Category Archives: History

NEW COLUMN: Conservatism’s Perennial Piñata

Colonialism, Conservatism, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, History, Neoconservatism

THE NEW COLUMN is “Conservatism’s Perennial Piñata.” “Politically powerless and proud, Native-Americans are an easy target.” It’s currently on WND.com. An excerpt:

…  As they heap contempt upon Native-American societies—establishment bobble heads, with admirable exceptions, are at the beck and call of African-American interests. Most conservatives agree about the legitimacy of African-Americans’ eternal grievances (“the fault of Democrats,” they intone). The same establishment offers incontinent exhilaration about the greatness of African-American heroes (MLK über alles). And the only argument mustered in these quarters for raising, rather than removing, statues for the South’s heroes is, “We need to preserve our history, horribly flawed with respect to African-Americans, mea culpa.” Or, “Who’s next? Jefferson?”

Conservatives seem constitutionally (as in physically) incapable of arguing the merits of Robert E. Lee , something Lord Acton managed on solid philosophical grounds.

Here’s a theory as to why conservatives use American Indians as their perennial piñata, while generally acceding to the aggressive demands for permanent victim status levied by African-Americans. …

… READ THE REST. “Conservatism’s Perennial Piñata” is currently on WND.com.

You can read the Mercer Column weekly on the Unz Review, WND.com, Daily Caller, frequently at American Thinker, very occasionally on Townhall.com, and certainly on the other fine outlets listed here. It’s always posted, eventually, on IlanaMercer.com, under Articles. Please share.

UPDATED (6/28): The Face of a Fanatic, Or A Modern-Day Radical Republican

History, Neoconservatism, Republicans, States' Rights

A nerdy observation, but Richard Painter, a modern-day Radical Republican by any other name, has the same crazed look worn by the original Radical Republican, the fanatic Thaddeus Stevens.

MSNBC’s Richard Painter:

Here is the terrifying Thaddeus Stevens:

The context (as in who the Radical Republicans were) in “The Radical Republicans: The Antifa of 1865.”

UPDATE (6/28):

More like murderer John Brown:

Image result for john brown

UPDATED (10/13): ‘Liberal Brains Are Pickled In The Formaldehyde Of Identity Politics’

Barack Obama, Democrats, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, War

Writing about the death of the liberal anti-war sensibility and movement, brilliant old-school liberal John Pilger notes that nothing penetrates those “liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics. Commodified and market-tested ‘diversity’ is the new liberal brand. …”

“The Killing of History“:

… Europe is threatened again with becoming a military training ground for nuclear weapons. We must raise our voice against this.”

But not in America. The thousands who turned out for Senator Bernie Sanders’ “revolution” in last year’s presidential campaign are collectively mute on these dangers. That most of America’s violence across the world has been perpetrated not by Republicans, or mutants like Trump, but by liberal Democrats, remains a taboo.

Barack Obama provided the apotheosis, with seven simultaneous wars, a presidential record, including the destruction of Libya as a modern state. Obama’s overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government has had the desired effect: the massing of American-led Nato forces on Russia’s western borderland through which the Nazis invaded in 1941.

Obama’s “pivot to Asia” in 2011 signalled the transfer of the majority of America’s naval and air forces to Asia and the Pacific for no purpose other than to confront and provoke China. The Nobel Peace Laureate’s worldwide campaign of assassinations is arguably the most extensive campaign of terrorism since 9/11.

What is known in the US as “the left” has effectively allied with the darkest recesses of institutional power, notably the Pentagon and the CIA, to see off a peace deal between Trump and Vladimir Putin and to reinstate Russia as an enemy, on the basis of no evidence of its alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The true scandal is the insidious assumption of power by sinister war-making vested interests for which no American voted. The rapid ascendancy of the Pentagon and the surveillance agencies under Obama represented an historic shift of power in Washington. Daniel Ellsberg rightly called it a coup. The three generals running Trump are its witness. …

MORE.

Still, this Rightist thanks the liberal ladies of Code Pink for stepping into—and filling—the antiwar void, left and right. The traditional antiwar Right was magnificent during Genghis Bush’s rule. Is it MIA for Trump? As to the intrepid ladies in pink: many of them are mature. Perhaps that’s the reason they have the focus Pilger laments as lost.

UPDATE I (10/13) :

POTUS is picking a fight with the mighty Iranian Revolutionary Guard: Is America alone allowed to have Special Forces?

And indeed, North Korea has since said precisely this:

UPDATE II: How has that bellicosity worked out with North Korea, Mr. president? Dennis Rodman would do better.

North Korea is not ruling out diplomacy, but “before we can engage in diplomacy with the Trump administration, we want to send a clear message that the DPRK has a reliable defensive and offensive capability to counter any aggression from the United States,” the official said.

CNN: “North Korea rejects diplomacy with US for now, source says.“

UPDATED (10/12): Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not

America, Classical Liberalism, Critique, History, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Natural Law, Objectivism, Private Property

A NEW ESSAY, “Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not,” is on Mises Wire.

The Indian tribesman’s claim to his ancient stomping grounds can’t be reduced to a title search at the deeds office. That’s the stuff of the positive law. And this was the point I took away from a conversation, circa 2000, with Mr. Property Rights himself, Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Dr. Hoppe argued unassailably—does he argue any other way?—that if Amerindians had repeatedly traversed, for their livelihood, the same hunting, fishing and foraging grounds, they would have, in effect, homesteaded these, making them their own. Another apodictic profundity deduced from that conversation: The strict Lockean stipulation, whereby to make property one’s own, one must transform it to Western standards, is not convincing.

In an article marking Columbus Day—the day Conservatism Inc. beats up on what remains of America’s First People—Ryan McMaken debunked Ayn Rand’s specious claim that aboriginal Americans “did not have the concept of property or property rights.” This was Rand’s ruse for justifying Europeans’ disregard for the homesteading rights of the First Nations. “[T]he Indian tribes had no right to the land they lived on because” they were primitive and nomadic.

Hoppean Homesteading

Cultural supremacy is no argument for the dispossession of a Lesser Other. To libertarians, Lockean—or, rather Hoppean—homesteading is sacrosanct. He who believes he has a right to another man’s property ought to produce proof that he is its rightful owner. “As the old legal adage goes, ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ as it is the best evidence of legitimate title. The burden of proof rests squarely with the person attempting to relieve another of present property titles.” (Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, p. 276.)

However, even if we allow that “the tribes and individual Indians had no concept of property,” which McMaken nicely refutes—it doesn’t follow that dispossessing them of their land would have been justified. From the fact that a man or a community of men lacks the intellectual wherewithal or cultural and philosophical framework to conceive of these rights—it doesn’t follow that he has no such rights, or that he has forfeited them. Not if one adheres to the ancient doctrine of natural rights. If American Indians had no attachment to the land, they would not have died defending their territories.

Neither does the fact the First Nations formed communal living arrangements invalidate land ownership claims, as McMaken elucidates. Think of the Kibbutz. Kibbutzim in Israel instantiate the principles of voluntary socialism. As such, they are perfectly fine living arrangements, where leadership is empowered as custodian of the resource and from which members can freely secede. You can’t rob the commune of its assets just because members elect to live communally. …

… READ THE REST. “Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not” is on Mises Wire.

UPDATE (10/12):  Facebook Thread.

Those who are unfamiliar with the methods of praxeology and deductive reasoning will twist into pretzels to find fault with this essay. Maybe read the ancients (not the neocons) on natural rights.critiquing neocons on natural rights is a straw man.