Category Archives: libertarianism

The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Ethics, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

“The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The reader should know that I cringe as I write this first-person account.

Why the disclaimer?

Opinion differs about how often to use the first person pronoun in various genres of writing. Certainly its overuse in opinion writing is a cardinal sin. To get a sense of how bad someone’s writing is count the number of times he deploys the Imperial “I” on the page.

Abuse “I” when the passive-form alternative is too clumsy. Or, when the writer has earned the right to, because of her relevance to the story. The second is my excuse here.

Righting two wrongs I must.

Clichés about victors writing history aside—it has become apparent to me how easy it is to write individuals out of their place in history, however meager that place and past are.

Since history is another term for reality chronicled, it is ineluctably tied to truth. It’s crucial to tell history like it is.

The stage has been set. Onto it steps a young academic, George Hawley, who’s taken on the first assiduous investigation of an exceedingly small set of individuals: “Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism.”

There is, however, lacuna in Dr. Hawley’s work. By his own admission, Hawley has failed to mention one veteran writer who falls squarely in the even-rarer paleolibertarian subset.

She has been writing voluminously in that tradition, week-in, week-out, for close on two decades (since 1999), and is the author of two unmistakably paleolibertarian books, one of which is “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” (Oh Buddha! The Imperial “I” has now given way to third-person writing. Mea culpa, gentle reader.)

Undergirding these, and the forthcoming “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” is paleolibertarianism.

Plainly put, I (ouch) believe that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure. That’s me. That’s my work.

Another academic, author and Townhall columnist Jack Kerwick, contends the omission of one ILANA Mercer from the first academic’s book covering the dissident Right is a glaring one.

” … There are three reasons why it is imperative that Mercer be included in any discussion of paleolibertarianism,” avers Kerwick: …

… Read the rest. “The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian” is now on WND.

Kerwick: Where’s One Of Paleolibertarianism’s Most Prolific Writers In Book About Dissident Right?

Conservatism, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism

What is he thinking? Author, columnist and academic Jack Kerwick is incorrigibly honest, intellectually honest. Doesn’t he know it’ll get him nowhere?

In a column at Beliefnet.com, “Missing ‘Right-Wing Critic of American Conservatism,'” Dr. Kerwick suggests that the omission of one ilana mercer from a new book entitled Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism is a grave one.

A “discussion of ‘paleolibertarianism’—an oft-neglected variant of the classical liberal perspective from the genuine right,” ventures Kerwick, “could’ve been vastly enriched had only [its author, George Hawley], said a thing or two about a specific paleolibertarian writer whose omission from his exposition struck this author [Kerwick] as glaring.”

“That writer is Ilana Mercer.”

” … There are three reasons why it is imperative that Mercer be included in any discussion of paleolibertarianism”:

First, and most obviously, she is a paleolibertarian—and a tireless one at that. For decades, this defender of the paleolibertarian vision has published a couple of books and thousands of articles and blog posts in which she’s shattered not only leftist pieties but neocon and “libertarian-lite”(left-wing libertarian) sureties as well. Much blood, sweat, and tears, to say nothing of opportunities for professional advancement, has Mercer foregone in her campaign against the idols of our Politically Correct age.

Second, not only is Mercer a veteran paleolibertarian writer. She is unquestionably the most visible, the most widely read, of such contemporary writers. At one point, she was nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate, and for nearly the last 20 years, WorldNetDaily (WND), a site that boasts roughly 1 million visitors a month, has featured Mercer’s weekly column, “Return to Reason”—its “longest standing, exclusive, paleo-libertarian weekly column.”

In addition to WND, Mercer’s work has been showcased in a plethora of outlets, both internationally and stateside, and she’s currently a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

No paleolibertarian—to repeat, a rightist proponent of a tradition-grounded classical liberal ideal—has nearly as much exposure when it comes to scholarly and popular audiences alike as does Mercer.

Third, Ilana Mercer is a woman. Moreover, she is a Jewish woman, the daughter of a Rabbi who was raised in both South Africa and Israel. This is no insignificant detail: Mercer is a standing repudiation of the stereotype, all too easily reinforced by her exclusion from any study of “right-wing critics of American conservatism,” that such critics are exclusively elderly white men. …

OUCH.

