Category Archives: Liberty

Self-Segregation Trumps Imposed Multiculturalism

Ilana Mercer, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Correctness, The West

“Originality is rare in punditry these days,” writes Joseph F. Cotto, who is “a scholar and columnist from central Florida.” “Every time a new narrative-of-the-day arrives, we take refuge in groupthink rather than thinking for ourselves. Not Mercer … [who] is one of America’s leading paleolibertarian voices, [with] “a prominent column on WorldNetDaily.”

Mr. Cotto recently interviewed this writer for the Washington Times’ community pages. You can read the interview, “Self-Segregation Trumps Imposed Multiculturalism,” at WND. Here are excerpts:

JOSEPH F. COTTO: This seems like one of the most polarized eras in American politics. Why do you think that our country’s political atmosphere has become so divisive?

ILANA MERCER: I think you are correct in your assessment regarding the unparalleled polarization of American society. Have you noticed how commentators on both sides of received political wisdom attempt to diminish the fact you articulate by referring to America’s fractious history? Nevertheless, this is a complex issue that is hard to answer briefly. I’ll try. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” economist Milton Friedman underscores this important point: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”
Underway today in the USA is a monumental clash between individualism and collectivism; between the forces of reason and reality, against force and coercion. The “philosophical” differences between the Republikeynesians, on the one hand, and the Democrats, on the other, are insignificant. The first believe individual rights should be carefully calibrated by central planners; the latter believe these natural rights can be overridden.
There is also a cultural dimension to these irreparable divisions. We are today, thanks to social engineering, a deracinated and divided society. We are no longer what John Jay termed “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.” There can be no unity without community. The glue of togetherness is gone, replaced by a flimsy, fluid, and thoroughly fake unity peddled by politicians. “Ideas” they call it. On the one day, it’s a crusade for democracy; on the next, it’s a war against racism.

COTTO: Multiculturalism is spreading rapidly across the Western world. This has led not only to cultural barriers, but tremendous religious and ethnic conflicts. What are your views on the subject?

MERCER: Multiculturalism as practiced in the West amounts to top-down, centrally enforced and managed integration. Show me a historical precedent where forced integration has worked. As it works across the Anglo-American and European spheres, one group (the founding, historical majority) is forced by self-anointed and elected elites—no contradiction there—on pain of public and professional ostracism, to submerge its history, heroes, customs, culture, language, and pander to militant minorities, who’ve been acculturated by the same elites in identity-politics warfare. …
… An interesting new book, reviewed by one Barnaby Rogerson, makes the point that the Levant of the 18th century was peaceful and prosperous (and surprisingly libertine), because it was made up of “a grid of self-governing communities.” Integration between disparate communities was not enforced. And surprise, surprise: communities freely chose to live in complete segregation. This freedom fostered “remarkable tolerance” among diverse communities across the cities of the Levant of that time. “Deals before Ideals, City before State, Trade before Politics,” as the reviewer puts it. This freedom of association was the source of strength. These autonomous ethnic communities were free of the top-down, punitive, forced integration that has become the hallmark of the 19th-century nation-state that usurped their authority. …

This interview, “Self-Segregation Trumps Imposed Multiculturalism,” continues at WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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In For The Kill

Crime, Government, GUNS, Law, Liberty, Private Property, The State

Loc­al, state and fed­er­al assassins are hunting for LAPD of­ficer and Navy veteran Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, who is alleged to have shot­ three po­lice of­ficers, one fatally, in River­side, and committed a double hom­icide on Sunday, in Irvine, murdering “the daugh­ter of a re­tired LAPD cap­tain and her fi­ance.”

Not only have the authorities and their SWAT teams been locking down businesses and invading private homes in the course of the manhunt—the once-bustling winter resort of Big Bear, in Southern California, is one example—but they have been firing on bystanders in the process.

Oops. “Mistaken identity” is what the police perps are calling this collateral damage.

More like “unbridled police lawlessness,” says Robert Sheahen, an attorney of one of the victims. “These people need training and they need restraint.”

Via the LA Times:

In the first incident, LAPD officers opened fire on another pickup they feared was being driven by Dorner. The mother and daughter inside the truck were delivering Los Angeles Times newspapers. The older woman was shot twice in the back and the other was wounded by broken glass.
In Perdue’s case [the latest victim of the state’s assassins], his attorney said he wasn’t struck by bullets or glass but was injured in the car wreck, suffering a concussion and an injury to his shoulder. The LAX baggage handler hasn’t been able to work since, and his car is totaled, Sheahen said.
“When Torrance issues this ridiculous statement saying he wasn’t injured, all they mean is he wasn’t killed,” his attorney said, referring to a press release reporting “no visible injuries” to Perdue.

