Category Archives: Reason

Austrian Analysis Seeping In To Mainstream

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Media, Reason

You know the country’s commentariat has traveled some distance when PBS’s Paul Solman concedes that, given the role of the Federal Reserve (and, presumably, Fractional Reserve Banking) in the economy, it is “not a zero probability event here in America” that “the US could go the hyperinflation route of a Zimbabwe or Germany, freeze, face increasingly punitive interest rates and eventually require drastic overhauls.”

Solman, who still invests in Treasury, and is optimistic against all odds, also admits that “Since the Federal Reserve was created and got into the act in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost somewhere between 94 percent and 99.7 percent of its value. (See MeasuringWorth.com for a range of conversion options: constant basket of goods, unskilled wage, etc.)”

But because Solman thinks that the debasing of the coin by the Fed also coincided with America’s becoming “the world’s dominant global economy,” he is not that concerned. That’s what happens when correlation is confused with causation.

The Republic has managed to thrive despite the Fed, not because of it.

The Incredible Dr. Kerwick, The Cannibal & ‘Intellectual Conservative’

Classical Liberalism, Ilana Mercer, Intelligence, Law, Political Philosophy, Race, Reason, South-Africa

After a while, when interviewers and reviewers would request an interview or ask me about “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America,” I’d reply with little enthusiasm:

“What in particular about The Cannibal would you like to cover?”

The replies would invariably be these: “Oh, how relevant it is to the US.” “Diversity, multiculturalism, affirmative action, immigration, quality of life before and after “freedom”; this or the other population index.”

“Since you must have read my book,” I’d retort—initially, in hope—“how about discussing the often frayed thread of natural vs. political rights that runs throughout? Let’s look at the origins of Apartheid? Did you know these were firmly rooted in existential, largely non-racial, considerations? I really like the section about the ‘Colonialism Canard’ in the context of Chapter 5, the ‘Root-Causes Racket.’ Also a favorite of mine is the examination of case studies in current South African jurisprudence as an example of the “indigenization” of what was once a Western system of law. Oh, and my absolute best: the moral questions floated in the sections, “Intra-Racial Reparation” and “Recompense or Reconquista.”

Needless to say, the focus of the reviewer or interviewer was always so foreign to how I understood my book—that I lost interest in speaking about it, or concluded that my points had not been picked up due in some measure to my failures.

Enter Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. (Who never even requested a review copy of The Cannibal.) The fact that Kerwick levitates in level of abstraction and understanding above most might not be a good thing for his career as a popular writer, but I’m enjoying it.

Dr. Kerwick’s “Reflections on Ilana Mercer’s ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa'” appeared in Intellectual Conservative. Once again, Kerwick exposes the tortured tension vis-a-vis natural rights that I experienced and, apparently, Burke did too. As does he commend the absence of biological reductionism, a textual strength that drew derision from racialist quarters (I reject reductionism, in most spheres.)

The neglect with which this book has been treated is as sore as it is tragic. Cannibal is a woefully underappreciated book. A not inconsiderable number of otherwise astute reviewers seemed to have missed its main significance. This work is not primarily about “diversity,” “democracy,” “egalitarianism,” or “collectivism.” And it is certainly not about any conflicts within the Jewish community (Mercer is herself a Jew who remarks upon the role that South African Jews, including her father, played as critics of apartheid, as well as the role that Israel assumed as a stalwart ally of the Old South Africa). Cannibal isn’t even a book about inter-racial conflict.

….Neither, however, does Mercer countenance any reductionist biological accounts of black-white differences … Such an approach is problematic for more than one reason, but especially because it would, ultimately, amount to but one more “root-cause.” …

…Mercer’s thought is distended between universal natural rights and particular cultural traditions, it is true. Yet as is the case with so many works of genius, this tension is as much one of Cannibal’s strengths as it is a weakness, for from it there springs an energy that is notable for its sense of urgency.

… Like Burke before her, Mercer, it is clear, is on a mission. Burke was consumed with the conflagration of the French Revolution that he believed threatened to tear European civilization asunder. Far from obscuring his ethical vision, I believe that much of the passion that informed it stemmed from a conflict in Burke’s consciousness between a recognition of both the universal demands of morality and the partiality that we owe to “the little platoons”—our local attachments—from which we derive our individual identities. This, though, is precisely the same war that rages within Mercer, and as it aided Burke in his contest with the evil of the French radicals, so too does it aid Mercer in her contest with the wickedness of the African National Congress and its supporters.

The complete review, “Reflections on Ilana Mercer’s ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,'” is on Rachel Alexander’s Intellectual Conservative.

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.”

