Category Archives: Intellectualism

UPDATED (7/10): LinkedIn: Stanton Peele On ILANA And Addiction

Argument, Classical Liberalism, Drug War, Healthcare, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, The Therapuetic State

Thank you, Stanton Peele, PhD., for an inspired LinkedIn review. We represent an era of intellectuals in which left and right had so much in common, Stanton being a 1960s liberal; myself a 19th Century classical liberal.

“Ilana Mercer is the most independent thinker of the 21st century — she was that in the 20th. She saw a path that we didn’t follow away from myths of mental illness and incorrigible international conflict. But we have instead followed the roads she eschewed while she, the Cheshire Cat watched grimacing and catcalling our missteps. Need I say we require her insights more than ever?”~ STANTON PEELE, PhD., J.D., best-selling author, addiction expert (review on LinkedIn)

Dr. Peele is the only theorist and clinician I’ve ever respected on the vexing matter of addiction–now a thriving industry with poor outcomes, increasingly, if reflexively, vested in maintaining dysfunction.

I recognized Stanton for the outstanding thinker he is when I read and wrote about his seminal and best work, “Diseasing of America: How We Allowed Recovery Zealots and the Treatment Industry to Convince Us We Are Out of Control .”

Calgary Herald readers were irate, at the time. The same readers (whom I loved) were as annoyed when I wrote about ADHD, in 1999. Boy, are people vested in a  medical diagnosis for legitimizing and authenticating all aspects of The Self. I continue to hold Dr. Peele as the best thinker on the subject. Like myself, he has mentored (knowingly and unknowingly) followers who have adopted his thinking.

Some mentions are here:

“Addictions Are About Behavior, Not Disease” (June 22, 2000)

Medical Mumbo Jumbo Does Not Explain Addiction” (June 29, 2000)

Charlie Sheen’s Out of the AA ‘Troll Hole’” (March 4, 2011)

Addicted To The Drug War” is a wide-ranging libertarian think piece written originally for the Mises Institute in 2001. A section, “ADDICTION: VICE OR DISEASE?” is inspired by Stanton Peele’s work.

MORE on the drug war.

MORE on the Therapeutic State and Industry (almost indistinguishable).

UPDATE (7/10): In reply to the Comment:  I do not know any thinker, other than those who followed the pioneers I’m citing here, who questioned philosophical fundamentals of mental disease and addiction, as Dr. Peele does and as my sweet, kind friend, the genius Thomas Szasz (RIP) did in his monumental works. (R.D Laing was a loon):

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2012/09/im-sad-not-libya-israel-9-11/

I’ve not looking for exposes; I’m looking for analytical truth to bolster the empirical. That’s my method; it’s theirs. Dr. Szasz was the pioneering genius. His books were prescribed at my South African alma mater. Now it has reverted to the anti-intellectual American drek, namely that of diseasing all aspects of behavior.

“Broken Brains” (2002)

The Feminized Society Is Silly, Loose, Libertine, Institutionally Rotten & Ungrateful

Affirmative Action, Culture, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Logic, Science

The better responses on Facebook to this indubitably crass indictment of the feminized society harped on the mistake of collectivism in reasoning.

In aggregate, however, this seemingly obnoxious statement attributed to one Bob Wallace (?) is still largely true. For, from the fact that vast individual differences exist between people—and that there are many magnificent women—it doesn’t follow that one cannot make accurate aggregate statements about groups of individuals.

This is, very plainly, the basis of science: deductions about the aggregate characteristics of representative samples. Maybe not the most comprehensive definition, but you get my gist.

A priceless excerpt from Norah Vincent’s book comes to mind. Its title is self explanatory: Self-Made Man: My year Disguised as a Man.

Vincent, a lesbian in her regular life, describes dating women while disguised as Ned:

“I listened to [the women] talk literally for hours about the most minute, mind-numbing details of their personal lives; men they were still in love with; men they had divorced, roommates and co-worker they hated…. Listening to them was like undergoing a slow frontal lobotomy. I sat there stunned by the social ineptitude of people to whom it never seemed to occur that no one, much less a first date, would have any interest in enduring this ordeal …”

Seconded in my VDARE.com article, “The Silly Sex?”:

Over the last five decades women, who make up roughly 50 percent of the world’s population, have claimed only 2 percent of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences. In literature, women have claimed only 8 percent. No woman has won a Nobel in economics. During that period Jews, who comprise less than 0.5 percent the world’s population, have claimed 32 percent of the Nobel Prizes for medicine, 32 percent for physics, 39 percent for economics and 29 percent of all science awards.

