Category Archives: Liberty

UPADATE III: Fox News And Its Truth Deniers (Left-Libertarianism)

Business, Economy, Founding Fathers, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Ron Paul, Socialism

The following is excerpted from “Fox News And Its Truth Deniers,” now on WND.COM:

“The dueling perspectives political panel is compatible with the aims of CNN, MSNBC, and the other progressive broadcasters. Here is how it works: You invite a member of the Republican establishment; often a RINO—preferably a bimbo—to do battle with a lefty from similar circles. The sides are ideologically so close, that, in all likelihood, the panelists hang out after the show.

This format is positively postmodernist. Why? Because, by presenting the public with two competing perspectives—you mislead viewers into believing that indeed there are two realities, and that it is up to them to decide which one is more compelling.

The one parallel universe is represented on Fox Business by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne, and others. …

The philosophical filth spewed by such characters – almost nightly on freedom-promoting programing, no less – is that government can spend and lend to good effect; that it can tax without discouraging and disrupting production; and that our overlords in D.C. can regulate “better” (read energy-squandering) industries into being by steering capital and labor away from bad (energy-efficient) industries (oil and gas). …

The truth is that truth is immutable, never relative. The little truth there is in mainstream media should not be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.

The above Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

With an exception: Libraries have long since engaged in a robust debate as to how to classify Holocaust-denying literature. While admirably advocating for unfettered free access, Professor of Library Services John A. Drobnicki has suggested moving Holocaust denial out of the History section in US libraries and closer to the ‘Bigfoot books,’ so that Holocaust denial’s Dewey Decimal designation is with ‘hoax materials.’

Indeed, hacks are not historians. Although the dueling-perspectives panel format would suggest it is—the economic bunk spewed by the likes of Skinner, Heldman, Dowdell, Jeffers, Sibila, and Erika Payne is no version of the truth, but a perversion of it.” …

The complete column, “Fox News And Its Truth Deniers,” is now on WND.COM. Read it.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about an Xmas special on bulk buys.

UPDATE I (Nov. 18): MSNBC has just inaugurated the nauseating “NOW,” which utilizes the dueling-perspectives panel discussed in my WND column to great effect. Here is the little RINO Lolita S. E. Cupp making a weak case for the right of a man to hire a lawyer, in a pathologically litigious country, which jails more individuals than any other: the USA. By “a weak case,” the hallmark of an establishment Republican (or whatever one chooses to dub this political species), I mean that grimaces, gestures, and a paraphrasing of the host replace serious argument. In particular, earlier in the debate, Cupp picked up on a catchy phrase the host had used, and repeated it again and again (“precipice politics) in order to conceal her vacuity. In the loud talking (for it wasn’t intelligent debate) about the Super Committee, Naomi Wolf was the only individual to zero in on the issue of a soviet-style politburo making decisions in a so-called representative democracy. (Wolf didn’t put it this way, but she made the point effectively. And, of course, the US was supposed to be a republic, not a mobocracy.) Otherwise, everything is all very friendly and flirty.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE II: Via Facebook: What uncharacteristic intellectual pettiness it is to zero in on a trivial convention used in the column, instead of addressing the issue of natural law and reality, also the core of the column. This is what the column is about. However, maybe some here disagree that “truth is immutable, never relative.” And that “the little truth there is in mainstream media should not be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.”

UPDATE III: LEFT-LIBERTARIANISM. To the “there is nothing wrong with Judge and Stossel” crowd: ‘Cmon: They are the best we have, but there is plenty wrong. They are left-libertarians. For a while, Paul was teetering there too, but was pulled back from the brink by the conservatism of the his base, the majority of whom do not think that, at 1 million a year, the US needs more immigration and that anchor babies are dictated by the Constitution.

UPDATED: Drug Pusher & Purchaser Innocent In Libertarian Law (On Selecting for Low Character)

Celebrity, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, War on Drugs

The trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, “the doctor charged in Michael Jackson’s death,” drags on. “Authorities contend Murray gave Jackson a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol in the singer’s bedroom on June 25, 2009. Defense attorneys claim the singer gave himself the fatal dose.” (WAPo)

Murray agreed to become Jackson’s personal physician for $150,000 a month but was never paid because the singer died before the contract was signed.

