Category Archives: Liberty

UPDATED (7/5/022): Independence Day Is Not About Firecrackers And Cookouts

America, English, Founding Fathers, Liberty, Nationhood, Political Philosophy, Secession

“notwithstanding the claims of the multicultural noise machine, the Declaration was as mono-cultural as its author. Let us … toast Thomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him.”ILANA MERCER, July 4, 2019

The Declaration of Independence—whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate—has been mocked out of meaning.

To be fair to the liberal Establishment, ordinary Americans are not entirely blameless. For most, Independence Day means firecrackers and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. In fact, contemporary Americans are less likely to read it now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. Printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet,” recounts historian David Hackett Fischer in Liberty And Freedom. And President (of the Continental Congress) John Hancock urged that the “people be universally informed.”

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it “an expression of the American Mind.” An examination of Jefferson‘s constitutional thought makes plain that he would no longer consider the mind of the collective mentality of the D.C. establishment “American” in any meaningful way. For the Jeffersonian mind was that of an avowed Whig—an American Whig whose roots were in the English Whig political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

By “all men are created equal,” Jefferson, who also wrote in praise of a “Natural Aristocracy,” did not imply that all men were similarly endowed. Or that they were entitled to healthcare, education, amnesty, and a decent wage, à la Obama.

Rather, Jefferson was affirming the natural right of “all men” to be secure in their enjoyment of their “life, liberty and possessions.”

This is the very philosophy Hillary Clinton explicitly disavowed during one of the mindless presidential debates of 2007. Asked by a YouTubester to define “liberal,” Hillary revealed she knew full-well that the word originally denoted the classical liberalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But she then settled on “progressive” as the appropriate label for her Fabian socialist plank.

Contra Clinton, as David N. Mayer explains in The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson, colonial Americans were steeped in the writings of English Whigs—John Locke, Algernon Sidney, Paul Rapin, Thomas Gordon and others. The essence of this “pattern of ideas and attitudes,” almost completely lost today, was a view of government as an inherent threat to liberty and the necessity for eternal vigilance.

Jefferson, in particular, was adamant about the imperative “to be watchful of those in power,” a watchfulness another Whig philosopher explained thus: “Considering what sort of Creature Man is, it is scarce possible to put him under too many Restraints, when he is possessed of great Power.”

“As Jefferson saw it,” expounds Mayer, “the Whig, zealously guarding liberty, was suspicious of the use of government power,” and assumed “not only that government power was inherently dangerous to individual liberty but also that, as Jefferson put it, ‘the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.’”

For this reason, the philosophy of government that Jefferson articulated in the Declaration radically shifted sovereignty from parliament to the people.

But Jefferson‘s muse for the “American Mind” is even older.

The Whig tradition is undeniably Anglo-Saxon. Our founding fathers’ political philosophy originated with their Saxon forefathers, and the ancient rights guaranteed by the Saxon constitution. With the Declaration, Jefferson told Henry Lee in 1825, he was also protesting England‘s violation of her own ancient tradition of natural rights. As Jefferson saw it, the Colonies were upholding a tradition the Crown had abrogated.

Philosophical purist that he was, moreover, Jefferson considered the Norman Conquest to have tainted this English tradition with the taint of feudalism. “To the Whig historian,” writes Mayer, “the whole of English constitutional history since the Conquest was the story of a perpetual claim kept up by the English nation for a restoration of Saxon laws and the ancient rights guaranteed by those laws.”

If Jefferson begrudged the malign influence of the Normans on the natural law he cherished, imagine how he’d view our contemporary cultural conquistadors from the South, whose customs preclude natural rights and natural reason!

Naturally, Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.

The settlers spilt their own blood “in acquiring lands for their settlement,” he wrote with pride in A Summary View of the Rights of British America. “For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold.” Thus they were “entitled to govern those lands and themselves.”

And, notwithstanding the claims of the multicultural noise machine, the Declaration was as mono-cultural as its author.

Let us, then, toast Thomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him.

©2019 ILANA MERCER
SEE: “A July Fourth Toast To Thomas Jefferson—And The Declaration,” by Ilana Mercer, July 4, 2019

UPDATED (7/5/022): Thomas Jefferson & The Jacobins “From my reading of Dumas Malone’s 6 vol. Jefferson And His Times,” writes BAB writer Juvenal Early, “I’m to the point where Jefferson has just returned from France, where he’d witnessed the first few months of the Revolution. He had been there 5 years and he continued to detest the whole idea of the king, and was still much opposed to England. The England most recently of Edmond Burke and Dr. Johnson, as we know. So Jefferson was naturally inclined toward the Jacobins, very good friends with his fellow Mason the Marquis de Lafayette. Also a very reverent friend of that most radical of the founders (I think) Mr Franklin.”