UPDATE: A man’s work: Corralling logs with a boom boat. How can one fail to be impressed by the strength, skill, calm and staying power this job takes? To do all this competently and single-handedly? Mike Row’s show is genius in what it shows.

The MeToo ingrates should take note, too. Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are currently prohibited from leaving the country. Drafted. This is what men have been doing stoically and dutifully for centuries: defending the women folk. (Who gets drafted is another matter. Read “Support The Drafts.…”)

Familiar Words, Familiar ‘Ethics’

America, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism

On January 29, 2022, I wrote:

US State craft is driven, first, by the arrogance of power and delusions of ideological superiority, as well as by self-serving elite concerns. The US ruling interests to prevail are those of “The Blob” (the permanent foreign policy establishment), military-industrial-complex, a media also engaged in expedient myth-making, not news reporting, crooked corporate elites, and a sanctions-giddy US Congress, in which there are currently no pro-détente thinkers (nor thinkers, for that matter).—ILANA MERCER,”Neocons, Neolibs And NATO Inch Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia,” January 29, 2022

On Feb 16, 2022, Richard Hanania, some young chap, wrote:

“American foreign policy is driven by a need for conflict for reasons of both ideology and the self-interest of the foreign policy establishment.”—Richard Hanania, Feb 16, 2022

RELATED:

The Moral Writer’s First Commandment: Cite Your Sources!

More about American ethics and what followed my first submission to an American libertarian magazine.

Alex Berenson Gets A Fail For Blackening Joe Rogan For His Impolitic, Impolite Speech

Conservatism, Cultural Marxism, Culture, Etiquette, Free Speech, Intellectualism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism

Serious libertarians and conservatives will study and absorb the following principles articulated about the thought crime that is racism and the attendant impolite and impolitic speech that often accompanies it:

  • “Racism—systemic or other—remains nothing but thought crime: Impolite and impolitic thoughts, spoken, written or preached.”—ILANA Mercer,‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?” August 6, 2020.
  • “Thought crimes are nobody’s business in a free society.”—ILANA Mercer,‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?” August 6, 2020.
  • “A lot of establishment libertarians and conservatives have joined the neoconservative and neoliberal establishments in the habit of sniffing out racists. Sniffing out racists is an absolute no-no for any and all self-respecting libertarians (and conservatives). True libertarians don’t, or should not, prosecute thought crimes or persecute thought ‘criminals.’ Period.”—ILANA Mercer, Big League Politics, Interview With Ilana Mercer, November 23, 2018.

Consider those fundamentals and, in commitment to liberty, you will shrug off Joe Rogan’s speech of many years back as rude and uncouth, albeit rooted in a realistic stereotype, and leave it at that—no more rude and uncouth than the plethora of “cracker”-hating, anti-white pejoratives emitted approvingly by blacks, who are cheered when they rail against a group that isn’t remotely associated with high crime and social disruption.

Rogan was referencing a video compilation that features him in various contexts using the racial slur. It also includes him comparing being in the presence of Black people with the film Planet of the Apes. The video has gone viral online and was highlighted by musician India Arie in an Instagram Story she posted Thursday.

Thus when Alex Berenson acts as a racism-spotting scold-–an old biddy deploying cliches like, “I don’t know what’s in his heart” (oh, fuck off; it matters not. Rogan is a peaceful, productive human being)—Berenson deserves and earns contempt.

Rogan’s use of the n-word – and that Planet of the Apes story – are indefensible and humiliating and will haunt him for the rest of his career.
Our woke revolution has brought lots of linguistic rules I’ll argue. Not this one. That word has a unique history and power that give it a unique ugliness. The only slur remotely close might be “kike,” though even it doesn’t compare.

Fox News darling Alex Berenson has a pattern—has already proven to be a self-promoting weasel, using a TV segment to try and take out Robert Malone, who shot him down with a smile, no sweat, like the high IQ, classy gentleman and scholar he clearly is. Watch.

For his part, Rogan must get off his knees and quit apologizing. He’s worth $100 Million (it is an intellectually impoverish market place that has resulted in that sorry reality).  Rumble is pleased to pay that sum–as well as reinstate his verboten speech removed by the illiberal scolds.