Category Archives: Political Philosophy

NEW COLUMN UPDATED (9/25): Critical Race Theory Robs And Rapes Reality

Argument, Criminal Injustice, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Law, Logic, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Reason

NEW COLUMN is “Critical Race Theory Robs And Rapes Reality.” It appeared on Townhall.com, WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens, and is now featured on American Greatness.

It is the fourth and last in deconstructing the pernicious construct that is racism.

Your Anti-Critical Race Theory Analytical Ammunition:
1. ‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?
2. Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!’?
3. “Ethnocidal ‘Critical Race Theory’ Is Upon Us Like White On Rice
4. “Critical Race Theory Theory Robs And Rapes Reality

An excerpt:

Inciting racial hatred against whites is all in a day’s work on CNN. It devolves into a more festive affair when a celebrity like DL Hughley joins the network’s conga-line of cretins.

In a July segment, the comedian, author of Surrender, White People!, regaled those CNN viewers of a masochistic mindset, by comparing “racism” to COVID-19.

Whitey, belched Hughley—who used to be witty and is now a drag—can be an asymptomatic carrier of racism. Just because you haven’t done anything racist, doesn’t mean you aren’t racist.

Pay no attention to the COVID-race comparison. It’s the Left’s lowbrow idea of an intellectual quip. Be mindful, however, of the “guilty if you do, guilty if you don’t” pop-jurisprudence. Collectively convicting an entire racial group for metaphysical crimes is the cornerstone of the Critical Race Theory.

Flouting Western judicial philosophy, Critical Race Theory says you are a racist without having committed racism, which is like being a murderer, robber or rapist without having murdered, robbed or raped.

How does that jurisprudence strike you?

It strikes the reasonable, fair-minded member of society as “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

SYMBOLISM INSTEAD OF REALISM

Deconstructed, racism, as deployed by Critical Race racists, is purely a metaphysical affair. It doesn’t survive contact with reality, relying for its validation on a loose relationship with the real world.

You might say Critical Race Theory is anchored in symbolism and not realism.

Ditto Critical Race Feminism, a subspecies of Critical Race Theory, the symbolic nature of which I had traced in a 2001, Ottawa Citizen column:

Women’s studies courses and English departments have long been littered with [postmodernism’s] lumpen jargon. There, text is routinely deconstructed and shred. Subjected to this academic acid, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and T. S. Eliot are whittled down to no more than ruling-class oppressors, their artistry reduced to the bare bones of alleged power relationships in society. All this glumness is due to a theory, no more, and one based on a partial and insular view of history [and reality].

To properly place the oppressiveness of all critical theory in perspective, a young man followed-up that column by writing me a personalized tale of desperation. He had the misfortune of drawing a skyscraper in art class. His creation was alighted on by his professor-cum-oppressor and right away called out for being a phallic symbol, offensive to womenfolk, meant as a symbolic assertion of his dominance qua male.

Where is reality in all this white noise? Nowhere. This nonsense exists solely in the heads of demented distaff and their house-broken, white, liberal, male accomplices. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Racist Theory Robs And Rapes Reality.” It appeared on Townhall.com, WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens. It is currently featured on American Greatness.

UPDATED (9/25):

Dr.C. Fhandrich appeals to ‘dunderheads’ who dog this column, but fail to read it:

The absolute DUNDERHEADEDNESS, of millions of whites is evident in the fact that this brilliant little essay, which concerns the welfare and safety of whites in the very nation they founded, has to now had a mere 8 comments. What is it with so many “whites”? Too busy playing “paintball warrior”?Too busy debating what form of crack you should try? Too much in pain from taking the “knee” too often???

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

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.

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

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.