So, yes, TJ was pretty radical by American standards when he joined Washington’s administration. He was even a little suspect in some corners, for having too favorable a view of the French Revolution. He would cool off on the Revolution later, I think. I’ve heard that. But I haven’t got to that part. A long way to go.

Tucker And The Trucker: Condescending About Canada; Wrong About American South

America, Canada, Juvenal Early's Archive, Liberty, Race, Racism, The South, The State

Tucker Carlson: “Canada, they always steal our ideas and produce a slightly shoddy copy of them.”

Tucker Carlson’s segment, “There’s no more fearful despot than Canada’s Prime Minister,” is an important one. However, as a Canadian (an American too), who grasps very well the fundamental differences between Canada and America—Americans think they are God’s Country and operate with such imprimatur; Canadians don’t—I found it was remarkably condescending, as the famous and important host cackled that, “Canada always steals our ideas and produces a slightly shoddy copy of them.”

I have pinpointed and analyzed the differences I experienced personally between Canada and the US in an interview series with Dissident Mama: “Ilana Mercer, part 1: Roots, writing, & resistance” and “Ilana Mercer, part 2: Lady Paleolibertarian.”

To the extent Canadians have aped American state legislation and cultural trends; they lose. To the extent they stick with their more reserved, understated, quieter, far-better spoken civility and civilization; they win. On the whole, the Canadian State is usually far less menacing to its citizens than is the American State to its legal inhabitants. The US jailed Conrad Black; not Canada. And even when they reproduce their facsimile of the prototypical, American, TV Fox News blonde, Canadians do it better: Witness Lauren Southern versus dummy Tomi Lahren. (Oy! And my Dutch relative tells me Holland is now producing what is considered in The Netherlands déclassé, hackneyed, American-style TV blonds. Tucker already had one on!)

Juvenal Early, a regular writer for Barely A Blog, was furious:

“Tucker disgusted me with his coverage of the truckers last night. He asked one of them to refute the leftist assertion of racism in the crowd. What does that have to do with the vaccine mandate protest? Tucker also continues to demonize the Confederacy and the battle flag. Among real Southern right wingers, that’s a big non-starter.”

The Confederate flag segment is at the 13:00 minute mark.  The trucker interview starts at 16:45 and goes until 19 minutes.

UPDATED (12/24) On Being A Man*: NEW COLUMN: Extradited! Why Assange Fears Being ‘Epsteined’

Ethics, Free Speech, Globalism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Morality, Political Philosophy, The Establishment, The State, War

NEW COLUMN: It suddenly struck me: Most men are cowards. How many men have the courage and character to step up and honor the highest principles or the best of humanity when they encounter these? Too few. Most live defensively or ignorantly, betraying the good for the bad. That’s why men like Assange are so impressive and important and true. They show us the way. While most men live in-thrall to miserable entities or people and the bonds they impose; Assange has shown us the right way to live within our own orbits; dangerously, if you must, never on your knees; bravely seeking that which is the best and the finest—be they principles or people.

Julian Assange has given his life in the cause of exposing global state and corporate corruption and the collusion betwixt. He should be thanked for his service, for Assange did not enlist to do The State’s bidding in futile, wicked wars in faraway lands. Rather, he went-up against the Administrative, Warfare, Surveillance State for The People.

Therefore, all state agents—media-military-congressional complex; local and global—want this, the greatest libertarian alive (if barely) to disappear. Never mind that First-Amendment jurisprudence is clear-cut with respect to the guerrilla journalism of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks operators have committed no crime in publishing what is undeniably true, newsworthy information, with probative value. Besides, why has America any jurisdiction over a foreign entity (WikiLeaks) and a foreign national (Julian Assange)?

Well, America has jurisdiction over Assange because it has simply asserted it based on trumped-up charges equating his journalism with espionage. Which is why Assange now fears being “Epsteined.”

THE NEW COLUMN is “Extradited! Why Assange Fears Being ‘Epsteined’”. Read it on WND.COM, Townhall.com and the Unz Review.

UPDATE (12/24): An honest man asks on Twitter how to become courageous. Am I an authority? No! I just try my best, in writing—having never betrayed my first principles for popularity or pelf—and in living, in charity and in loving and helping those who see me.

I have, however,  known people who never step up and are mired in cowardice, wasting their considerable mentation and manhood on being frightened in the quest for equilibrium (personally and politically); or  gulling themselves into believing that when they serve the wrong people and principles—they are ever-so good. Contempt is what they deserve. When encountering good people, fighting the good fight, doing good work—every person can honor that and help, rather than hinder.

