Category Archives: Paleoconservatism

Interview: Ilana Mercer, Part 1: Roots, Writing, & Resistance

Canada, Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Etiquette, Family, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

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Interview: Ilana Mercer, part 1: Roots, writing, & resistance, By Dissident Mama on Friday, September 25, 2020.

I gave an interview to an up-and-coming young star, Dissident Mama, aka Rebecca Dillingham. She writes:

“It’s been a long time in the making, but here it is: the first installment of my two-part interview with the always provocative and poignant Ilana Mercer. Part 2 should be published on Monday. Keep your eyes wide open for that – it promises to be explosive!”

The tagline at Ilana Mercer’s website is “Verbal swordplay for civilization.” Ain’t that the truth. The self-described paleolibertarian has been wielding words and fighting the good fight since well before I even thought about fleeing the clutches of feminism-atheism-socialism. She’s both provocative and poignant – a difficult thing to pull off anytime, much less in our postmodern dystopia.

I remember first stumbling upon Mercer at World Net Daily back in my neocon “daze” in the early 2000s. I recall being moved by not only her tenacity, but her cerebral style. Being such a prolific essayist, I then found her articles during my libertarian/ancap phase. And again, her writing spoke to me. Now, I’m what you’d call a paleoconservative/Southern traditionalist, and yet, there she is again: writing articles that say things we all want to say but don’t know how, or planting seeds for new thinking.

Now, I don’t always agree with Mercer. I’d say she speaks my language on most matters, but that’s really not what draws me to her work. When you read Mercer, you know that she’s coming to her conclusions through principled inquiry, deep research, a passion for justice, and an impatience with the insanity. In other words, she’s rational but on fire!

And Mercer can see through so many of the charades. Perhaps this is due to her years of experience or because, as Jack Kerwick says, “Ilana is in much greater supply of that ‘manly virtue’ than are most male writers today.”

As Southern stalwart Dr. Clyde Wilson explains of Mercer, “This is one libertarian who knows that the market is wonderful, but it is not everything.” Intellectual honesty like that is hard to come by these days, and that’s why Mercer’s writing is so damn good: it’s fearless and succinct. Bold and challenging. Accessible and engrossing.

Moreover, anyone who’s forever banned from Facebook, pegged as a hater by the SPLC, and given accolades by everyone from Peter Brimelow and Vox Day, to Tom Woods and Paul Gottfried, well, they’re pretty cool in my book. Plus, Mercer has become what I would call a mentor and a friend. So, for those of you who don’t already know her, please meet the never-to-be-duplicated Ilana Mercer. And folks who are already familiar with her and her independent streak, get ready to have your socks knocked off.

MORE… Ilana Mercer, part 1: Roots, writing, & resistance, By Dissident Mama on Friday, September 25, 2020.

 

 

UPDATED (8/22/): NEW COLUMN: Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!

Conservatism, Free Speech, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Paleoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Reason

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NEW COLUMN IS “Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!” It featured on Townhall.com, WND.COM, the Unz Review, and Newsroom For American and European-Based Citizens.

It is currently a feature on American Greatness:

“Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!” It is the second in a series deconstructing the racism construct. For the first, there is also a quick YouTube primer.

Excerpt:

Racism consists of a mindset or a worldview that boils down to impolite and impolitic thoughts and words written, spoken, preached, or tweeted.

If that’s all racism is, you ask, then what was the knee on George Floyd’s neck? Was that not racism?

No, it was not.

Judging from the known facts, the knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck was a knee on a man’s neck. That’s all that can be inferred from the chilling video recording in which Floyd expired slowly as he pleaded for air.

Floyd begged to breathe. But the knee on his neck—“subdual restraint and neck compression,” in medical terms—was sustained for fully eight minutes and 46 seconds, causing “cardiopulmonary arrest.”

There are laws against what transpired between former Officer Derek Chauvin and Mr. Floyd.

And the law’s ambit is not to decide whether the offending officer is a correct-thinking individual, but whether Mr. Chauvin had committed a crime.

About Officer Chauvin’s mindset, the most the law is supposed to divine is mens rea—criminal intention: Was the officer whose knee pressed on Floyd’s neck acting with a guilty mind or not?

For fact-finding is the essence of the law. The law is not an abstract ideal of imagined social justice, that exists to salve sensitive souls.

If “racism” looks like a felony crime, then it ought to be prosecuted as nothing but a crime and debated as such. In the case of Mr. Chauvin, a mindset of depraved indifference seems to jibe with the video.

This is not to refute the reality of racially motivated crimes. These most certainly occur. It is only to refute the legal and ethical validity of a racist mindset in the prosecution of a crime.

Surely, a life taken because of racial or antisemitic animus is not worth more than life lost to spousal battery or to a home invasion.

