Category Archives: Media

On The Mike Church Show

Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Media, South-Africa

On Monday morning, May 9, at 8:05 ET, I will be talking to the King Dude, the one and only Mike Church. Much marginalized by the “DeceptiCONS,” as he calls the custodians of allowable opinion in contemporary America, Mike is “a man, a myth and a machine of clear Constitutional thought.”

Topics: We’ll touch on my new book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. You can pre-order the book from the publisher. In about 10 days, it will be available from Amazon too. If you pre-order from the publisher, shipping is free, where ever you live (South Africa included).

Praise for Into the Cannibal’s Pot is here.

We will be discussing the bin laden orgy too.

I hope I am compos mentis at 5:05AM PT.

UPDATE II: Beck Bucks The System (If “Incoherent & Meandering”)

Glenn Beck, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Media, Uncategorized

Yes, I’ve been critical of the irrational, illogical twists and turns in the thinking of Glenn Beck in recent months. (Here). “Skeptic” (the magazine) could use Beck’s conspiracy building tactics to fill an issue on irrational thinking. However, besides exuding goodness, Beck also radiates rebellion. Whatever one thinks of Beck, he is a rebel. And like all real rebels, he too must secede from the system. Glenn’s departure from FoxNews is an act of secession. FoxNews is the system. Beck is no longer able to abide by the ideological and disciplinary constraints imposed by the Republican establishment’s megaphone.

Beck has promised his jubilant adversaries that they were “going to pray for the days of 5:00PM,” intimating that a force of nature has been unleashed on the world. Or as the Judge put it, “Bigger, better and more Beck.”

Go Glenn! Of course, as I had hoped (see “Beck has Left the Building”), The Judge may stand to inherit the slot.

UPDATE (April 7) I: I hear here, and on Facebook, lots of cheerleading for one program, The Judge’s. Or Stossell’s—who is marvelous, but still very much within the remits of conventional, by-the-book libertarianism. I love them both to bits. But none of you so-called “independent thinkers” has noticed that these shows tolerate, 1) the must-have, establishment Tea Partiers, and 2) the Reason and other narrow-faction libertarianism. The shows are still within the, admittedly, wonderful box. Those who say Beck is part of the system are as insane as Beck (who is a good type of insane; a lovable goof, as Huggs put it). Beck is a natural secessionist.

I’m surprised that you’ve all fallen to your knees before (our) ideological correctness, dismissing Beck’s brave act of secession, b/c of his errors of thought. I have news for you: In the liberty-oriented community, people tend to huddle in atrophying intellectual attics, and quibble about detecting and expelling contrarians. Dare to dissent on this or the other point of purity, and keepers of the flame will take it upon themselves to read you out of the movement. This, naturally, makes for tribalism, not individualism. The bad, moreover, have a nasty habit of crowding out the good. Or as one wag once said to me (was it Randy Barnett? I can’t recall), “Quality is never the result of intellectual purges: the most creative and independent thinkers are the first to go.” That makes perfect psychological sense: those who remain feel more secure, group cohesion having trounced intellectual vitality.

UPDATE II (April 9): Larry Auster:

Glenn Beck’s announcement that he is going to “transition off” his daily TV program later this year, whatever that means, is about as coherent as Sarah Palin’s July 2009 announcement of her reasons for resigning from the governorship. Has anyone noticed that Beck, like Palin, is inveterately incapable of forming a cogent sentence, and that one of the reasons for this, as with Palin, is that almost everything he says revolves around himself?

Indubitably true.

UPDATE II: Lawless In Libya (‘Allahu Akbar’)

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Foreign Policy, Just War, Media

As Dr. Johnson said, “There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.” Indeed, louse or flea — Obama is as much of a pest as was Bush. Still, in centralizing power in the executive branch, Obama may have surpassed Bush the younger. Here’s the latest in the annals of the Imperial Presidency (via BBC):

US President Barack Obama has secretly authorised covert assistance to rebels seeking to overthrow Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, US media reports say.
He recently signed a document known as a “finding”, allowing support to the rebel groups, Reuters news agency and ABC News said.
Such “findings” are a common way for the president to authorise covert operations by the CIA.
The CIA and White House have both declined to comment on the reports. … The New York Times, citing American officials, said on Wednesday that the CIA has had operatives on the ground in Libya for several weeks. They are said to be gathering intelligence for air strikes and making contact with the forces fighting Col Gaddafi.

