Category Archives: Political Philosophy

UPDATE IV (2/26): Julie Borowski’s Wrong: Judge Andrew Napolitano Is NO Rightist Libertarian

Ethics, Free Speech, libertarianism, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property

I call Judge Andrew Napolitano a left-libertarian. I prove it. Have done so over years.

Consistency is the touchstone of truth. If you keep changing your philosophical orientation as evinced by your changing positions, you’re more of a creedal politician, than a principled thinker.

Julie Borowski, on the other hand, asserts that Judge Andrew Napolitano is a bona fide rightist libertarian.

Ms. Borowski, do some digging. A search on Barely A Blog is a start. Here’s some of the yield:

Andrew Napolitano: Some Libertarian

Ann Coulter Offers A Corrective To Judge Andrew Napolitano

Judge Napolitano’s Left-Libertarian Confusion

Fighting Words From Left-Libertarian Egalitarians

Napolitano-Koch Connection? (Sixth Sense)

The Neoconservative & Left-Libertarian Positions: Liberty Is Universal

14th Amendment Jurisprudence For Dummies

She is “speaking” (I wish I could do that baby-doll voice) in response to Richard Spencer crashing the Students for Liberty Conference, a bit of performance art that brought out the leftist in the apoplectic attendees. (Yes, free speech belongs to the person who paid for the event. Still, don’t be so rude.)

I’ve tracked the Judge for a while. Unless a recent political conversion makes you a creedal rightist, then he isn’t one. A LOT of libertarians have suddenly found their inner rightist recently, when they crashed into the reality of Trump Nation. I respect the likes of Julie Borowski more. She sticks with her left-libertarian positions.

So, do opportunistic libertarian converts who, say, were open-borders until Trump, count as principled, creedal rightists? What CRAP. Actually, a good percentage of Fox News commentators were Never Trumpsters. For example, the Schlapp couple now riding high:

Much like neocons or liberals, libertarians move in tribes (although I have yet to be invited to join any of their intramural gatherings). Certain groups position themselves as top dogs. They enjoy donor and think-tank backing, and can reinvent themselves the way a slut like Madonna does (although, to her credit, Madonna is consistent philosophically. It’s her face that keeps mutating).

Many of those dubbed Right libertarians flirted with open borders and other abominations (as has the Judge), until recently. At the same time, these libertarians have ostracized me for a consistent, restricted immigration position, and a support, since time immemorial, of Israel’s rights in the land (as against those of the MOPE, Most Oppressed People Ever, etc). Our reformed libertarians (many of whom fell out with me over Israel), now make their new-found case for Israel, ponderously, by citing obscure Israeli/Jewish teens. It’s amusing, and certainly leftist. Cultural leftists love “authoritative” kids. Maybe arguing with and citing kids is an intellectual cop-out (like Bill O’Reilly who feels more comfortable with a 22-year-old blondie on his show than with Ann Coulter).

To this hard rightist, there is no kid worth listening to (except for Milo , seriously). To quote Florence King: “… children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?’ More on being culturally rightist in “THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES.”

In any event, Judge Nap is certainly not Right, although he’s smart enough to so position himself, since the Trump tsunami.

As for Jeffery Tucker. Yes, he has moved left. But, as a personal matter, Jeff has always been respectful and decent to me. (I know him as a good man.) When allowed, he also published my work (“Democratic Despotism,” for example). There is a saying in Hebrew, I remember you the grace of youth or beginnings …

UPDATE I (2/26): Love him, just don’t mislabel Judge Nap as a rightist libertarian:

UPDATE II: Facebook Thread.

UPDATE III: “Napolitano-Koch Connection? (Sixth Sense)”

UPDATE IV (2/27): Jack Kerwick has chronicled this phenomenon of Hollywood of the punditry like no other. Have fame, will travel. No matter what you say or promote, you get to redefine yourself anytime, anywhere.

UPDATE V (3/27): Civil Rights.

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Trump Won by Articulating Principles, Not Policy. This Guides POTUS’ Cabinet Picks

Democrats, Donald Trump, Education, Media, Political Philosophy

I’m no fan of the voucher fetish, having likened it, in 2002, to tweaking the educational Gulag. Free-market schooling throughout—primary, secondary and tertiary levels—is the only solution to our centrally planned miseducation.

But when Senate Minority Leader Chucky Schumer says President Trump’s pick to lead Education, Betsy DeVos, is the least familiar with education policy, Schumer is making the same case against DeVos EVERYONE (including Fox News, you forgetful Fox News fans) made against the POTUS.

President Donald Trump, like candidate Trump, won by articulating principles over policy.

Amen.

Beware The Values Cudgel

Conservatism, Government, IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Islam, Liberty, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Politics

“Beware The Values Cudgel” is the current column, now on The Daily Caller (founded by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson). An Excerpt:

… When you hear an appeal to “permanent values”—”the values that make our country great,” to quote Hillary Clinton—know you are dealing with world-class crooks. These crooks want to swindle you out of the freedom to think and believe as you wish. For in the classical conservative and libertarian traditions, values are private things, to be left to civil society—the individual, family and church—to practice and police.

The American government is charged purely with upholding the law, no more. Why so? Because government has police and military powers with which to enforce its “values.” A free people dare not entrust such an omnipotent entity with policing values, at home or abroad, because values enforced are dogma.

When incontestable majorities call on government to curb Islamic and other in-migration because this imperils American lives, President Trump’s unswerving opponents—the Obama, Clinton, Ryan, McCain, Graham, Schumer and media mafia—will invariably intone, “That’s not who we are.”

When you hear that manipulative mantra, tell them to shut up, mind their own business, and stick to their constitutional mandate to protect the people, not police their minds.

Remember that through an appeal to values, the State aggrandizes itself.

A limited government, serving an ostensibly free people, must thus never enforce values. …

… Read the rest. “Beware The Values Cudgel” is now on The Daily Caller.

If you’d like to feature the Mercer Column (criminally underexposed in paleolibertarian and paleoconservative quarters), in your magazine, paper or pixels, contact me at ilana@ilanamercer.com. My gratitude to the wonderful, intellectually honest publishers who’ve taken the leap.

Buchanan On Trump Challenging The Golden Calf Of Democracy

Democracy, Donald Trump, Elections, Political Philosophy, Republicans

“An Establishment in Panic” by Pat Buchanan:

… It may rule and run the country, and may rig the system through mass immigration and a mammoth welfare state so that Middle America is never again able to elect one of its own. But that establishment, disconnected from the people it rules, senses, rightly, that it is unloved and even detested.

Having fixed the future, the establishment finds half of the country looking upon it with the same sullen contempt that our Founding Fathers came to look upon the overlords Parliament sent to rule them.

Establishment panic is traceable to another fear: Its ideology, its political religion, is seen by growing millions as a golden calf, a 20th-century god that has failed.

Trump is “talking down our democracy,” said a shocked Clinton.

After having expunged Christianity from our public life and public square, our establishment installed “democracy” as the new deity …

… Read the rest of Pat Buchanan’s must read on Trump’s challenge to the Golden Calf of democracy.