Category Archives: Nationhood

UPDATED: American Rabbis For Israel First (Good Column; Back Page On WND)

Ilana Mercer, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, Nationhood, Paleolibertarianism

“American Rabbis For Israel First” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Here is an angry and cogent Israeli response to incessant provocation and violence, and one of the factors that triggered the Gaza campaign,” wrote a reader. In his missive, the reader had attached an article for my edification. Chief among the problems with the article is that its author, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, is not an Israeli. Rabbi Boteach is an American. Online, he describes himself as “‘America’s Rabbi,’ whom The Washington Post calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.”

Rabbi Boteach’s Huffington Post defense of Israel titled “Fed Up With Dead Jews” is thus not an “Israeli” response to the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, but a Jewish-American one.

Mistaking a Jewish-American defense of Israel for an “Israeli” one is understandable. When it comes to things Israel, very many American Jews sound like Israelis. While one would expect an Israeli to vigorously defend his homeland, in theory and in practice, one does not expect an American—Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or Baha’i—to defend the interests of a foreign country, with the intensity ordinarily reserved for one’s own.

In “Fed Up,” Rabbi Boteach inveighs: “We have every right to be fed-up. No nation should have to live like this. No nation should have to die like this. … what we do know is that the option of dead Jews is no longer acceptable. We have a right to live.”

Rabbi Boteach and Israel are as one.

Far be it from me to question the Rabbi’s capacity to commit to two countries. Seamlessly does Boteach spread passion and “Kosher Lust” (his new book) wherever he goes. In question here is the unseemliness of dual patriotism; the conflict of interest, if you will. …

… Contra Boteach, my own passions are tempered by time and place. I live in America. My neighbors are American. This is my home. I may be a Jew, but I’m an American patriot first. My loyalties lie with my (war-weary) countrymen, first. …

An American writer’s intellectual energy ought to focus on American interests, first. Personal probity demands it! Otherwise, the columnist is a fifth column.

Read the complete column. “American Rabbis For Israel First” is now on WND.

UPDATE: GOOD COLUMN; BACK PAGE. From the Facebook Thread:

Kerry Crowel: “Whoa … Ilana, that is one hell of a good column.”

Ilana Mercer: “Kerry Crowel, thanks. I thought so. But it’s on second page, as usual, on WND. Second page is more or less the rule for one of the site’s longest standing columns. When thinking of where to publish next book, one takes into account the kind of promotion the column gets. Or no promotion, rather. But thanks for your kind comment.”

What Normal People Do About Welfare Migration

IMMIGRATION, Nationhood

The Australian common-sense option to stop the deluge of welfare migration into the country is unavailable to Americans. Why? Because none of the political parties offers a platform of sanity and rationality on the issue. Colluding quislings all. Minorities notwithstanding, the vast majority of Americans do not have representation in the halls of power.

Via WND comes the story of an electorate that did what was once considered both rational and attainable:

… The Australian people silently revolted. … So, they threw out the government at the national election in September 2013. One of the incoming government’s core election promises was to “stop the boats.” Immediately, Prime Minister Tony Abbott got to work.

As he couldn’t stop the boats overnight, in those first few months, his government gave the illegal immigrants arriving to Australia two options: “You’ve arrived in Australia illegally. As a result, you will never get to stay here. You will never get to be an Australian. So, you have two options – we will take you to a processing center, and you will wait in detention for your asylum application to be processed. Or we will fly you home for free.”

In addition to this, the Abbott government got the Australian military to enforce its border protection, intercepting boats, turning them around, and even towing them back. And it applied pressure on Indonesia, by demanding it secure its own border.

Soon, the message got out, and the boats have stopped. It’s an ongoing issue that requires vigilance, but it has been achieved. Australia’s policy has been exceptionally effective in saving lives. It’s been done amid incessant howling from the left and the mainstream media. …

MORE.

UPDATED: Little America At The Tip Of Africa

Affirmative Action, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Political Correctness, Race, South-Africa

In “Little America At The Tip Of Africa,” I continue my conversation with South African philosopher Dan Roodt, Ph.D., a noted Afrikaner activist, author of the polemical essay “The Scourge of the ANC,” literary critic and director of PRAAG. (Previously on WND: “The Elephant In The Pistorius Courtroom.”) An excerpt:

ILANA MERCER: The dominant-party state that is South Africa is steeped not in an African creed but in an American one. One of your most astute observations has been that post-apartheid South Africa is very much a creature of the Anglosphere. In the U.S., centrally planned and enforced multiculturalism is twinned with open borders for Third-World peoples. How has South Africa fallen in line?