With the “rebels” in retreat, BHO will have to double his efforts in the Libyan theatre to avoid looking like he’s losing. Libya is about legacy more than Iraq and Afghanistan, wars Bush began.

Perhaps you’ve noticed this, but no sooner does the question of limits on presidential power intrude into the debate than the pundits and pols, who exist in symbiosis, start yammering about the top dog’s obligation to demonstrate “leadership.” “The American people,” say media elites, “want a strong leader.”

If they do, then they’re dumb. “Leadership” is presidential overreach euphemized.

Kneecap this president. Politically, that is.

UPDATE: I closed a blog post that “Cindy” responded to. So here below is her missive. As you can see, Cindy equates my feelings toward the American state with my feelings toward America the country. I would hope that the US is more than its pols, pundits, and foreign policy:

Cindy
2011/03/30 at 5:40 pm:

“Were you alive when Pan AM 103 exploded over the skies of Lockerbie Scotland? If you hate America, why are you living here? Leave! Go! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on on the way out.”

UPDATE II (March 31): Watching the “rebels” on PBS, it’s hard to ignore the blood-curdling harangues of “Allahu Akbar” emitted by our buddies, bless them. Secular democracy rising.

UPDATED: Stoic, Heroic Japan Vs. Neurotic Nation USA

Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Human Accomplishment, Journalism, Media, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Technology

The following is from “Stoic, Heroic Japan Vs. Neurotic Nation USA,” my new, WND.COM column:

” … Our country’s edgy experts have ordered the evacuation of Americans in Japan within a 50-mile radius of the damaged reactors at Fukushima. Japan is being harangued to ape America. The Japanese have, so far, moved people from within a 20-kilometer radius of the power plant. Funny that. The Neurotic Nation, whose military personnel in Japan are popping iodine pills if they’ve so much as flown over, or visited, the vicinity, expects the country that is fielding “The Fukushima 50″ to do the same. …

… Judging by their bombast, you’d think that our experts have been to the site at Fukushima. Indeed, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, asserted that the water meant to cover and cool the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor had evaporated, leaving the rods dangerously exposed. They were overheating, he declared from ground zero … at the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel in Washington. …

Are the nuclear plants in Japan working the way ours do in America? MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked one of the many American specialists to shamelessly share his findings from afar.

Hardball’s blowhard has a point. The USA’s stellar safety record—the best in the world, perhaps—is helped by the fact that we don’t have much of a nuclear power industry. Following the recommendations set out in ‘The China Syndrome,’ a Hollywood dramatization of the incident at Three Mile Island, the construction of new reactors in the USA was practically halted. Nobody died in that 1979 accident in Pennsylvania. Nobody but the nuclear-power industry. …

… The chauvinism with which our ego-bound elites are treating The Japanese Other continued apace. After all, this genteel, able people do not qualify as members of an easy-to-patronize, protected group, the kind so valued in the U.S. …”

The complete column is “Stoic, Heroic Japan Vs. Neurotic Nation USA,” now on WND.COM.

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UPDATE (March 20): Newsweak acknowledges Japan’s strengths: “In spite of monumental collapse and ruin, the Japanese politely wait in long lines for hours, without once complaining. Law and order are respected at every step. The Shinto-Buddhist tradition, which stresses social harmony and cohesiveness and looking out for your neighbor, is deeply ingrained in the culture. This stands in sharp contrast to some of the spontaneous reactions that have flared in the West. In the US, for example, a simple blackout back in 1977 unleashed an embarrassing wave of looting and mayhem, with marauding bands of thieves making off with anything they could carry.” …

But then, the reporter tries to blame Japan’s “ethical and social homogeneous” culture for the horrific monetary policies the country’s leaders have pursued, and for the country’s apparent paucity of “new off-beat ideas and technology, where the key is to be nimble and creative.” Any assertions will do when you are trying to redeem the morass and misery of official multiculturalism.