The law, then, must mete justice, in accordance with the rules of evidence, proportionality and due process. Other than intent, references to the attendant thoughts that accompanied the commission of a crime should be irrelevant—be they racist, sexist, ageist or anti-Semitic.

Ultimately, those thoughts are known only to the perp.

To make matters worse, legions of libertarians and conservatives have joined the progressive establishment in the habit of sniffing out and purging racists, as though they were criminals.

Sniffing out thought or speech criminals is a no-no for any and all self-respecting classical conservative and libertarian. We should never persecute or prosecute thought “criminals” for utterances not to our liking (unless these threaten or portend violence). …

… READ THE REST. LATEST COLUMN IS currently a feature on American Greatness:

UPDATE (8/22/20):

Loup-Bouc:

Fine article, Ms. Mercer. Unlike all other Unz Review authors who have addressed the Floyd case, you apprehend accurately/correctly much of the pertinent law. ..I observe that you have written a fine article. Brava.

Mark Humphrey says:
August 22, 2020 at 1:51 am GMT   ?

This essay is the clearest and most effective explanation as to why racism and other bad ideas are not criminal. Of the numerous Mercer essays I have read, this is the best. Thank you.

 

 

UPDATED (8/14): NEW COLUMN: America’s Race Reality: Inhuman, Insane, Incoherent

Crime, Criminal Injustice, English, Justice, Law, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Race, Racism

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NEW COLUMN IS “America’s Race Reality: Inhuman, Insane, Incoherent.” It appeared on WND.COM, The Unz Review, American Renaissance, Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens, The Saker.

The column, called “Racial Violence Isn’t a One Way Street,” is now a feature on American Greatness, which, under the intrepid leadership of Julie Ponzi and her colleagues, has fast become the leading, cutting-edge paleoconservative publication.

Excerpt:

Racism is a lot of things. One thing it is not:

A white child, aged five, executed by a black man with a shot to the head, as the tyke rode his bike. Ask the cultural cognoscenti. They’ll tell you: That’s never racism.

Otherwise, almost anything involving the perpetually aggrieved black community counts as racism.

Students hoist a “thin blue line” flag in solidarity with police: racism.

A black male is asked for his driver’s license: racism. Of course it’s systemic. Are you stupid, or something?

A white politician proclaims that “all lives matter”: Come again? Are you kidding me?!

A museum curator fails to commit to the exclusion of the art of white men, including, presumably, the Old Masters: not racism; white supremacism. Be gone with you, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

A black student struggles with English grammar. English grammar is ruled racist. Take that, Dr. Johnson!

This, even though, logically, it is more likely that our student is not up to the task or hasn’t tried hard enough; that his tutor is not up to the task and hasn’t tried hard enough—or all of those things combined.

As you can see, accusations of racism are seldom grounded in reason or reality.

Racism, then, is just about anything other than the point-blank execution of little Cannon Hinnant (white), on August 9, by Darius Sessoms (black), and the rape, the other day, by Dejon Dejor Lynn, 25, of an old lady: his 96-year-old neighbor.

From the media industry’s modus operandi, we may comfortably deduce that the raped lady is almost certainly white.

How so?

Fully 73 percent of the residents of Ann Arbor, Michigan, are white. If the race of an unnamed victim of black crime is withheld, she’s most likely white. Were the victim Hispanic, the media industry would say so, and would forthwith withhold the picture and race of the “suspect,” so that the crime became an attack against a “minority.”

Similar black-on-white atrocities are a daily occurrence, documented, “in moving images,” by “the fearless and indefatigable journalist Colin Flaherty.” They are either ignored by the media industry or described as racially neutral.

In a powerful responsorial that is almost religious in cadence, Jack Kerwick, a FrontPageMag.com columnist, and occasional American Greatness contributor, commands us to “say their names”: …

… READ THE REST. “Racial Violence Isn’t a One Way Street” is now featured on American Greatness

UPDATE (8/14): Marc Train at WND:

MarcTrain • 5 hours ago @WND Comments:

Man …this woman is the ONLY conservative writer who will touch this with a million ft. pole. Tucker Carlson does a little but she hits it out of the park …

When Tucker Carlson Is Tops: Let Tucker Be Tucker

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Paleoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Technology

Let Tucker Carlson be Tucker Carlson. When Fox News bosses allow Tucker to be himself, a hardcore, principled paleoconservative, the only one at Fox News, he shines.

Reparations, immigration and Illegal-alien privilege, third-world style homelessness in an increasingly disease-riddled Los Angeles, the Koch Brothers’ ownership of the Republican Party, Big-tech tyranny and the censorship of conservatives and dissident rightists on the Internet: Tonight Tucker shone.

TRANSCRIPTS are here.