Category Archives: Individualism Vs. Collectivism

Updated: Elections Fatigue (& A Shout-Out To An Anti-Politician)

America, Education, Elections 2008, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, Taxation

What’s there to say about the interminable electioneering we’re being subjected to? I have less and less to say by the day.

For one, the candidates do not represent me or uphold my rights. If anything; they promise to violate them. The Hillary-Hussein-McCain unholy trinity caters in one way or another to the burgeoning American welfariate.

I’m also repulsed by the unchecked chauvinism of the elections coverage. Not a word about world events have I heard in weeks, perhaps months. America’s pathological, election-time self-absorption makes a mockery of the idea that the US is suited to lead the world. Shouldn’t a world leader take an interest in the world?

I believe the last debate between Hillary and Barack was actually worth watching if only for the performance of a journalist whom I’ve praised in the past: Charles Gibson. Gibson actually flouted the common consensus about his job description and asked the messiah some tough questions. He has a pattern of such subversion.

Alas, by that time, I was so thoroughly fatigued, I failed to watch.

Let me take the time, however, to give a shout-out to an anti-politician: Actor Wesley Snipes, who “was sentenced to three years in prison for a “history of contempt over a period of time” for U.S. tax laws.” Snipes got bad legal advice, but he’s a hero for acting on his contempt for legalized theft.

Update (April 26): MSM, which is seldom to be trusted, keeps reporting that the American people cannot tolerate the scrappy competition between Hillary and Barack. We are led to believe that, as I put it, Americans are so delicate they cannot stomach “a vigorous race for the highest office in the land because it is, well, vigorous.”

Presuming this is true and Americans are as soft as MSM portrays them—at least the ones that aren’t brewing with bitterness and bigotry and doodling with guns—why do you think this is so?

Could it be that the emphasis in schools on cooperative as opposed competitive endeavors—on the girlie over the boyish mindset—has something to do with it? The fact that everyone gets a prize at school for something, rather than for winning or being the best—could this be a factor in crippling the competitive spirit?

If the media is to be believed, Americans will soon be assuming the fetal position and whimpering in the corner if Hill and B. Hussein don’t stop exchanging barbs.

Boohoo.

Updated: Elections Fatigue (& A Shout-Out To An Anti-Politician)

America, Education, Elections 2008, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, Taxation

What’s there to say about the interminable electioneering we’re being subjected to? I have less and less to say by the day.

For one, the candidates do not represent me or uphold my rights. If anything; they promise to violate them. The Hillary-Hussein-McCain unholy trinity caters in one way or another to the burgeoning American welfariate.

I’m also repulsed by the unchecked chauvinism of the elections coverage. Not a word about world events have I heard in weeks, perhaps months. America’s pathological, election-time self-absorption makes a mockery of the idea that the US is suited to lead the world. Shouldn’t a world leader take an interest in the world?

I believe the last debate between Hillary and Barack was actually worth watching if only for the performance of a journalist whom I’ve praised in the past: Charles Gibson. Gibson actually flouted the common consensus about his job description and asked the messiah some tough questions. He has a pattern of such subversion.

Alas, by that time, I was so thoroughly fatigued, I failed to watch.

Let me take the time, however, to give a shout-out to an anti-politician: Actor Wesley Snipes, who “was sentenced to three years in prison for a “history of contempt over a period of time” for U.S. tax laws.” Snipes got bad legal advice, but he’s a hero for acting on his contempt for legalized theft.

Update (April 26): MSM, which is seldom to be trusted, keeps reporting that the American people cannot tolerate the scrappy competition between Hillary and Barack. We are led to believe that, as I put it, Americans are so delicate they cannot stomach “a vigorous race for the highest office in the land because it is, well, vigorous.”

Presuming this is true and Americans are as soft as MSM portrays them—at least the ones that aren’t brewing with bitterness and bigotry and doodling with guns—why do you think this is so?

Could it be that the emphasis in schools on cooperative as opposed competitive endeavors—on the girlie over the boyish mindset—has something to do with it? The fact that everyone gets a prize at school for something, rather than for winning or being the best—could this be a factor in crippling the competitive spirit?

If the media is to be believed, Americans will soon be assuming the fetal position and whimpering in the corner if Hill and B. Hussein don’t stop exchanging barbs.

Boohoo.