UPDATE II: Lawrence Lies-A-Lot: Auster’s Lackluster Logic & Terminal Intelectual Dishonesty

Crime, Critique, Gender, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Race, Reason, Ron Paul

Larry Auster has gone to town on me and my latest article, “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt.” The “man’s” methods are devious. He asserts in the absence of textual proof, and proceeds to draw deductions that fit these assertions and his formulaic theories, irrespective of the text (my own) that these fanciful deductions contradict.

I generally ignore Auster’s periodic, irrational fits of pique, however, this time the “man” has outdone himself for intellectual dishonesty, systematically misrepresenting my positions as a paleolibertarian (classical liberal) who is unusual in her critique of Ron Paul on matters of race, Islam, immigration, you name it. Since my positions are a mouse click away, and easily excerpted from the Ron Paul Articles archive, and the attendant blog archives—I have no choice but to presume that Auster is, again, an incompetent or a malicious and fulminating liar.

Auster’s conclusions are often wrong because they are premised not on reality, objective facts, and first principles, but on a formulaic worldview which he foists on the facts. Backward is Auster for reasoning backwards. Take the overwhelming evidence that Amanda Knox, her paramour and a black man, with whom she likely cavorted as well, all partook in the kinky slaughter of a girl from a good family, who disliked Auster’s favorite little American whore.

The blood evidence was solid (here). But Auster, like the liberal media he abhors, elevated this repulsive product of a liberal upbringing to Madonna because of her … whiteness, thus offering an “if B, then A argument” in her favor—and against physical and circumstantial evidence. If whites and blacks are implicated in the same murder—implicate the black man to the exclusion of the whites, and evidence be damned.

As explained about the man’s method, he reasons not from fact but from a rigid, formulaic worldview.

Barefaced liar—or perhaps a mere incompetent—that he appears to be, Auster provides links to items referenced, but then lies about what the links say, relying, seemingly, on his readers to accept his say-so, rather than read the material to which he links. This is, after all, the Age of the idiot, and Auster is a prime exhibit.

For example, Auster attributes to me an Ann Coulter quote (or funny joke), featured on my blog, and encircled in quotation marks. He writes that “she [me] “suggests that Amanda Knox was saying, like O.J. Simpson, that now that she had been acquitted she was going to look for the ‘real’ killer.” For one, the dour (compromised) Auster mistakes a witticism for a truism, and attributes to me an Ann Coulter example of the first. Is Auster careless and slack in his attempts to misrepresent? Malevolent? Or perhaps both? He certainly is humorless.

For another, Auster, like a lot of liberals, appears to be so taken by the little, loose, manifestly sociopathic (read her diary as did the long-suffering David Jones of the British Mail Online!), narcissistic Knox—that, in all seriousness, he argues her “positions”: the little darling, whines Auster, has never said what Coulter, in jest, attributed to “America’s Angelic O.J.”

Now, as this writer has documented extensively in a book about South Africa, which most conservatives like Auster have ignored—befitting the insular, petty, provincial penmen many of them are—blacks commit crimes disproportionately to their numbers in the population at large. (And Hate crimes, in particular, are a unidirectional affair: black on white.)

But, as should be obvious even to Auster, this general truism is no license to ignore evidence of a collaborative crime committed by a white woman and her accomplices, a black and white man respectively. Drunk with their sexual and social powers, have white, liberal women never been known to act on their inner depravity? Please! Ignoramus Auster might wish to trace the research done on the correlation between violent aggression and the pathological levels of narcissistic self-esteem (un-moored from reality) common among American youngsters.

Next, Auster attacks this statement in “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt.”:

The hypocrisy in [our intervention in Egypt] is that we Americans do not live under the Athenian democracy seemingly promoted abroad. On the contrary, we the people labor under a highly evolved technocratic, militarized Managerial State, which is far more efficient in encroaching on its citizens than are the tin-pot dictators,who’ve been built-up into mega-monsters in infantile, Disneyfied minds. Given the US’s record-breaking incarceration rates, your average Egyptian under Mubarak or Libyan under Gadhafi was probably less likely than his American counterpart to be jailed, harassed or have a threatening encounter with the state’s emissaries

To that Auster infarcts, writing that,

“So Mercer signs onto the anti-American left’s standard lie that America is more oppressive than Muslim dictatorships, and that, as stated by the despicable Ron Paul, whom she supports, the proof of America’s oppressiveness–of its lack of the sacred libertarian liberty–is that it keeps lots of criminals in prison where they cannot endanger society.”

The “anti-American” pejorative is a standards smear among weak-minded statists, who conflate the American state AND the American people. It is a substitute for substantive argument.