Gun violence? As Vox Day (who, sadly, called it a day on WND) pointed out, in December of 2012,

800,000 law enforcement officers have killed 525 unarmed citizens with guns so far this year. Approximately 310 million private citizens killed an estimated 10,500 of their fellow citizens with guns over the same period of time. Given that a law enforcement officer is 19.4 times more likely to shoot and kill an unarmed American than a private citizen, if you genuinely care about reducing gun deaths, why aren’t you calling for the disarmament of law enforcement?

Welcome to the militarize, police-state USA.

Posse Comitatus And Police State USA

Constitution, Homeland Security, Law, Liberty, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Americans live under a militarized police force. SWAT teams are forever poised to descend on their homes at the drop of a hat. Is it possible that the military will soon be stepping in to do some policing of its own?

The Posse Comitatus Act was supposed to restrict America’s military from acting as a domestic police force, but then none of the limits on power put in place by the Constitution and other legislation have ever stuck, now have they?

Via Drudge comes this ABC report of an especially energetic military drill in a HOUSTON neighborhood. If you hear helicopters or hear gunfire near your homes, don’t worry, assures the reporter.

Another comatose journo, writing for CBS (via Karen De Coster ), is blasé about yet more militarized operations, this time in Miami. The excuse given:

“The training is designed to ensure that military personnel are able to operate in urban areas and to focus on preparations for overseas deployment. It also serves as a mandatory training certification requirement.”

Dig a little and you’ll find a Republican or two behind earlier efforts to undermine Posse Comitatus.

On Sept. 26, President Bush urged Congress to consider revising federal laws so that the U.S. military could seize control immediately in the aftermath of a natural disaster, noting that “it may require change of law. The law the president seems to be referring to is the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the government’s ability to use the U.S. military as a police force. Sen. John Warner, R.-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also has signaled his desire to change the law.”

As CATO’s Gene Healy has written , “The Posse Comitatus Act is no barrier to federal troops providing logistical support during natural disasters. Nor does it prohibit the president from using the Army to restore order in extraordinary circumstances — even over the objection of a state governor.”

What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America’s traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified.

UPDATED: Fighting Words From Left-Libertarian Egalitarians (Andrew Napolitano)

IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Military, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism

Judge Andrew Napolitano, who exemplifies left-libertarianism on many issues (not least immigration, civil rights law, etc), believes that freighting men with females in combat is a great step toward the ideal of judging individuals based on their merits and not their group.

To left-libertarians liberty is an abstraction. Apply it “properly,” and it will work everywhere and always. Enforced by the state, this egalitarian abstraction has culminated in the idea that women belong alongside men on the battle field. You know, only the right kind of women—the kind that is as physically able, and will not introduce sexual dynamics to what has been the business of brothers-in-arms since time immemorial.

A crucial difference between left libertarians and the Right kind (the paleolibertarian) is that left-libertarianism is egalitarian; its idea of liberty is propositional–a deracinated idea, unmoored from the reality of history, biology, tradition, hierarchy.

The paleolibertarian, on the other hand, grasps “Liberty’s Civilizational Dimension”; he understands that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom, and that it has a cultural and civilizational dimension.

A paleolibertarian gets that, as an arm of the state, the military is already manacled by doctrinaire mediocrity, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action (fem and other), and every postmodern pox imaginable. So now you want to further tweak it in this direction?

As Pat Buchanan puts it in his latest column (“Obama has hijacked the American Revolution”), “The freedom of all Americans to compete academically, athletically, artistically and economically must inevitably result in an inequality of incomes, wealth and rewards. Why? Because all men and women are by nature and nurture unequal.”

But not if liberals and left-libertarians can help it.

UPDATE (Jan. 28): Jack Kerwick writes on some of the Judge’s other left-libertarian positions:

The Judge eviscerated Arizona Governor Jan Brewer when she signed SB 1070 to help Arizonans deal with the ravages of illegal immigration that it had been suffering for years. And he also has never put up any kind of resistance to amnesty. Instead, Napolitano has remarked that if “our rights come from our Creator—as the Declaration of Independence declares,” then “how can they differ because of where our mothers were when we were born?”
With respect to the administration’s decision to lift the ban on women in combat, Napolitano claimed to be “thrilled.” While on a Fox News panel last week, the Judge noted what he perceived to be the irony involved in the fact that it is a “collectivist president” who has decided “that people should be judged as individuals and not as members of groups [.]” Napolitano lavished praise upon the President for relegating to the dustbin of history “the old military prejudices against…women,” ideas rooted, “not in facts,” but “often…in ignorance, bias and prejudice [.]”
This latest development, Napolitano believes, is a victory for liberty and individualism, for “each person in the military will [now] be judged for combat, leadership and command based on their skills and ability—not some group they are a member of based on the consequence of birth” (Emphasis added).