene in Syria – it’s downright crazy.

What’s as troubling, but doesn’t surprise in the least, is that the Obama administration has also adopted the position that Assad must be removed.

Rule by Alawite minority (with some nominal power sharing), however, is by far the more civilized of the options facing this country. This, unfortunately, is the reality.

Soon you might be supplying McCain’s rebels with rations.

Join the conversation on my Facebook Page.

Moron Strong

Bush, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iraq

“We are Boston strong” was coined, or just parroted perhaps, by Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts’ Indian American, senior United States Senator. Warren was speaking at the memorial service for Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, another victim of the brothers Tsarnaev.

We are also Moron Strong.

The Shrub, former President George W. Bush, delivered an address at Thursday morning’s library dedication ceremony on the campus of SMU in Dallas, Texas. There he said:

“… my deepest conviction, the guiding principle of the administration, is that the United States of America must strive to expand the reach of freedom. [APPLAUSE]”

The Iraqis are still reeling from Genghis Bush’s faith and freedom-based initiative to their country.

No self-examination or reflection have happened in that head … or in Bush-revering ditto-heads like Dana Perino’s.

UPDATE II: It Takes A Village Idiot: The Latest On Hillary Clinton’s Culpability In Benghazi

Democracy, Feminism, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Intelligence, The State

Today came confirmation, in the form of a promised comprehensive progress report on Benghazi, of what I had prognosticated back in November, 2012.

“In the fullness of time … it will transpire that the woman who crack[ed] the whip at Foggy Bottom had decided to leave the U.S. embassy in Libya undefended.
The open community center [Hillary Clinton] was running there was meant to signal that the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, was a success. (Recall, Libya was a war of the womb, a product of the romantic minds of three women who fantasized about an Arab awakening. This estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids began, as in Greek mythology, with the Gorgon sisters. Medusa’s posse included Samantha Power, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. They helped Hillary devise the casus belli for the war.)”

It takes a village idiot, and state immunity, to run an “open community center” in a country you’ve turned into Jihad Central.

Released today and reported by Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, the Benghazi report, which will likely be ignored by most media, is so fresh and damning—that it is still unavailable online.

I will post a link as soon as one becomes available. Send one if you have one.

UPDATE I: Via Fox News: “Report: WH Altered Benghazi Talking Points to Protect State Department”:

Researchers for five Republican-controlled House committees have come out with a scathing indictment of the Obama administration’s response to the September 11, 2012 terror attack in Benghazi.
Jennifer Griffin reports that the 46-page progress report concludes that the administration’s response was a concerted attempt to insulate the Department of State from blame following the attack.

“Findings in the report include”:

“Prior to the Benghazi attacks, State Department officials in Libya made repeated requests for additional security that were denied in Washington despite ample documentation of the threat posed by violent extremist militias.”
“Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton.”
“In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.”

UPDATE II: Text of the “Interim Progress Report,” with thanks to Mr. Love on Facebook.