Category Archives: Neoconservatism

NEW COLUMN: Gov. Marvelous: Ron DeSantis Delivers First Principles In Action

Canada, COVID-19, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Technology

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NEW COLUMN is “Gov. Marvelous: Ron DeSantis Delivers First Principles In Action.” It appeared on The New American, The Unz Review, WND.COM, and Townhall.com.

It is now easiest read on IlanaMercer.com.

(The attendant podcast will be posted as soon as it is available on Rumble.)

Excerpt:

…DeSantis: Principled Pragmatist

In Ron DeSantis we have a man who is acutely aware of the systemic rights violations to which Deplorables are subjected and is attempting to pragmatically govern in accordance with first principles.

Let us recount some of the ways:

When Texas’ Greg Abbott “flat-out banned vaccine requirements; Florida Gov. DeSantis quickly followed suit. Rejecting the jabs-for-jobs deformed public policy, DeSantis vowed to sue the Biden administration. These two governors have been unique in upholding natural, inalienable, individual rights—the right of self-ownership and bodily dominion.

As inoptimal as DeSantis’ “Big Tech” bill was—the governor was the only Republican to have proceeded against Deep Tech in any meaningful way.

The governor was also unique among powerful men to spring into actions on behalf of the Canadian Truckers for Freedom. The Canadian Truckers converged on Ottawa, early in 2022, to reclaim their Charter rights and protest Trudeau’s anti-constitutional Covid-driven apartheid.

GoFundMe is an American crowd-funding site. It had happily collected and distributed funds to detritus like BLM (Black Lives Matter), which, by the most basic of measures, are scum of the earth. Having received $9 million dollars in donations for the Canadian truckers, GoFundMe right away announced it would steal the funds and funnel them to charities of its choosing.

Here was a crime in progress. DeSantis’s response to the GoFundMe cyber-robbery was righteous, principled and proactive. He tweeted:

“It is a fraud for Go-Fund Me to commandeer $9M in donations sent to support truckers and give it to causes of their own choosing. I will work with AG Ashley Moody to investigate these deceptive practices — these donors should be given a refund.” The thieving outfit soon backtracked pursuant to DeSantis’ show of force.

And how is it that only Gov. Ron DeSantis grasps that it’s illegal for state attorneys, whose job description is to uphold the law, to nullify the very law they are paid to enforce?

As the only elected official smart and dedicated enough to grasp and govern in accordance with first principles, DeSantis fired State Attorney Andrew Warren for “effectively nullifying Florida’s criminal law.” Unheard of. The great governor of Florida has also been steadfast in accelerating his pipeline of criminal aliens to the affluent areas of the northeast. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Gov. Marvelous: Ron DeSantis Delivers First Principles In Action.” It’s now on IlanaMercer.com.

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UPDATED (9/7/022): Being Neocon, Wrong And Immoral Earns America’s Pundits More Plaudits

Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, Neoconservatism, Russia, The West, War

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Sorry, Tucker Carlson: We like Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) as a person–but his record, put charitably, is that of playing catch-up. Only recently and slowly has he loosened the grip the neoconservative worldview has had on his thinking. And unconvincingly so.

VDH has been avidly cheering for the Ukrainian project—and seems unable to quiet his rhetoric about American foreign-policy Manifest Destiny. His first instinct was to support the Ukrainian endeavor and he holds the most mundane neoconservative views on Russia.

How predictive is VDH’s analysis in this, our latest, foreign-policy debacle? Not at all. In March of 2022, VDH celebrated “the muscular response of a West supposedly in decline,” when the West is manifestly in decline and Russia is winning by attrition. See “Russia Admits Weaponization Of Gas, Halts NS1 Shipments ‘Until Sanctions Lifted,’ As EU Prepares Response To Energy Crisis.” “[I]n response to the west’s weaponization of currencies and capital flows—Russia has halted gas supplies through Nord Stream 1.”

UPDATE 9/7/022: Putin: “We’ve Lost Nothing” – Putin Warns Western Elites’ “Sanctions Fever” Will See European People “Freeze”

…the blowback from EU and US-led sanctions and attempts at decoupling from Russian fossil fuels is wrecking lives in the West. “Now we are seeing how production and jobs in Europe are closing one after another,” Putin said, stressing that this is happening as “Western elites, who would not, or even cannot acknowledge objective facts.”

While against its war of aggression—those of us who see Russia as a natural ally of traditionalism (expressed in “America’s Radical, Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa!“) offered a solid distillation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Not VDH. He celebrated the puppet Zelensky, who, early in my analysis (March 24, 2022), betrayed his people for war and western aggrandizement.

When VDH, in March 2022, was getting hot for war (the mildest neocon finds war a turn-on), proclaiming a western revival—which is EXACTLY how neocons see war; a rejuvenator of sorts—aggrandizing its horrors ; I wrote this, March 3, 2022:

Good old realpolitik is what Zelensky should have been practicing with his powerful neighbors and historic brethren, the Russians.

Realpolitik is practical politics, the art of getting along, differences and all, in a real world in which reality, including the differences between people and their political systems, is accepted and dealt with.

VDH absolutely loved the war on Iraq (we railed against it from 2002 onward) and admits to NOT supporting Trump in the primaries. We were Orange from day one. (Trump book was published in June, 2016.)

Here we were for Trump from the get-go; against the Iraq war; hold a realistic position on Russia as friend of conservatives (the rest is the business of Russians, not Americans).

Still, readers have become angry with me, and not with the famous, rich, sinecured fools who led them astray and have proven wrong all the time (including in their current pursuits of the Ukraine production).

That kind of schedule of reinforcement and preference in public intellectuals and politicians explains the quality of cognoscenti Americans get. I’ve always said the government and culture don’t stand apart from us; they are us.

The more you reward those who are frequently and reliably wrong in public life—the more flourishing wrongdoers you’ll get and the more likely you are to keep going wrong.

Those who are right and principled get maligned for having foresight and principles. Those who were wrong are redeemed and forgiven, for they reflect the masses.

“PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!”

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Dying For Nothing Day

America, Globalism, Government, Hillary Clinton, Military, Neoconservatism, The State, War

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A brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can ~ ilana (2003)

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. My sympathies go out to Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it, and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but I won’t worship at Moloch’s feet to make you feel better.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Every Israeli stops on that day, wherever he is, and stands still in remembrance. We would have died or been overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland, and not some far-away imperial project.

But can we Americans, in 2013, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that members of the American military killed Iraqis or Afghanis or Libyans so that we may … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

Ultimately, it is “for the love of a brother-in-arms, and ‘Big Brother’ be damned,” explained Robert Glisson. This is why they of the “Patriot Guard Riders,” his band of brothers, truly fought. Men fight for one another and not for the causes imputed to them by the cowards who send them to battle.

The military is still a government job; a career path with huge risks. How fast the so-called small government types forget this immutable truth. From the appropriately titled “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program“ (which the military has become):

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”—ILANA (“Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.“)

AND, from “Classical Liberalism And State Schemes “:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”

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