Category Archives: Political Philosophy

UPDATED: Philosopher Jack Kerwick On the Compelling & Conflicted Cannibal (At Last, An Analytical Review Of My Book)

America, Classical Liberalism, Democracy, Ilana Mercer, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Reason, South-Africa

This dazzling review of my book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is a credit more to the mind (and moral clarity) of the reviewer than the book under review. In his New-American review, Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. (more about him below), zeroes in with unusual perspicacity on the palpable tensions in the book, without losing sight of the effort as a whole. All in all, he thinks I cleared the hurdle:

Ilana Mercer’s, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, is an unusual book. Yet it is unusual in the best sense of the word.

At once autobiographical and political; philosophical, historical, and practical; controversial and commonsensical, Cannibal succeeds in weaving into a seamless whole a number of distinct modes of thought. This is no mean feat. In fact, its author richly deserves to be congratulated for scoring an achievement of the highest order, for in the hands of less adept thinkers, this ensemble of voices would have fast degenerated into a cacophony. By the grace of Mercer’s pen, in stark contrast, it is transformed into a symphony. …

… Burke had famously said that the only thing that was necessary for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. Though Mercer is not a man, sadly, she is in much greater supply of that “manly virtue” that Burke prized than are many — even most — male writers today. Burke unabashedly identified the wickedness of the French Revolutionaries for what it was. Similarly, Mercer courageously, indignantly, exposes the evil that is the African National Congress and its collaborators. In fact, her book may perhaps have been more aptly entitled, Reflections on the Revolution in South Africa. …

…It is tragic that Ilana Mercer was all but compelled to leave the country that for much of her life was her home. Yet South Africa’s loss is America’s gain. As her work makes obvious for all with eyes to see, the richness of Mercer’s intellect is as impressive as the soundness of her character.

THE COMPLETE REVIEW is at The New American.

“Jack Kerwick graduated with a BA in religious studies and philosophy from Wingate University in Wingate, NC in 1998. He received his MA in philosophy from Baylor University in Waco, Tx., the following year, and in 2007, he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University. Kerwick specializes in ethics and political philosophy. His doctoral dissertation, ‘Toward a Conservative Liberalism,’ was a defense of the classical conservative tradition, a tradition of thought usually and widely perceived to have been fathered by Edmund Burke. Kerwick drew from Burke for inspiration, but also from David Hume and, perhaps most importantly, the twentieth century British philosopher Michael Oakeshott.” (Source: About.com)

Jack’s blogs is At the Intersection of Faith and Culture at Beliefnet.

Discovering Jack’s work (and friendship) has been a blessing. Unfortunately, Gulliver is surrounded by
pygmies.

UPDATE (March 2): AT LAST, AN ANALYTICAL REVIEW. After reading Dr. Kerwick’s review of Into the Cannibal’s Pot, which has since been published at “American Daily Herald: veritas, libertas, pax et prosperitas, as well as at “The Moral Liberal,” a new fan of Jack’s writing wrote this:

“Upon looking at some of your book’s other reviews, I couldn’t help but think that while some of what has been written is true, the forest was missed for the trees, so to speak.”

Indeed, most reviews of the book are contents-driven, strictly descriptive reviews of what is, flaws and all, essentially an analytical text. Odd that.

As Peter Brimelow noted in his exquisitely sensitive Foreword to “Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture,” “… Yet, somewhat to my surprise, it is actually quite rare for this most emotionally intense of columnists to draw on such personal experiences. What seems to motivate Ilana, ultimately, is ideas.”

UPDATED: Paul In National Polls (Independents’ Vote Ripe for Ron Paul)

Barack Obama, Crime, Drug War, Homeland Security, Military, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

January 16th, 2012: If the November election were held today, a CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday shows Ron Paul is almost statistically tied with Obama, with the president at 48% and the longtime congressman at 46%.

The CNN/ORC International poll has Obama beating Paul by a slim 48%-46% margin, but add in the margin of error and it is basically tied. The same goes for Romney’s 48%-47% lead over the president. The poll shows Obama easily beating the other Republican candidates.

[OpposingViews.]

Here are all the Ron Paul South Carolina FOX Debate Highlights:

There is a difference between defense spending and “military spending,” and between what Eisenhower called the military-industrial-complex and national defense.

Let us not rehash the Paul drug-war racism comments, which I dissected in “Diane (Sawyer) in Disneyland (The Homo-eroticism of Left-Liberalism)”

UPDATE (Jan. 18): The New York Times concedes that “a majority of independent voters have soured on BHO’s presidency, disapprove of how he has dealt with the economy and do not have a clear idea of what he hopes to accomplish if re-elected. … Two-thirds of independent voters say he has not made real progress fixing the economy.”

What amazes me, and I can only presume that some statistical error has crept into the data (such as a bias toward giving a favorable answer for fear of being labeled You Know What), is that “38 percent of all voters BHO favorably.”