Read the rest. “Missing ‘Right-Wing Critic of American Conservatism” is on Beliefnet.com

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UPDATED (4/9): Cruz Blames Victim; Big Business, For Big Government Shakedowns

Business, Donald Trump, Free Markets, Government, libertarianism

For someone who’s supposed to be so smart, Ted Cruz makes stupid arguments. This career politician, Cruz, repeatedly claims that Donald Trump is part of the DC corruption because (like all business moguls), Trump has paid politicians to let him operate. It’s ridiculous to blame the victim of government predation. Take away government and there would be no shakedowns.

More ridiculousness came today from Fox News and what passes for analysis there. In defense of Trump, bobbing-head Andrea Tantaros offered only that at least Trump admits to being part of the problem.

In Tantaros’ defense, Trump (who reads the wrong people) has adopted this idiotic line, namely blaming himself, the businessman, for a reality government brings about.

Again, take away government and there would be no shakedowns.


The correct answer is to be found under the heading “POLITICAL POWER VS. ECONOMIC POWER”:

“A successful politician and a successful businessman represent two solitudes, never the twain shall meet—except when the capitalist must curry favor with the politician so as to further his business interests, a reality brought about by corrupt politics. Trump’s donations to both parties fit a pattern forced by the regulatory state, whereby, in order to keep doing business, business is compelled to buy-off politicians. …

MORE.

UPDATE (4/9): Aside the fact that in a David vs. Goliath scenario there is never a moral equivalence between the parties—a libertarian never-ever conflates or draws equivalences between government corruption and individual or corporate corruption. Never! Thread:

Myron Robert Pauli: “Corruption is corruption whether it is business or government. A football team owner wants a taxpayer funded stadium. A State Department staffer negotiating a 2500 page ‘free trade agreement’ wants Hollywood to fund her spouse to be a DC lobbyist in return for writing IP protection for record companies into the agreement. I want a special tax exemption for overweight physicists with daughters from China! Whatever…. – who shakes down whom, the general idea is to benefit me and my friends over everyone else (taxpayers, consumers, competitors).”

Ilana Mercer: “Myron Robert Pauli, you show a profound lack of understanding of the workings of government vs. those of the individual; the workings of a monopolist in the use of force, vs. one who has no such power. Profound lacuna. Surprising too, given you write for my blog. This ancient column should tell you what I mean: “Media Concentration Is Not A Threat to Free Expression, Government Is.”

RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein Froths At The Mouth About Trump

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, libertarianism

“Frightening, idiotic, nonsensical, insane, breathtakingly horrible, flabbergasting, makes me want to cry”: Does this spleen, vented by Ben Stein, resemble an “argument”? It was the sum total of Stein’s “case” against Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements about a foreseeable recession.

As an “expert” who despises Mr. Trump, Stein—an actor, comedian, lawyer and self-styled economist—holds sway with the liberal, malfunctioning media. Our establishment “RepubliKeynesian” appeared on the anti-Trump channel, CNN, to huff and puff about Mr. Trump’s alleged far-fetched doom-and-gloom about a troubled economy. If I recall, this expert was clueless about the previous bubble, not that errors prevent the pundit class from returning for encores.

“We’re not in a bubble, unemployment is not high, Trump needs to consult a real economist [take me, me, screams Stein silently] were some of Stein’s assertions to the smirking, vacuous looker, Pamela Brown. Naturally, Brown provided no counter perspective.

Suffice it to say that Trump’s warnings about the effects of the enormous national debt, the still bigger burden of unfunded liabilities owed, as well as his assessment of the real unemployment numbers would certainly comport with more distortions in the economy and more bubbles.

Oh, and Trump supporters are all idiots for not sympathizing with Stein’s outrage.

Anyhow, not one argument was advanced by Stein for his case against Mr. Trump, only ad hominem. Had the smirker in the anchor’s chair called in an economist, say, of the Austrian persuasion—or even Paul Craig Roberts, United States assistant secretary of the treasury for economic policy under President Reagan, in 1981—she would have heard a perspective more in agreement with Trump than with RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein.