Category Archives: Political Philosophy

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

Leave a reply

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.

 

 

UPDATE III (9/30/020): The Meta On ‘Cancel-Culture King’ Ben Shapiro

Celebrity, Conservatism, Critique, Free Speech, Political Philosophy

From his comfy perch alongside establishment conservatives, Ben Shapiro regularly whinges about the de-platforming of members of his center-right, ideological cabal. This, as he vilifies and ostracizes those on the alt- and dissident right.

Understand, Ben. It’s all in the meta: Your methods are of a piece with the methods of the Left. For you can’t claim to support unfettered speech if you actively work to fetter those whose speech you abhor.

The Alt-Right asks questions. This is not despicable, as Mr. Shapiro terms the faction. The Alt-Left throws punches. This is despicable:

Daily Wire puff piece about its own editor here.

More me on Ben-Shap here.

“Ben Shapiro Attacks The Dissident Right.”

The Great Lady herself. Ms. Malkin knows that Ben-Shap deceives people into thinking he’s really smart by going “300 RPM”:

Conservatives are most certainly interested in cancelling conservatives and libertarians to their right.  Ben Shapiro is the “king of such cancellation culture,” as Ms. Malkin points out. And she is still standing, railing against the “two-faced pundits and keyboard warriors.” Bravo!

America First is why Shapiro, who is ConInc subsidized, tried to cancel Michelle. “There is no money in telling the truth (don’t I know it: was cancelled 20 years ago). … The young men Ben-Shap opposes pose a threat to his business model.” David Rubin is another intellectual mediocrity. True again. Been saying this for years.

UPDATE I (8/2/020):

UPDATE II (9/25): Ben Shapiro says “the 2ndAmendment only applies to ‘guns that are in common use’ and that if the #guns are not determined by government officials to be in common use, that they can “theoretically be restricted by the state.”

UPDATE II (9/30): Ben on the first presidential debate. 

NEW COLUMN: A ‘Victims of Communism Day’ Is Long Overdue

Communism, Crime, Fascism, Political Philosophy, The State

3 Replies

NEW COLUMN:  Why on earth is communism still kosher? The topic has to be revisited occasionally, given that a good chuck of your kids are being groomed to be followers of this death cult.

“A ‘Victims of Communism Day’ Is Long Overdue” was on WND. It appeared last week on the Unz Review. It is now a feature on the great  American Greatness, which, together with the Unz Review, is the freest, smartest spot for the dissident right.

On Sunday evening, you’ll be able to read this column on American Greatness.

The fact that socialists and communists are still voted into power with swagger; the fact that this creed’s savage foot-soldiers, Black Lives Matter and Antifa, are cast as pacifists, seekers of equity and justice—demonstrates that communists, despite their murderous past, “belong to the camp of democratic progress,” whereas the Right is forever open to suspicions of unforgiven fascist and Nazi sympathies.

If anything, “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression”—that “800-page compendium of the crimes of communist regimes worldwide”—treads too lightly when it comes to qualitative comparisons between the Nazi and the “Marxist-Leninist phenomenon.”

On the quantitative front, “Nazism, at an estimated 25 million dead,” turned out to be distinctly less murderous than Communism, whose “grand total of victims, variously estimated at between 85 million and 100 million murdered, is the most colossal case of political carnage in history.”

Qualitatively, the “‘class genocide’ of Communism” is certainly comparable to the “‘race genocide’ of Nazism.” In its reach and methods, moreover, nothing compares to Communism’s continual, ongoing invention of new classes of “enemies of the people” to liquidate. “Mass violence against the population was a deliberate policy of the new revolutionary order; and its scope and inhumanity far exceeded anything in the national past.”

The Jewish people have carried out “the solemn obligation to keep the memory of its martyrs alive in the conscience of the world.” The civilized world has internalized the methods and meaning of the “Final Solution.” As “The Black Book” observes approvingly, “Hitler and Nazism are now a constant presence in Western print and on Western television.”

Alas, although “their practices were comparable,” the “moral auras” of Nazism and Communism are still “antithetical.” “The Communist project” is permitted to claim “a commitment to universalistic and egalitarian goals, whereas the Nazi project” is said to offer only “unabashed national egoism.” The liberal world has refused to similarly stigmatize Communism. “The status of ex-Communist carries with it no stigma, even when unaccompanied by any expression of regret.”

Even more skewed is the situation in the East. No Gulag camps have been turned into museums to commemorate their inmates; all were bulldozed into the ground during Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization. The only memorial to Stalin’s victims is a modest stone brought to Moscow from the Arctic camp of Solovki and placed in Lubyanka Square (though well off to the side), where the KGB’s former headquarters still stands. …

READ ON. “A ‘Victims of Communism Day’ Is Long Overdue” is featured now on American Greatness. 

Cancel Culture Compliance Always Leads Back To A … Kneeling, Groveling Republican

Democrats, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Republicans

Twitter tiffs are hard to trace. But on matters racial and right-of-center, they invariably lead to a kneeling, prostrate Republican.

Prone is the natural position of the Establishment Republican, Con Inker, neoconservative, whatever his latest political permutation.

These days, this political chameleon (with apologies to the delightful chameleon community) has a new disguise: Con, Inc., as gladiator Michelle Malkin likes to taunt the reconstituted D.C. herd. As always, Con Inc., aims to pacify the Left and deceive the Right.

Over the authentic, Dissident Right, Con Inkers and the Left converge: We must be cancelled.

Like the Establishment Republican before him, the Con Inker expects Democrats to define the terms of debate. This means that each day ushers in a new kind of Kafka. From his prone position, the Con Inker Republican does nothing much but offer-up mea culpas to the enemy for his putative political sins as he inches closer to the Left. This enfeebled creature, formerly known as a neoconservative, keeps up the apologia even when his faction occupies the White House and controls the two congressional chambers.  

Ritual offerings accompany the bowing and scraping. Errant writers and thinkers who are not in compliance with the duopoly’s orthodoxy are denounced. Most have been purged (check).

So, if you are able to trace and make sense of the tweets below: Geoffrey Ingersoll, Daily Caller’s editor-in-chief, knows me. To his credit, Mr. Ingersoll corresponded with me cordially (if utterly insincerely), before discontinuing my column at Daily Caller, pursuant to taunts by the country’s leading hate group, the Southern Poverty law Center.

And, did I mention that the Daily Caller has written ardently against the SPLC, while purging people this hate group has placed on cancel lists?

Yep.

Defeatism, hypocrisy and betrayal are generally traced back to Republicans, Con Inkers, neoconservatives.

My thanks to Patrick Howley and Cassandra Fairbanks for being standup people. Few are the people who man-up these days.