Improving Nature The Randian Way

Britain, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Objectivism, Reason

I have a heroic Randian friend in the UK—you have to be a lager-than-life character to make vast fortunes in that Fabian climate. When he’s not negotiating mega-million pound acquisitions, he partakes in long-distance Triathlons—qualified for the World Championships last year, and aims to do so again this year.

He said this today:

“If men had to do this [childbirth], all the resources in the world would have been put into getting the process easier, for sure.”

This is so great—just up Mercer’s logical lane—because, he, at once, 1) acknowledge the great hardship of childbirth. And 2) man’s general superiority—on the facts of it—and drive to streamline and innovate that which is imperfect.

This is just up Mercer’s logical and inspirational alleys: The Man wants to improve on nature. In this realm, nature sucks. If not for technology, I have no doubt I’d have died in childbirth. An awful business.

Update # II:Erasing The Afrikaner Nation

Classical Liberalism, Communism, Crime, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, South-Africa

“CNN’s Kyra Phillips has led her viewers to believe that dangling a noose—an impolite and impolitic form of expression—is a hate crime; a black man beating a white man to a pulp—not so much. Being maimed or murdered, evidently, doesn’t compare to being maligned. Phillips and the feminized establishment media have difficulties differentiating a felony from an affront to feelings. No wonder these wonder men and women are mum about who’s killing whom in the democratic South Africa, the pride of the liberal press…”

I’m aware that in “Erasing the Afrikaner Nation” I’m reminding readers, on the happy occasion of the Thanksgiving, of brutal injustices. But, as I give thanks for the safety and security I enjoy in my American home, and for the love of my beloved husband and daughter, I think too of the innocents—members of my extended family included—imperiled in my former homeland.

Happy Thanksgiving,

ILANA

Update # I: Some of the letters received and promptly discarded were the ones with The Expected Epithet. As one wise scholar once said to me, “If you are not called a racist, then, it seems to me, you are in intellectual trouble and it is high time to reconsider your own thinking.”

The other less expected avenue of attack was a defense of Marxism, coupled to a claim, thrown into the ignorant mix, that the South African Communist Party is a spent force in that political landscape. On display here is an ignorance of the ANC, its history and philosophy.

The South African Communist Party, the African National Congress, and the ANC’s terrorist arm, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), were overlapping, intricately intertwined entities, historically and ideologically.

The Communist Party is a rib from the ANC’s rib cage. There is an overlap in membership, confirms the government’s own website, with “a number of SACP members occupying seats in the General Assembly by virtue of their dual ANC membership—The party’s membership overlaps with those of the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), its partners in what is known as the tripartite alliance. It has significant representation in the ANC and government, from the executive down to local government structures.”
“The party believes in the establishment of a socialist society, which it says should be characterized by democracy, equality, freedom, and the socialization of the predominant part of the economy.”

“Socialization,” to those who still don’t know, is antithetical to freedom. This is the embodiment of Orwellian speech.

The ANC-orchestrated “racial socialism” that is contributing to the destruction of South Africa would do any modern, media-savvy Marxist proud. This is not merely affirmative action—which is bad enough—but rather, legislation that does away with property rights, with the aim of transferring wealth, by stealth, from white owners to black non-owners. ANC position papers hint at its ideological direction/intentions. The leopard has not changed its spots; it’s just a very cunning leopard.

Update # II (Nov. 27): A number of “Christian” souls have written in to gloat: Afrikaners are getting their comeuppance because of the sins of apartheid. The more hateful of these letters were not published.

These collectivists conflate the actions and legislation enacted by the state with the wishes and will of all European people—Boer and British alike. Such is the collectivist mindset.

However, even if we concede the collectivist’s argument, the destruction wrought by the criminal class (that includes the ANC government) to South Africa’s economy and productive workers dwarfs compared to the sins of apartheid. What you have in the offing is the looming demise of a civilization. As for the numbers, I quote from an essay familiar by now to readers of BAB and IlanaMercer.com:

“Few know that during the decades of the repressive apartheid regime, only a few hundred Africans perished as a direct result of police brutality. A horrible injustice, indubitably, but nothing approximating the carnage under ‘free’ South Africa, where thousands of Africans perish every few months. (Let us not beat about the bush; crime in South Africa is black on black and black on white.)”

But then, collectivists love what they’d call “creative destruction.”