My humble reply to Sean: “Within our orbits we can all try to stand up for the principles and people that matter and make a difference and need our energies most. So, I thank YOU for joining me here.”

* The “man” noun here is used in the traditional sense, as mankind. I include myself, a woman, as part of mankind. Your fucking sexual or gender orientation matters not. Quit the pronoun crap. That is another first principle: never dignify nonsense, including linguistic bafflegab. I write and think in English. So should you.

A July Fourth Toast To Thomas Jefferson—And The Anglo-Saxon Tradition

America, Founding Fathers, History, Human Accomplishment, Individual Rights, Liberty, Political Philosophy

“Let us … toast Thomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him.”ILANA MERCER, July 4, 2019

The Declaration of Independence—whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate—has been mocked out of meaning.

To be fair to the liberal Establishment, ordinary Americans are not entirely blameless. For most, Independence Day means firecrackers and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. In fact, contemporary Americans are less likely to read it now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. Printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet,” recounts historian David Hackett Fischer in Liberty And Freedom. And President (of the Continental Congress) John Hancock urged that the “people be universally informed.”

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it “an expression of the American Mind.” An examination of Jefferson‘s constitutional thought makes plain that he would no longer consider the mind of the collective mentality of the D.C. establishment “American” in any meaningful way. For the Jeffersonian mind was that of an avowed Whig—an American Whig whose roots were in the English Whig political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

By “all men are created equal,” Jefferson, who also wrote in praise of a “Natural Aristocracy,” did not imply that all men were similarly endowed. Or that they were entitled to healthcare, education, amnesty, and a decent wage, à la Obama.

Rather, Jefferson was affirming the natural right of “all men” to be secure in their enjoyment of their “life, liberty and possessions.”

This is the very philosophy Hillary Clinton explicitly disavowed during one of the mindless presidential debates of 2007. Asked by a YouTubester to define “liberal,” Hillary revealed she knew full-well that the word originally denoted the classical liberalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But she then settled on “progressive” as the appropriate label for her Fabian socialist plank.

Contra Clinton, as David N. Mayer explains in The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson, colonial Americans were steeped in the writings of English Whigs—John Locke, Algernon Sidney, Paul Rapin, Thomas Gordon and others. The essence of this “pattern of ideas and attitudes,” almost completely lost today, was a view of government as an inherent threat to liberty and the necessity for eternal vigilance.

Jefferson, in particular, was adamant about the imperative “to be watchful of those in power,” a watchfulness another Whig philosopher explained thus: “Considering what sort of Creature Man is, it is scarce possible to put him under too many Restraints, when he is possessed of great Power.”

“As Jefferson saw it,” expounds Mayer, “the Whig, zealously guarding liberty, was suspicious of the use of government power,” and assumed “not only that government power was inherently dangerous to individual liberty but also that, as Jefferson put it, ‘the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.’”

For this reason, the philosophy of government that Jefferson articulated in the Declaration radically shifted sovereignty from parliament to the people.

But Jefferson‘s muse for the “American Mind” is even older.

The Whig tradition is undeniably Anglo-Saxon. Our founding fathers’ political philosophy originated with their Saxon forefathers, and the ancient rights guaranteed by the Saxon constitution. With the Declaration, Jefferson told Henry Lee in 1825, he was also protesting England‘s violation of her own ancient tradition of natural rights. As Jefferson saw it, the Colonies were upholding a tradition the Crown had abrogated.

Philosophical purist that he was, moreover, Jefferson considered the Norman Conquest to have tainted this English tradition with the taint of feudalism. “To the Whig historian,” writes Mayer, “the whole of English constitutional history since the Conquest was the story of a perpetual claim kept up by the English nation for a restoration of Saxon laws and the ancient rights guaranteed by those laws.”

If Jefferson begrudged the malign influence of the Normans on the natural law he cherished, imagine how he’d view our contemporary cultural conquistadors from the South, whose customs preclude natural rights and natural reason!

Naturally, Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.

The settlers spilt their own blood “in acquiring lands for their settlement,” he wrote with pride in A Summary View of the Rights of British America. “For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold.” Thus they were “entitled to govern those lands and themselves.”

And, notwithstanding the claims of the multicultural noise machine, the Declaration was as mono-cultural as its author.

Let us, then, toast Thomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition that sired and inspired him.

©2019 ILANA MERCER
SEE: “A July Fourth Toast To Thomas Jefferson—And The Declaration,” by Ilana Mercer, July 4, 2019