Category Archives: Ilana Mercer

Just War And The Confederate Soldier

Constitution, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, History, Ilana Mercer, Military, States' Rights, War

Was on The Schilling Show, which is radio out of Charlottesville, to talk about our hero, Robert E. Lee. He and John Randolph of Roanoke compete in my heart.

The charming host, Rob, sprung on me something for which I was unprepared: “What would you tell Mayor Mike Signer, if he were listening and we know he does.” I should have humbly/politely declined, but this came out:

“Go back to Berkeley and Princeton, you carpetbagger.”

A thought on Confederate soldiers as heroes in the mold of any American military hero:

The mantra that brooks no challenging is, “Our Military Men and Women” uber alles. But not all American veterans are created equal. Therefore, are confederate soldiers truly honored by being considered as good as any other American soldier, by being welcomed belatedly and grudgingly into the military pantheon? For the War Against Northern Aggression was a just war. The other wars fought by the US, except for the Revolutionary War, not so much. unjust.

In any event, many of the military veterans I hear or see on TV contradict the values for which Lee stood. Lee fought for the locality, they fight for the Empire.

On the other hand, Confederate soldiers by default are heroes and patriots. Whereas American military veterans currently have performed feats of heroism in saving their buddies; their cause is mostly unjust: unjust wars. For if a soldier is not conscripted yet volunteers to fight the Empire’s unjust wars; is that heroic? If he fights to defend his family, community, town, kin; a soldier or any man is my hero.

But that’s the reactionary libertarian, the reincarnated Southern agrarian, the Articles-of-Confederation devotee speaking.

Donald, Destroyer Of The Administrative State

Donald Trump, Ilana Mercer, The State

President Trump’s goal: The “deconstruction of the administrative state,” said Stephen Bannon at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). “The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” is how my July 2016 book described the man, Donald Trump, and his mission:

The first libertarian book of Trump is The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed.

A Timely Christmas Gift

Christianity, Donald Trump, Ilana Mercer, Literature

The other day, a reader asked if  “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” published June 29, had been “updated since the election.” The candid reply is “no. No need.” The first libertarian book of Trump is as valid and predictive as it was when it came out. And the price of both formats has been slashed. For a last minute Christmas gift, the Kindle edition is a mere $3.99; the paperback $10.99.

Historians Dr. Clyde Wilson, whose books I highly recommend, reviewed “The Trump Revolution” in Chronicles magazine, the flagship publication of principled paleoconservationism. “Sounding The Trump” is in the October 2016 issue of Chronicles (subscribe). A short excerpt:

In important ways, a revolutionary process has begun. So argues Ilana Mercer in the best extended analysis yet published of the Trump phenomenon: “Trump is getting an atrophied political system to oscillate” in “an oddly marvelous uprising.” For us revolutionaries there is still a long way to go, but we are entitled to a “modest hope” that “an utterly different political animal, Donald Trump, might actually do some good for the countrymen he genuinely seems to love.”  … It is not Trump who is transforming American politics, the author asserts; “it’s the people of America doing the transforming.” Trump is the first politician in a long, long time who has regarded America as a country rather than a “proposition” and has actually spoken to and for “the people.” Far from being “divisive,” his plain speaking has enthusiastically united large numbers of Americans. …

… “White Lives Matter Less” has been, in Mercer’s words, “the creedal pillar” of our public life. Without ungraciousness to any, Trump has shown that it is OK for white Americans to declare that they have had enough of “the pigment burden” that has been piled on their backs. This paleolibertarian author does not disguise her disgust at the fashionable statism, indistinguishable from the collectivist left and without a clue to what “free trade” really means, that passes for libertarianism today. …

… as Mercer points out with tough realism, … In this post-constitutional time, it may be that “the best liberty lovers can look to is action and counter-action, force and counterforce in the service of liberty.” A president hoping for reform will face 160,000 pages of federal laws and regulations and relentless sabotage by the Banksters, Bombers, Bureaucrats, and Busybodies who now govern us. He cannot be a moderate if he hopes to accomplish anything.

On “Mercer’s Menckenesque ability to coin memorable phrases describing the empowered fools of our time,” Professor Wilson’s asks: “Does any contemporary writer do it better?”

Finally, a reviewer with a sense of fun; someone with the good sense to have a hearty chuckle at this verbal swordplay:

Mercer on the media: “news nitworks,” the “War Street Journal,” “idiot’s lantern,” “unsharpened pencil,” “tele-tarts,” a “circle jerk of power brokers,” “one-trick donkeys,” “celebrated mediocrities,” “another banal bloviation,” the “cable commentariat as a cog in the corpulent D.C. fleshpot.”

Mercer on our rulers and would-be rulers: “parasites in waiting”; “nation-building at the point of the bayonet makes [Hillary] barking happy”; “Banana Republicans”; “dwarf-tossing” (William Kristol’s promotion of nonentities as Trump alternatives); the “quaint expectation that voters, not party operatives, would choose the nominee”; the “silent majority that dare not speak its name”; “what our crypto-leftist conservatives are ramming down our proverbial gullets are dogmas, not values”; the “master-servant relationship between Republicans and the Religious Right”; the “think tanks’ industry for the god of war”; “neoconservatives speaking like Tocqueville but acting like Robespierre”; “neoconservatives standing athwart every valid form of American conservatism yelling stop.”

What a review and what an honor!

And to all my readers: I’m honored to have had your support for all these years. Thank you!

Merry Christmas and a happy Hanukkah and New Year.

ilana