Category Archives: Ilana Mercer

UPDATE III: Magic Manhattan, Matters of the Mind (&, Yes, Manhattan’s Magnificent)

America, Ilana Mercer, Individual Rights, Intelligence, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Rights, South-Africa

I am back at my desk after a magnificent trip to Manhattan, where it was my distinction and delight to address the New York City Junto gathering as the featured speaker for the month of May.

The title of my address was “Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”

For his generous and gracious hospitality I must thank the formidable force behind the NYC Junto forum, Victor Niederhoffer, Ph.D. Dr. Niederhoffer, with whom I enjoyed a late night snack after the lively event, is a well-known “professional investor,” trader and speculator. In other words, a man of the free, glorious, financial markets. He founded Junto in 1985, as a discussion group for people who treasure liberty (and, yes, the great Gene Epstein was present).

Dr. Niederhoffer puts NYC Junto guests up at The Harvard Club of New York, established in the late 1800s. I hope to have an image or two for you of the setting, later this week.

The turnout was good and the interactions most enjoyable.

The courteous organizers (Rudolf Hauser, Iris Bell and Linda Peterson) had prepared an introduction to this scribe and her work. It was posted at Junto.org, here. Not being a man who is easily scripted, Dr. Niederhoffer made a valiant attempt to stick to it. But after a few sentences, he gave up and said something to this effect:

“All I can tell you is that you can’t win an argument with this woman. I’ve tried and failed.”

As we say in Hebrew, “Dayenu.” Coming from Victor Niederhoffer, that’s more than enough for this woman.

At the time, when Dr. Niederhoffer and I had had the exchange to which he conceded defeat, I replied thus: “It takes a man and a gentleman to know and say what you’ve said. There are too few of those these days.”

More materially, the quality of recognizing, respecting and heeding intelligence speaks to who a man is. You cannot learn this quality. It is rare, as it demands—and coexists with—a healthy and happy ego.

Other than Dr. Niederhoffer, I have met one other man very recently who has this quality. Otherwise, not a day goes by when one is not saddled with the enormous opportunity costs, personal and professional, that accompany dealing with an ego-driven Idiocracy.

For idiots are invariably malevolent. Oscar Wilde said it best in one of his plays: “She thought that because he was stupid he would be kindly, when of course, kindliness requires imagination and intellect.”

UPDATE I: Here is a very blurred image. I have a few more, also blurred, that I will upload to the Facebook photo album, eventually.

May, 2012, Ilana @ NYC Junto:

UPDATE II: When the punishing publication process of Into the Cannibal’s Pot culminated in a book on Amazon—also The Only Shop in Town—hundreds of my readers wrote in private to share their impressions with me. I say again to all new readers and friends made what I’ve said to the aforementioned readers over the year. The conversation must take place in public, on the forums that exist for the purpose of spreading the word about—and discussing—these ideas.

Of these, Amazon is the most vital to The Cannibal’s cause. Please post your reviews to Amazon. Those who’ve done so over the last year have heard from me (and have my deepest appreciation).

Otherwise, all topics are discussed on BAB (Barely a Blog), which I personally moderate and maintain, on Facebook (ditto), Twitter, and in the Comments Sections appended to the WND and RT weekly articles.

UPDATE III (May Eighth): In reply to Sunny Black, see the new BAB post, “Manhattan Le Magnifique.”

UPDATE III: Planet IRS (Police State USA)

English, Europe, Human Accomplishment, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Media, Private Property, Regulation, South-Africa, Taxation

The following is excerpted from my new, weekly column, “Planet IRS”:

“You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” Those are the chorus lyrics to Hotel California,” the haunting rock classic by the Eagles.

Americans who try “running for the door”—in the evocative words of Glenn Frey, and the Dons Felder and Henley—soon discover that they “are all just prisoners here …”

Prisoners of Uncle Sam’s device.

If he can tolerate TSA assaults as he departs the country, an American who chooses to live and work overseas cannot escape the Internal Revenue Service. The United States is perhaps the only country “to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad.”

To loss of privacy and property, add the prospect of prison—and you get why, as Reuters has reported, droves of Americans are “renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards.”

On pain of criminal charges and “penalties of up to $100,000 or 50 percent of undeclared accounts, whichever is larger,” the expatriate must report his own bank accounts and all conjoint accounts—a spouse, a client, or business partners.

The victims of this shakedown are residents who have foreign bank accounts (the Canadian equivalent of a small USA 401K, in this scribe’s case), in addition to “an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad.” The aims of their pursuers, the IRS, are control and compliance. The rogue agency’s source of revenue, in this context, is derived primarily from penalties for forgetfulness or faulty filing.

All fear bankrupting fines, even imprisonment.” …

Click on the link to read the complete column, “Planet IRS.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

UPDATE I: On Facebook, Anthony Michael Miceli writes this: “You’re one of the most honest writers that is publicly known. This and a lot of your work SHOULD be carried by major newspapers but when most are controlled by just a handful of corporations the writing and thought pool becomes the same incestuous crap ppl haven been exposed to for years.”

