Category Archives: Nationhood

NEW BOOK REVIEWED ON RECKONIN’ By Dr. CLYDE WILSON

Argument, Business, Capitalism, COVID-19, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Nationhood, Outsourcing, Paleolibertarianism, Political Economy, Pseudoscience, Republicans, Technology, The South

The Paleolibertarian Guide to Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & the Aberrant Economy” by Ilana Mercer: A RECKONIN REVIEW by ~ CLYDE WILSON, distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews. Dr. Wilson is also is co-publisher of Shotwell Publishing, a source for unreconstructed Southern books.

LIBERTARIANS rightly understand that economic freedom goes along with individual liberty and prosperity. But American libertarians have become, it seems, advocates of a solipsistic individual will and license. The sovereign individual is an imaginary beast that does not exist. Paleolibertarians like Ilana Mercer understand that man lives in a community, the virtues of which are necessary for capitalism and which is his best protection from intrusive government. And such virtues do not fit any and every society.

In this incisive chapter-and-verse exposé of the current American regime, she argues that the state, which now represents a merger of government and large corporations, is presiding over the destruction of American civil society. That is the nature of the touted global economy and global politics.

Mercer’s description of the American economic and social condition will not find disagreement from any Reckonin’ reader. “The business of life,” she writes, “one’s livelihood, and the locality in which one lives and loves – these are the property repositories for conservative loyalties.”

Living standards of the middle and working classes are falling. You would think this would bring the attention of public leaders. Instead, they are busy promoting ethnic chaos, genocide, and sodomy here and abroad. The Covid lockdown killed 3.3 million small businesses; the homeless now include more and more families; Deep Tech claims to need to import foreign talent (Republican boilerplate) while firing Americans. Differences in wealth distribution are higher than ever seen in history.

Our leaders don’t seem to see any problem with their ways. They don’t notice catastrophic debt and overextended, wasteful, and incompetent military as problems, despite their contribution to the “aberrant” economy.

Mercer’s treatment of health tyranny, immigration, and outsourcing is informative and hard-hitting. “The free flow of goods across borders is not to be confused with the free flow of people across borders…. The very stuff of life has been contracted out. Not mere jobs, but careers; not just some products, but entire production lines; not one or two manufacturing plants, but the means of production.”

The author advocates and illustrates a preference for good old common sense. Common sense was long the undergirding of our Anglo-American law and way of life. Why have so many abandoned it, as in the Covid fraud, for the authority of phony “expertise”?

Mercer is always a fun read because of her creative labelling: castrati Republicans, Washington wokerati, FixNews, ConOink, Learjet liberals, bafflegab for bureaucratic and progressive discourse, ‘Walmart with Missiles’ for the present U.S.

UPDATED (9/26/022): Giorgia Meloni Has A Philosophy Of Liberty; GOP Candidates Have Positions, Talking Points, Bereft of Philosophy

Argument, Europe, Family, Individual Rights, Liberty, Nationalism, Nationhood, Political Philosophy, Republicans

‘The GOP has to stick to positions, talking points, because the Republicans don’t hold a philosophy, much less one that can support concepts like nationalism, nation-state and national sovereignty’

Unlike most of our GOP candidates, who promote positions, as opposed to a philosophy of liberty (even the very nice ones such as Kari Lake)—Giorgia Meloni, prime minister elect of Italy and leader of Brothers Of Italy, bases her opinions on a systematic philosophy which is central to her core beliefs.

Liberty to Meloni is not the party’s talking points—positions and political plank—as it is for the GOP—“God, Groceries, Gas,” as one hack summed it up on Hannity. Rather, Meloni holds a philosophy of liberty which she grasps. Thus she quotes GK Chesterton not for the meaty words, but to shore up a philosophy. Coming from her, Chesterton doesn’t ring hollow.

What do I mean? Example: Meloni talks about “the nation state” and a “political sovereignty that belongs to the citizens of that state.”

The GOP confines itself to noodling against open borders, but for legal immigration (they love it) and against illegal immigration. The GOP has to stick to positions, talking points, because the Republicans don’t hold a philosophy, much less one that can support concepts like nationalism, nation-state and national sovereignty.

Meloni knows that individual rights are not deracinated, free-floating entitlements that attach naturally to every person who can then show up on the West’s doorstep demanding these abstracted rights be defended and optimized. No, this position is that of the Republicans and Democrats. Their positions justify open borders to varying degrees and an adventurous foreign policy to varying degrees.

A party that holds positions bereft of philosophy will never restore the nation. Why, the concept of a nation (not nation-state) Republicans reach for only to promote and project Lincoln-like visions of political might and can-do optimism.

On the other hand, Meloni, an Italian nationalist, will want to slow immigration to a halt because she believes that everything that is good in Italy comes from its Italian essence.

Suffice it to say that, in her references, the Italian prime minister elect evinces erudition and knowledge.

Alas, as I’ve been told, Meloni is wishy-washy on the vaccine and I note that she suffer the Ukraine euphoria, although is about Italy First.

https://gettr.com/post/p1s9u5762ab

* Screen capture image via NYT

NEW COLUMN: Mourning The Queen— But Did Elizabeth II Drop The Ball?

Africa, Britain, Colonialism, Communism, Constitution, Democracy, Etiquette, Nationalism, Nationhood, Race, Socialism

NEW COLUMN is “Mourning The Queen— But Did Elizabeth II Drop The Ball?” It is now on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Excerpt:

It cannot be denied that Queen Elizabeth II of blessed memory partook in the decision to support the unchecked majority rule of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, my homeland.

Like her Majesty at the time, most politicians and public intellectuals thought nothing of delivering South Africa into the hands of professed radical Marxist terrorists. Yet any one suggesting such folly to the wise Margaret Thatcher risked taking a hand-bagging.

The Iron Lady had ventured that grooming the ANC as South Africa’s government-in-waiting was tantamount to “living in cloud-cuckoo land.” (Into The Cannibal’s Post: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, p. 147.)

But what do you know? Queen Elizabeth did just that! Over Mrs. Thatcher’s objections, in 1987 the queen had bullied Prime Minister Thatcher to sanction South Africa.

And in 1979, noted British paleolibertarian Sean Gabb, the queen also muscled Mrs. Thatcher to go back on her election promise not to hand Rhodesia over to another bunch of white-hating black Marxists.

Most disquieting to decency: Although search engines are energetically scrubbing this fact from the Internet—the Queen had knighted Robert Mugabe. Mugabe was chief warlord of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia (may that country rest in peace).   

To quote Into the Cannibal’s Pot, the book aforementioned:

“By the time the megalomaniac Robert Mugabe was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II (1994)—and given honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh (1984), Massachusetts (1986), and Michigan (1990)—he had already done his “best” work: slaughtering some 20,000 innocent Ndebele in Matabeleland (1983). Western conventional wisdom was no wiser. (And the United Nations responded invariably by … condemning Israel.)” P. 134.

Sidebar:

Mugabe was nothing if not consistent in his contempt for all life.

Question: What do you call a “person” who butchers and barbeques baby elephant?

Answer: A motherf–ker. Lowbrow Robert Mugabe, as Foreign Policy magazine had reported in 2015, “celebrated his 91st birthday followed by a lavish party with an exotic menu, reportedly including barbequed baby elephant.”

Is it any wonder Dr. Gabb took a different measure of her Majesty in 2012, dubbing her “Elizabeth the Useless“? Gabb’s “Sixty Years a Rubber Stamp” unfurls a list of her Majesty’s acts of constitutional omission, if not unconstitutional commission. …

…THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Mourning The Queen— But Did Elizabeth II Drop The Ball?,” is now on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

* Screen picture via Daily Mail

NEW COLUMN: Bar Meghan Markle From The Great Lady’s Funeral

Britain, Conservatism, Constitution, Democracy, English, Globalism, Nationalism, Nationhood, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN is “Bar Meghan Markle From The Great Lady’s Funeral.” It’s a feature on WND, Unz Review, and The New American.

It’s no secret I favor monarchy over mob rule, namely democracy aka mobocracy.

“From pundits on our side of the pond, however, the monarchy regularly draws nasty barbs. Trashing the British monarchy appears to be their way of asserting American exceptionalism. I wager that were the conservative, periwigged Englishmen who founded America to pounce back on to the ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ TV set—the only place they’d be welcomed, given their ‘Ultra MAGA’ bent—the founders, too, would favor the monarchy over the current American mobocracy.”

… consider the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the tawdry, quintessentially American saga they had inflicted on the queen. That the British monarchy stands for the last vestiges of ancient English tradition is not in dispute. But what do the Americanized Harry Windsor, formerly known as Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle represent? …

MORE on WND, Unz Review, and The New American.

A different measure of her Majesty was taken by British paleolibertarian and friend Sean Gabb. In 2012, Dr. Gabb dubbed Elizabeth II “Elizabeth the Useless.”

Brilliant piece, facts all new to me in “Sixty Years a Rubber Stamp” By Sean Gabb:

“The Queen has not sustained our national identity. … she has allowed many people to overlook the structures of absolute and unaccountable power that have grown up during her reign. She has fronted a revolution to dispossess us of our country and of our rights within it.”

“The Queen should have resisted the Offensive Weapons Bill and the Firearms Bill, that effectively abolished our right to keep and bear arms for defence. She should have resisted the Bills that abolished most civil juries and that allowed majority verdicts in criminal trials.”

“She should have resisted the numerous private agreements that made our country into an American satrapy. She should have insisted, every time she met her Prime Minister, on keeping the spirit of our old Constitution. There have been many times since 1972 when she should have acted. …”

“… she has acted only twice in my lifetime to force changes of policy. In 1979, she bullied Margaret Thatcher to go back on her election promise not to hand Rhodesia over to a bunch of black Marxists. In 1987, she bullied Thatcher again to … sanction South Africa. … MORE.

What are we to expect from Charles III?

Nothing, says Dr. Gabb, today.

He is old and stupid and possibly malevolent. Nor do I expect anything of William V, assuming he is ever allowed to succeed. George V was unfortunate in his progeny, and its quality has been dropping ever since. If all else had been sound, monarchs of low intellectual quality might not have been a problem – though I suspect it would always have had damaging effects given that our constitution is monarchical and in need of some ability at the top. But they were stupid at a time when intelligent monarchs were an essential safeguard against a political class that, since about 1940, has never risen above the worthless.

* Screen pic image via Sean Gabb.