Jackson, whom I defended when ‘Mad Dog’ [Thomas] Sneddon picked up the star’s scent and gave chase, was a deeply disturbed, body dysmorphic, drug-addicted man. But he was an adult, not a child. His decisions were his to make. He hired Murray to feed narcotics directly into his bloodstream.

If not for the medicine of this admittedly shoddy practitioner, Jackson would have ended-up dead, in a back alley with a needle in his stick arm, a long time ago.

In the libertarian law, Dr. Conrad Murray is innocent (if odious).

A drug purchaser and a drug pusher have agreed on an exchange. If it is voluntary and consensual, then both parties expect to benefit ex ante. A voluntary exchange is, by definition, always mutually beneficial inasmuch as, at the time of the exchange, the buyer valued the purchase more than the money he paid for it, and the seller valued the money more than the goods he sold.

There will always be meddling third parties seeking to circumscribe and circumvent a voluntary activity not to their liking. Some feminists want to stop lovers of pornography from making or consuming it. Other busybodies would like to stop adults from gambling. These third parties have no place in a transaction between consenting adults, unless these transactions infringe directly—not foreseeably—on their property or person.

Any transaction that was at the time of occurrence voluntary, and hence beneficial to the participants, can, retrospectively, be denounced as harmful and regrettable.

The legislator has no place in a voluntary exchange between adults, as dodgy and as dangerous as they may be (like dwarf tossing). Murray might be an unsavory character. He would not be my choice for a medic, but he does not belong in jail.

UPDATED (Oct. 27): ON SELECTING FOR LOW CHARACTER. Some interesting comments have been made below, under Comments. First, not to be schoolmarmish, but addiction is not a disease. Please click “Drug War,” on my Articles Archive, and read some of these titles. The category of “Psychiatry and The Therapeutic State” is also relevant to grasping that the disease model of misbehavior has no place in a free society:

Charlie Sheen’s Out of the AA ‘Troll Hole’
VICES ARE NOT CRIMES
HARRY’S HOUNDERS AND OTHER VILLAGE IDIOTS
Addicted To The Drug War
Tokers Are Terrorists Now
Medical Mumbo Jumbo Does Not Explain Addiction
Addictions Are About Behavior, Not Disease

As to the good points raised in Comments. We live in the real world which is encumbered by positive law. Analysis must avoid, in as much as possible, levitating between what “is” and what “ought to be” (although all libertarian analysis, given its deference to natural law, will so err).

The type of “service” Jackson required from this Murray man was one that few competent, above-board practitioners would agree to perform. I’ve used a similar argument to make the case that our immigration law selects for low character: yes, left-libertarians like to believe that the best and bravest of humanity will cross our borders illegally. As an immigrant who knows a bit about the US visa system, I assure you that this is seldom the case. (Read more.)

It appears that poor Jackson did not have the fiduciary and intellectual wherewithal to sign a contract specifying Murray’s responsibilities. But even had Jackson done that prudent thing, Murray would have likely flouted his obligations, irrespective of the Hippocratic oath he took. See comment above. Risk is implicit in buying a dodgy service such as anesthetizing yourself to sleep every night. However much I paid my doctor, I know she would refuse. She’s a go-by-the-book woman.

What is true is that if all drug dealing were licit, Jackson would have had access to a better practitioner. However, private medical associations would have probably not licensed Murray and would refuse to give their medical imprimatur to individuals who were prepared to anesthetized a man to sleep each and every night (give him his “milk,” as the warped Jackson called this deadly, almost necrophilic practice).

Either way, your best and brightest medics would not be willing to cease practicing in their area of specialty, and contend themselves, as professionals, with the nightly routine of hooking up a celebrity’s IV.

Here’s another clue Jackson ought to have used in assessing the risks of hiring Murray: the man is a cardiologist, for heaven’s sake, not an anesthesiologist. The latter is a specialty in itself.

Smaller Unit of Bondage?

Conservatism, Economy, EU, Europe, Liberty

Mainstream conservative opinion is catching up with secessionist sentiment and prescriptions expressed over these pixelated pages (September 9, 2011), except that these conservatives can’t quite bring themselves to speak of the benefits of dissolving the dysfunctional EU.

Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times advocates a new, if smaller, unit of bondage:

“… a new Mark-based monetary union with fellow northern economies that maintain strict fiscal controls could help salvage something when the next economic tsunami hits Europe.” (October 21, 2011)

BUT:

German taxpayers are fed up with having to constantly bail out suicidal spendthrift policies in irresponsible countries. They understand that bailouts are only temporary band-aids because welfare states will keep coming back with hats in hand for more cash injections but never improve their failing practices.

If they are dropped from the EU, “loser countries” will better able to serve as cheap labor and resume exporting goods to their neighbors.

UPDATED CONTINUALLY: Independent Against The Establishment

Barely A Blog, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Liberty, Media, Reason, South-Africa

IF YOU ARE new to IlanaMercer.com and its sister site, BarelyABlog.com, welcome! Read a better rounded biographical and professional exposé here.

In brief:

I am a US-based, classical liberal writer. I pen WorldNetDaily.com’s longest-standing, exclusive, paleolibertarian, weekly column, “Return to Reason.” With a unique audience of 8 million, WND.COM has been rated by Alexa as the most frequented “conservative” site on the Internet. I also feature on RT, ranked 999 on the WWW, with the “Paleolibertarian Column.” (Here are some thoughts on RT’s overall excellence as compared to the malfunctioning American media.)

Formerly syndicated by Creators Syndicate, I contribute to London’s Quarterly Review, and am a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an independent, non-profit economic policy think tank.

Dare I say that millions have read this writer’s work over the years on WND.COM (ranked 1,874th on the internet rater, Alexa)?

Nevertheless, I am forever being peppered with patronizing notes from readers—hardly patrons, for a patron is “one that supports, protects, or champions; a sponsor or benefactor.” This persistent condescension (usually from older, authoritarian males, some in position of influence) necessitates that I remind reality bound readers of the following: The age of the Internet guarantees the futility of energetic efforts to marginalize myself and others, who like me, write outside of accepted orthodoxy. In my case, for almost two decades.

BELTWAY LIBERTARIANS
A recent exercise helped me to appreciate just how much the libertarian establishment, much like its mainstream cohort—and desperate to sustain its sinecured monopoly over the marketplace of ideas—will forever opt for the “statist quo” (to use a Jeff Tuckerism), in the face of popular trends to the contrary.

I was asked to attend a workshop and deliver an address at a local chapter of a property rights organization. Closer to the time, however, I was informed that I had been dropped in favor of an individual from a well-heeled think tank.

(Poor me. Instead, I got to travel to Manhattan Le Magnifique, to feature as speaker for the month of May, 2012, at the libertarian-cum-Objectivist New York City Junto gathering.)

You see, this writer is an independent, one-woman band, whose fidelity is to the truth alone. As such, or so I was told, I lacked name recognition. Since I had never heard of the individual who was to fill my much-smaller shoes, I did a few Internet searches. I discovered that the group had opted for establishment, not for name recognition.

GOOGLE threw up 245,000 results for the establishmentarian to my name’s 1,310,000 results.
FACEBOOK had me at 3400 Friends (and no time YET to vet the rest). Mr. Establishment was stuck at … 4. (Here is my FACEBOOK “FRIENDSHIP” POLICY.)
MY BOOK’S FACEBOOK FAN PAGE garnered 594 Likes; Mr. Establishment’s Author Page had all of 25 Likes. Amazon was as dismally populated.
TWITTER: Mr. Name Recognition had 67 followers to my modest 771.
WND & RT, as mentioned, carry my weekly column. They rank, respectively, 1,874 and 999 on the WWW by Alexa, the premier website ranking site. I presume that Mr. Establishment produces the occasional ponderous, desiccated, extremely well-concealed position paper. If so, he does it on a site that ranks 47,094th on Alexa.

How long can these Beltway based think tanks and their patrons delude themselves about their reach or appeal? They excite as much passion as a wet blanket during the perennial, Washington State power outage.

As mentioned, a year on Facebook finds me communicating with a community of over 3400 Facebook Friends and growing. Expanding too is the Facebook following on Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s Fan Page.

Not too shabby for one woman.