DAN ROODT: Many people see South Africa as an experiment in multiculturalism and open-borders. Almost robotically, we’ve adopted most of the American liberal precepts in a very naïve, knee-jerk fashion. Some people are even urging that we abolish borders completely, to allow any of the billion Africans north of our country to come and settle in South Africa, much like your government is doing vis-à-vis Central-American dependents. However, our experience of the massive illegal immigration we have had since 1994 is that it increases intolerance, especially among the poor and the unemployed. Locals regularly kill foreigners and we have had so-called xenophobic riots.

In some towns close to the border, the foreign population is about 80 percent. Foreigners have access to public health-care facilities, so many are “obstetrical tourists” who come here to have babies. “Anchor babies,” as you call them in the U.S. Generally speaking, state hospitals are getting worse and worse, also as a result of being overburdened with foreign Africans. …

Read the rest of the interview with Dr. Roodt. “Little America at the tip of Africa” is now on WND.

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UPDATE (7/25): FACEBOOK THREAD:

Myron Robert Pauli: While it seems anti-intuitive, the “beneficiaries” of affirmative action are really. in the long haul, the main victims. Consider among other things” (a) you and everyone are told that you are effectively born with a inherent disability by virtue of your parents, (b) you are eventually given phony credentials and phony expectations for which you are vastly inferior to most others with the same real credentials, (c) everyone inherently knows it but like the”Emperor’s New Clothes” remain goofy and silent … – not necessarily something to be proud of.
3 hours ago · Like · 1

Ilana Mercer: Myron, I believe you are echoing Demopublican orthodoxy. What Dan Roodt says is the real deal: some do double duty for others. As far as I can see, and contra to Jason Riley of WSJ, affirmative action recipients do quite well in the make-believe universe propped up by the money and labor of others.

UPDATED: Desperately Seeking Desperadoes in Diapers

Business, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Nationhood

“Desperadoes in Diapers” is the current column, now on The Quarterly Review. An excerpt:

“First they came: thousands of unaccompanied illegal minors rushing the South-Western border. Then came the theories as to why they came. Determined not to miss a trick, America’s traitor elite—open-border interests and enemies of private-property rights—called the arrivals refugees, victims of nativist Know-Nothings who want invaders turned away. The desperadoes in diapers were also said to have fallen victim to a sudden deterioration in conditions in Central America. No proof has been advanced for the claim that, all of a sudden, things in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have worsened. Because they reason in circles, no-border advocates deploy no logic to justify their claims. Only this did these Aristotelians say:

That Central American minors are arriving, hat-in-hand, is in itself proof that their homes have become uninhabitable. Quod erat demonstrandum (as Erik Rush likes to say); Q.E.D.; case proven.

Having been given the go-ahead by media mogul Rupert Murdoch—he came out for de facto limitless importation of third-world immigrants—his employees at Fox News cued the violins. Shepherd Smith was weeping and gnashing his teeth: “Not politics, but the disgusting conditions in their countries have sent these kids to our shores,” he asserted. “What is a caring nation to do? Their parents love them so much; they gave them to smugglers for a better life.”

However poor, this here mother would never have handed over her daughter to a smuggler. But what do I know about parental love? No more than the nation’s first president knew about the glue that was meant to keep America together.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington presented what historian Paul Johnson calls “an encapsulation of what [he] thought America was, or ought to be, about.” America, said Washington, “is a country which is united by tradition and nature. ‘With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits and Political Principles.’”

What a dummy!

“The children, the children,” wailed Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. “It’s all about the children. We are the United States, what do we do about the children?” Such showy “humanitarianism” invariably means the following: Working people in the U.S., with children of their own to mind, will be roped into supporting the children of the world. Enslave one set of people to whom American politicians are beholden by law, for the benefit of another.

Where’s the humanity for the non-consenting host population? …

Read the compete column. “Desperadoes in Diapers” is now on The Quarterly Review..

Our German readers can now follow this column and other worthy writers in the JUNGE FREIHEIT, a weekly newspaper of excellence.

Editors wishing to feature the “Return to Reason” column in their publications, pixel or paper, please contact Bookings@ilanamercer.com. Or, ilana@ilanamercer.com

UPDATE (7/3): Myron Robert Pauli: “I liked the quote of John Quincy Adams. Historian David McCullom said he was the most intelligent of our Presidents. His nickname was Old Man Eloquent. When one plots the trajectory from John Quincy (‘America does not go around in search of monsters to destroy …. She might become the dictatress of the world’) Adams to Bush-II and Obama, it makes me want to cry. – – – Arguably, I am a classical liberal but not a libertarian anarchist OR a welfare-socialist. I do not want foreign mobs taking $$ and turning the country even more socialistic nor do I want to have to turn my own home into a personal fortress to keep out the horde. The reality of modern America is that Washington and Adams would essentially be intellectual outcasts in America of 2014.”