The independents vote is ripe for Ron Paul.

UPDATE II: Unfortunately, Paul repeated the leftist rant he delivered in New Hampshire about how drug laws are enforced in the United States, pointing out that black men are incarcerated at disproportionate rates. (“How many times have you seen the white rich person get the electric chair?” he asked. “If we really want to be concerned with racism…we ought to look at the drug laws.”)

I said on 01.07.12 that, as a rightist I abjure anti-drug laws on the grounds that they are wrong, not racist. The fact that these laws ensnare blacks is because blacks are more likely to violate them by dealing drugs or engaging in violence around commerce in drugs, not necessarily because all cops are racists.

Cops deal with the reality of crime. It is an error—and wrong—to accuse them all of targeting blacks when the latter actually commit more crimes in proportion to their numbers in the population. This is also a losing strategy with rightists. It is akin to aping Obama, who went hell-for-leather at Sgt. James Crowley, calling him a racist for mishandling his pal Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. That strategy helped BHO lose the midterms.

“Dennis Prager offers stats showing judicial system is biased against whites, not blacks”:

…it is clear that blacks are actually under-represented in executions.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty organization, between 1976 and January 2012, 441 blacks (35 percent of the total) and 717 whites (55 percent of the total) were executed. Given that blacks committed more than half the murders during that time (52 percent versus 46 percent by whites), if we are to assess racial bias based on proportionality of murderers executed, the system is biased against whites, not blacks.
Because this fact is both obvious and irrefutable, virtually none of the anti-death-penalty sites note it. Instead, they focus on the race of murder victims and even the race of prosecutors – in other words, the race of just about everyone except those convicted of murder.

UPDATED: Fired Up Over Firing

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Elections, Free Markets, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Reason, Republicans

As I pointed out weeks ago on an RT broadcast, Newt Gingrich attacked Mitt Romney for what are the prerogatives of private property and the fiduciary duty of a CEO managing private property: firing people or evicting them from private property.

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t quite put it in such uncompromising terms, but he points out today what a feat of unparalleled moronity is the specter of “capitalism being attacked by the Republican” presidential front-runners.” “It’s senseless. It doesn’t make any sense,” gushes Rush.

Establishment conservatives only acknowledge reality once their own kind awakens to it, in this instance, Romeny’s vigorous defense of profits was noticed by Rush due to National Review’s Jay Nordlinger, who has rightly derides Mitt Romeny’s anti-capitalism detractors.

“Over and over, Romney defends and explains capitalism. And he’s supposed to be the RINO and squish in the race?” The one guy out there defending capitalism, the one guy out there trying to explain corporate profits to the Occupy crowd, he’s the squish, he’s the moderate, he’s the guy that we have the problem with? “That’s what I read in the conservative blogosphere, every day. What do you have to do to be a ‘real conservative’? Speak bad English and belch?

[Don’t bother to post here in reply if you are unable to separate this episode from the actors you dislike, and are wont to launch into a, “I hate all establishment conservatives, therefore I, lazily, refuse to address anything they say or do, right or wrong, and demand that you, Ilana, appease my idiocy.]

UPDATE: Paul defends Romney ‘fire’ comment and history at Bain. Good for him.

What is interesting is that dumbo Dana Bash—a CNN reporter whose love for Obama is second only to Jessica Yellin’s, another CNN pack animal—spun the Paul response as strategic, rather than principled. She’s not even an “analyst,” for what that title’s worth at CNN, yet she’s parsing a Paul response for markets (a thing she has no grasp of) as a response for politics. Yellin is now, as I write, yelling with excitement because, naming anonymous sources (isn’t that a no-no in Journalism, unless a matter of life-and-death?), she has had confirmation from her Man’s camp (BHO), that Romney has unraveled in the past 48 hours. Weird. Didn’t he just win a New Hampshire Primary?

Paul In Black, White & Pink

Gender, libertarianism, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

A December 2011 poll (16-18), taken by CNN/ORC, reveals that Ron Paul’s favorability among non-whites mirrors that of other GOPers. Hence, the fantasy that minorities will flock to liberty is just that, a fantasy.

While Barack Obama takes 72- and 57 percent respectively of the non-white and female vote, Ron Paul gets 25 and 41 percent of the same constituency. All the oozing over young Paul supporters aside, these numbers are yet more evidence that females and young voters lean left-liberal and are thus a hindrance to liberty: Obama garners the support of 53% of voters aged 18 to 34, to Paul’s 47%.

What was said in “RIP GOP” obtains: As the GOP goes, so goes the libertarian movement. Smug, self-satisfied left-libertarians like to dream that their constituency is differently derived, but the demographic facts are straightforward. The upshot of continued, unfettered, mass immigration—as it is currently practiced and preached by American central planners—is the triumph of tribalism, pillage politics, and left-liberalism.