On Alhurra TV, May 14, opposite Dr. Zuhdi Jasser: I know what I said. No idea what the translator said and was unaware there’d be overdubbing in real time.
Category Archives: Ilana Mercer
Donald, Destroyer Of The Administrative 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
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
The Third Degree à la Germany: Answering To Junge Freiheit
A change of pace for a change. “The Third Degree à la Germany” is the current column. It’s Junge Freiheit’s personalities-from-abroad questionnaire, now on The Unz Review (where, as in Germany, some got the humor. Townhall.com not so much). An excerpt:
Junge Freiheit is Germany’s finest weekly newspaper. It’s easily its only authentically rightist, freedom-loving, classically liberal publication. When Junge Freiheit’s editors come calling; this writer is always happy to oblige—and not only because my weekly column once appeared in JF. But also because, present company excepted, the young editors at JF are simply the kindest, most professional journalists I’ve encountered. What was it that Oscar Wilde said about kindness? “She thought that because he was stupid he would be kindly, when of course, kindliness requires imagination and intellect.” Having just emerged from a 15-year-long, abusive, professional relationship; kindness and courtesy are indeed new and lovely things to behold.
However, my Teutonic editor lit a fire under me. I was asked to make haste in answering Junge Freiheit’s personalities-from-abroad questionnaire, for the November 11 issue. You’re in good company was his matter-of-fact message. But get to it.
The company: Nigel Farage (author of Brexit), Eric Burdon (rock-and-roll legend), Douglas Murray (famous neoconservative), Lord Christopher Monckton (politician and inventor), Thomas Drake (Whistleblower), Colin Crouch (author of “Postdemocracy”), Frederick Forsyth (bestselling author), Charlie Duke (Apollo 11 and Apollo 16 astronaut), Tony Sheridan (early Beatles), etc.
The record time for answering the JF questionnaire: six minutes. Needless to say, I failed miserably to beat it.
JUNGE FREIHEIT: Where would you like to be at this very moment?
ILANA MERCER: I‘m strictly reality oriented. I don’t indulge in make-believe. I don’t wish to be where I’m not. …
… Read the rest. “The Third Degree à la Germany,” Junge Freiheit’s personalities-from-abroad questionnaire, is now on The Unz Review.
JUNGE FREIHEIT, z.Hd. Christian Dorn, Hohenzollerndamm 27 A, 10713 Berlin, GERMANY, November 11 issue, page 27.