Please log-in to, or join, Facebook in order to “Like” The Cannibal. To read The Cannibal is to love it. Guaranteed. To review this book on Amazon is to support what will prove to be a prophetic text.

In a gracious note to this writer, the one and only Patrick J. Buchanan wrote: “I believe your book is being sold [or bundled on Amazon] along with my new book, ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America survive to 2025.’ … my 18,000-word chapter on ethnonationalism and tribalism and the surge of both throughout the Third World—as well as our own declining world—tracks pretty much with what you wrote…”

Every bit as gratifying to this writer was a courtesy copy of “Suicide of a Superpower,” thus inscribed: “To Ilana Mercer: Fellow Columnist and Fellow Conservative, with The Respect and good wishes of The Author.”

Still and all, to say that the publication process of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa has been punishing would be an understatement. …

Read on about these travails, but return to this page.

All in all, patrons are preferable to the patronizing. I thank my patrons—you know who you are.

Speaking of patrons, as was announced in July of 2012 , Barely A Blog (BAB) Comments Section was closed down by necessity. (Related are the posts, “The Closing of The American Mind? What Mind?” as well as “Barely A Blog (BAB) Closes Comments (& Says ‘So Long’ To Cowards).”

For years, I’ve moderated this forum, hoping to educate visitors. The goal was noble, but naive. The labor-intense effort involved considerable opportunity costs, and few returns (Comments do not drive traffic to BAB or to IlanaMercer.com).
Time is scarce and thus precious.
With the exception of a few valued voices (who may, like Myron Pauli, submit editorials), this public-minded forum attracted a lot of maladroit, often maladaptive, men and women who, for the most, hadn’t the faintest idea how to behave on private property (BAB).

THE PALEO-PROBLEM
For over a decade, I’ve written a quality, consistently hardcore, paleolibertarian column, which no paleo site carries. Not one. This is quite astonishing, if you think of it. It says a great deal about the ossified mindset within this community. Assorted sites will feature, year-in and year-out, the same establishment columns. Or choose more malleable mediocrities. But they avoid like the plague even mention of the weekly output of this hard-right writer. Does the paleo practice of ignoring reality, highlighted in the post “The Paleo Problem: Intellectual Dishonesty Or Senility?”, amount to a child covering his ears and humming loudly, in the hope that reality will magically change?

Yes, and worse.

In his Foreword to Nonsense, Robert J. Gula’s handbook of logical fallacies, Hunter Lewis cautions that it is, in “a broader sense” (“broad” being Gula’s genius and sensibility), a logical fallacy to inject information or arguments that are … incomplete, or to omit some important fact, point, or perceptive, … whether intentionally or unintentionally.

PARSING PALEOLIBERTARIANIMS
In “Ilana Mercer and the Paleolibertarian Ideal,” columnist and political philosopher Jack Kerwick parses paleolibertarianism as “the conviction [first] … that a world in which men and women are free to order their lives in accordance with their own moral purposes, not those of the governments under which they live, is an ethical ideal worth aspiring toward.”

But that’s not all:

For years, Mercer has authored a weekly column — ‘Return to Reason’ — at the very popular WorldNetDaily website. The most casual perusal of her archives there readily reveals that she is as ardent a champion as any of that tradition … applauded for affirming ‘libertarian principles while opposing open borders, libertinism, egalitarianism, and political correctness.’
…It is this conviction that explains why everyone who is familiar with Mercer’s thought locates it squarely within the classical liberal or libertarian tradition. Yet to look at it more deeply — though not much more deeply — is to see why it just as solidly compels us to locate it within libertarianism’s paleo strain.
…Whether addressing a broad range of issues in an equally broad range of arenas — as she does in Broad Sides — or shedding blood, sweat, and tears to draw the Western world’s attention to the systematic injustices to which her native South Africa is daily subjected — as she does in Cannibal — Mercer is forever cautioning readers against succumbing to the contemporary Western temptation to indulge in abstractions. To put it another way, she has been laboring tirelessly to remind us of something that this generation of liberty’s defenders are all too ready to forget: Liberty is as dependent upon historical and cultural contingencies as is any other artifact. And it is just as fragile.

MORE.

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Yours,
ilana