“My larger point” in the quoted article was one of hypocrisy. However, it is well known that the state in these countries is a disorganized affair, and that it is easier to live off the grid in a country where the state is not as organized in its ability to surveil and track down its citizens. Moreover, Auster, a statist, might wish to consult James Burnham’s seminal text, “The Managerial Revolution.”” The concept of the all-controlling American Managerial State is an uncontroversial strand in conservative thinking, not merely in “paleo-libertarian” thought, as Lawrence-lies-a lot asserts.

Finally, a new low. This worm of a man offers his biggest mind fuck vis-a-vis my positions. The “argument” proceeds to deceive as follows: The method in the Auster quote below is to insinuate something nowhere in evidence in my documented positions, and then go on to further offer deductions gleaned from the sly, unsubstantiated insinuation just introduced.

As follows:

“Mercer has not quite gone to the ultimate Ron Paul / liberal lie that America is racist because it imprisons blacks ‘disproportionately.’ [sly insinuation] However, given other recent dismissive statements she’s made about “racialists,” … I would not be surprised if she goes along with that Paul position as well …The whole entry at her blog is worth reading to get an idea of Mercer’s emerging mindset.”

Having made a sly underhanded insinuation about something nowhere apparent in my writing—Auster proceeds to warn his readers to be on the lookout for more in this vein.

Here, however, are my actual appalled comments on, as I put it, “the leftist rant [Paul] 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.”

And here again, under the blog-post “Update” titled “The Homo-eroticism of Left-Liberalism,” I write in even stronger terms about Paul’s racial ramrodding of white America:

“As for Paul’s contention, last night, that blacks suffer most from wars waged. I was almost sick. More lefty nonsense. Try poor white kids from the South, who are also least likely to get into college even when they whip black applicants and rich whites with their test results.
There is nothing worse than a left liberal man—he’ll sell his mother for the little pat on the head from the lefty establishment. He’ll watch his son near death because of black racism, against which he never warned the poor soft boy, yet he will reach out to his son’s killer.
I am beginning to think that left-liberal men who keep scrutinizing themselves for signs of racism against their black accusers, and accuse others like themselves of the same—actually derive a homo-erotic kick of bowing and scraping to those accusers.”

I hold civilized, rational, logical (if spirited) exchange of differences to be a cornerstone of the Western tradition. In this spirit, I have generally been collegial to Auster—approaching him politely and in private over our disagreements, even donating small sums to his often interesting and worthy efforts. In his methods, however, Auster is a disgrace to a tradition he presumes to uphold. (Since he is obviously no gentleman in debate, I fully expect Auster to be quite capable of sharing private mail.)

In future, Lawrence-Lies-A-Lot might want to confine his sub-intelligent, unsubstantiated “critiques” to malevolent mental midgets like himself.

UPDATE I (Feb. 13): To be fair to Auster, an intellectual courtesy one should never expect him to return, I share many of his reservations about the paleo community. For over a decade, I’ve written a quality, consistently hardcore, paleolibertarian column, which no paleo site carries. Not one. This is quite astonishing, if you think of it. It says a great deal about the ossified mindset within this community. Assorted sites will feature, year-in and year-out, the same establishment columns. Or choose young, more malleable mediocrities. But they avoid like the plague the weekly output of a hard-right Jewish woman.

I’ve detailed the shameful episode of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s” review by a scion of the movement—from the many factoids to the skewed, diasporic, Jewey emphasis, utterly absent in my book. The review was not about my book, but was likely written to fit the webmaster’s tastes. Yes, paleos have their Court Jews. And this scribe is temperamentally not suited to obedience.

I also discovered a repulsive anti-Semitic strain on a paleo radio show. The host Jewed my book; much to my surprise, I discovered that I ought to have written about how the Jews, single-handedly, caused the demise of the Old South Africa. Presumably, in the same way they stacked the Episcopal Church with homosexuals. The host threw quite a few antisemitic canards at me not least that I was writing for profit (I’ve still not broken even).

UPDATE II (Feb. 16): Banish the thought: American youngsters would never thrill kill.

Take the recent case of Alyssa Bustamante, convicted this month of murdering her 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olten. The crime has been portrayed as a “thrill kill” and doubtless there was an aspect of that to the murder. Bustamante, fifteen years old at the time, set out to murder two children; she had excavated two graves in a nearby woods days in advance. The teen then used her younger sister to lure Elizabeth from the Olten home. At that point Bustamante beat the nine-year-old, stabbed her, slit her throat and carried her corpse off to the woods. An incredible feat of strength for a slight girl of 15.