Category Archives: Morality

Anti-Apartheid Does Not Mean Pro-Democracy

Democracy, Ethics, Etiquette, Individual Rights, Morality, South-Africa

Miguel write:

Mrs Mercer:

I purchased your book Into the Cannibal’s Pot and have just started reading it.

From your book and other sources on your website, I understand that you and your family (particularly your father) held an anti-apartheid stance.

Your book however, describes the current situation in SA, particularly after the multi-racial, democratic elections of 1994, as having resulted in a borderline lawless state.

My question to you is: Did you believe, prior to 1994, that the an end to the apartheid regime would bring a more beneficial political and quality of life process to SA.

Thanking you advance

It goes without saying that I make a point of replying to almost all letters I get, provide they’re polite. Thousands, since I began writing. As George Will once wrote, “manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related—as a foundation is related to a house—to the word civilization.”

I’ll address in a future post the issue of what failing to answer your mail says about you. For now, here’s my reply to Miguel:

Hello Miguel,

Thank you for reading Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.

I believe that nowhere in my book do I state the belief below. Moreover, from the fact that I oppose state-enforced apartheid—it does not follow that I support what I call in The Cannibal, a “raw, ripe democracy.”

By the end of the book, you will better understand this perspective. My involvement in SA as a young woman was humanitarian, not political.

You are correct in your assessment of my father’s thinking.

ILANA Mercer

An Agency Of Thieves (IRS) Expected To Practice Theft And Intimidation With Fairness

Criminal Injustice, Government, Morality, Political Philosophy, Taxation, The State

“Tea party,” “patriot,” “the Constitution and Bill of Rights”: This is the stuff of the American Revolution. These are also the keywords that cued the rogue Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to target conservative organizations.

We are ruled by a traitor class and we’ve become traitors to our founding.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, characteristically, understates the IRS’s abuse of “police power” as “an intrusive, ideologically targeted federal investigation of a political movement.”

WaPo’s Editorial Board stepped it up, conceding that “Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable — toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.”

A forthcoming Treasury Department inspector general’s report finds that IRS staffers looked for applications for tax-exempt status from groups that used in their names words such as “Tea Party,” “Patriots” and “9/12,” as well as ones that contained expressions of concern about government spending or criticism of how the country is run. One manager worried — with reason — that this targeting might result in “over-inclusion” of applications that needed no such scrutiny. By 2011, IRS staff had set aside more than 100 applications for added review. It wasn’t just a couple of wayward staffers involved but rather a number of IRS agents and managers.
The inspector general also reports that Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt organization office, knew about the targeting in 2011; she seemed to say Friday that she learned about it from news reports last year. That inconsistency raises suspicions about the agency’s statements that higher-ups didn’t know about the targeting and that there was no political motivation.

Let us remember that the IRS’s activities are immoral, if not illegal. The IRS’s business is legalized theft. However you slice it, there is no moral difference between a lone burglar who steals stuff he doesn’t own and an “organized society” that does the same. Most of what the federal government does is in fact immoral, but not illegal, as it makes up the laws. After all, those in power determine what’s licit and what’s elicit.

Apparently, we expect an agency of thieves (the IRS) to practice theft and intimidation in an even and fair manner.

In a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also apply to the collective. A society founded on natural rights must not finesse theft. The Founders intended for government to safeguard man’s natural rights. The 16th Amendment changed that—it gave government a limitless lien on a man’s property and, by extension, on his life. The Amendment turned government into the almighty source – rather than the protector – of man’s rights and Americans into indentured slaves.

No one in the US government ever gets punished or demoted. Pundits, no doubt, will soon turn to the question of suing the IRS. And most will agree about the “wisdom” of “governmental immunity,” intended as it is to “stop people from suing the government and government employees and officials in many cases.“

Indeed, legislators have used their position to pass laws exempting themselves and many others from liability.

The sovereign has immunity. And you call this a republic?

UPDATED: Dhimmis Seek ‘Dignified’ Burial For Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Carrion For A Hungry French Vulture?)

America, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, EU, Europe, Islam, Jihad, Morality, Political Philosophy, Russia, Terrorism

His relatives refuse to give the Boston butcher a Muslim burial, so–what do you know?—Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s dhimmi victims are obliging. Apparently interring the dead is another one of those inviolable American values. And not only that, but giving this detritus of humanity a burial that comports with his faith is an obligation as well. All nonsensical, if not plain immoral. Incinerating Tsarnaev’s remains is the moral thing to do. (I was going to write that cremation was a “perfectly American” thing to do here, but I am unsure if we act as a moral people would any longer.) Cremation conserves resources and leaves (almost) nothing behind.

Via Fox News:

Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlor, agreed to handle the funeral arrangements. He told Fox News:

“They can protest, but what do you do? In this country, we bury the dead.” Stefan said everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of their death and said he is prepared for protests. But he added that arrangements have yet to be worked out, and finding a final resting plot for the body – which Islamic law says must not be cremated – could prove difficult.

UPDATE (May 5): Carrion For A Hungry French Vulture? Speaking of the detritus of humanity, philosophically, at least: The French are a people whose revolution was a precursor to the Karl-Marx inspired Russian Revolution and the Nazi menaces. During the Reign of Terror, and by popular demand, thousands of the country’s best and brightest—clergy, the aristocracy, and the educated—were guillotined in assembly-lines. This was a dress rehearsal for the industrialized, mass killing of the Communists and Nazis.

Fast forward to France of 2013. Due to EU central planners’ rulings, the vultures of France (the good kind; the birdies) are without carrion. The poor animals are starving. They did what they do best: clean up after human beings. And now French farmers, who can’t survive sans state subsidies (but expect vultures to), want to eradicate the Griffon vultures.

Cut vulture some slack. Can we not send a certain slab of putrefying flesh to poor these scavengers?

Only Following Orders

Ethics, Healthcare, Law, libertarianism, Morality

Forgive the hyperbole, but the, “I was only following orders” excuse for evil action or inaction comes with hefty historical baggage.

It also conjures the nurse at Glenwood Gardens, a California retirement home, who refused to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on an “87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.”

The woman was later declared dead at Mercy Southwest Hospital, officials said.

At the beginning of the 7-minute, 16-second call on Tuesday morning, the nurse asked for paramedics to come and help the 87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.
[the 911 operator] pleads for the nurse to perform CPR, and after several refusals she starts pleading for her to find a resident, or a gardener, or anyone not employed by the home to get on the phone, take her instructions and help the woman.
“Can we flag someone down in the street and get them to help this lady?” [the 911 operator] says on the call. “Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger would help her.”

The relationship between the parties—the ruthless healthcare worker and the deceased—is governed by contract. By following her cruel heart, the nurse was also following the law—and this includes the libertarian law. There is no duty to act, as far as I know—all the more so if the contract by which the two parties were bound stipulated this pathetic policy: We don’t do CPR.

One can only hope that other elderly residents up and leave Glenwood Gardens, if they can, and that the facility is forced to change its policies for fear of bankruptcy.

Listen to the pitiful 911 call and you hear a 911 dispatcher (Tracey Halvorson) with a heart; a healthcare worker without one.

There is not much you can do to change someone without a heart. Name and shame says I.