I reply: It takes concerted pressure from readers like yourself, AMM, to sway the editorial gatekeepers across the country. What should irk you is not that opinion such as mine (also yours) is shunned; it’s the mediocrity and piss-poor, unimaginative writing that is embraced instead. Also, to help restore standards, let us separate writers from TV show men and women. Let us restore the division of labor. Only a few people manage to straddle both worlds (Ann Coulter, for instance, who is a Republican through-and-through). Most TV showmen with a large presence, or politicians, ain’t writers.

UPDATE II: I shouldn’t, but I will. I mean, there is a need to say IT, simply because few know better. And, after all, to a contemporary journalism teacher, instructing the aspiring young writer, creativity equals, “Sharing your passion” (“I love myself, and my dog, and me again”), “showing your feelings (“I feel like Obama is trying to feel for us, but like…”). So, you need to hear this from someone who learned the hard way (from tough veterans):

The lead to this column (used to be written “lede”), the Hotel California segue, is bloody good. Just saying.

UPDATE III: An example of the above necessary division of labor: Judge Napolitano. Great orator; poor writer.

UPDATED: IRS Survivors (Fleeing Police State USA)

Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Law, Liberty, Natural Law, Taxation

Writer Christopher Sandford describes his interactions with the Internal Revenue Service as “dealing with a simultaneously incompetent and psychotically aggressive opponent.” “What is beyond a doubt is that our relentlessly progressive and humanely empathetic leader had done precious little for the rights of those of us who find ourselves caught in the spokes of his infernal government machinery. Indeed, he and his government myrmidons have frequently spoken of their intention to pursue the allegedly noncompliant taxpayer to the very brink of that unhappy individuals’ endurance and sanity. That most certainly is part of Obama’s record.” (Writing in the April issue of Chronicles Magazine.)

“Think the IRS can’t send you to prison?,” warns CBS’ Survivor winner Richard Hatch in a timely television commercial. “The IRS sends people to prison and they’re not celebrities. If you owe the IRS $10,000 or more, call for your free tax consultation NOW. Listen, I went to prison for over four years, and you don’t want to,” Hatch tells potential victims.

The US government exercises a brutal tax-enforcement regimen. As a police state, it regularly finds citizens guilty of crimes absent the intent to commit a crime—the legal imperative of mens rea.

The “taxpayer,” compliant or not, however, must accurately be described as an innocent, non-aggressive property owner, who has the natural right to keep what he has worked for, or what was voluntarily bequeathed to him.

In the case of the so-called “non-compliant” victim of this armed and dangerous syndicate—the state—his actions have been criminalized, even though his alleged crime, more often than not, was unintentional; he did not mean to “deprive” his masters of the spoils of his labor.

Going by Thomas Jefferson, we live under tyranny, for as this founder said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

UPDATED (April 17): Fleeing Police State USA. Special Report: Tax time pushes some Americans to take a hike.

UPDATED: Putin Saves Us From Ourselves

Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Ron Paul, Russia, The West, War

“Putin Saves Us From Ourselves” is my new column (front page on RT, the column was buried at the bottom of WND’s second page, where two-day-old columns go to die, so is unlikely to edify the few who might have been amenable to edification). Here’s an excerpt:

“He vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling on President Bashar Assad to step down. Such a resolution, he argued, would serve as a ruse for the US to do a Libya in Syria.

He made the case that the “Syrian crisis would be better resolved by Syrians themselves,” and that the West should confine itself to brokering a ceasefire in that country, and encouraging dialogue between the feuding factions.

And, “Six months ago,” by the Daily Star’s telling, he “vetoed an earlier draft resolution threatening Damascus with sanctions.”

He is Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president elect. And he has done nothing that Ron Paul, president of America’s libertarians, would not have done: work to avert another ill-conceived, idiotic American intervention in a country in which it has no business, advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and oppose economic sanctions, which always and everywhere do more damage than good.

A just course of action is a just course of action irrespective of the actor.

The Sino-Russian alliance has been promoting the idea of an accord, involving “all the Syrians, the government and all opposition groups,” or so the Washington Post framed their side. NATO (nee the US) was champing at the bit to take the battle for Syria away from the Syrians and put it where they believe it belongs: the US military and its proxies.

Now, out of the blue, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pretending that the United States and its Arab and European allies have always supported such a civilized solution in Syria, and were merely waiting on the Russians to get with the peace program. This is the same woman who came close to squatting on Gadhafi’s corpse, in honor of her country’s custom of peeing on its dead enemies.

Yes, one minute the Obama Administration and its UN and Arab-League lickspittles had been itching to oust Assad. The next, the same coalition was dusting Kofi Annan off and dispatching him, as a UN envoy, to mediate a resolution to Syria’s civil war.

What’s going on here? …

The complete column is “Putin Saves Us From Ourselves.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

UPDATE: So true, Stephen Hayes. This is why I keep at my readers to post their responses to what they read here far and wide; post them to where my columns are featured, at RT (a new audience), and WND (which buried this column on the second page, where 2-day-old columns are posted), on Amazon (where is your Cannibal review, Stephen?), and other forums. Here on BAB, you are preaching to the converted.