Category Archives: Reason

UPDATE VI: Eunuchs at NRO Sack John Derbyshire (Cognitive Consonance)

Business, Canada, Free Speech, Intellectualism, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness, Race, Racism, Reason

Writes Facebook friend Aditya Vivek Barot:

Ms Mercer:

Mr. John Derbyshire, the man whose blurb appears on your book, has been unceremoniously sacked by the eunuchs at NRO.

What an apt appellation for that castrate, Rich Lowry.

Adds Peter Brimelow of VDARE.COM:

“[T]o appease a Left-wing lynch mob, John Derbyshire has just been fired from the new, Politically Correct National Review—despite (or perhaps because of) his unmatched brilliance there, to say nothing of his cancer and his years of loyal service.”

National Review has been PC—and worse, boring—for as long as I can remember.

John, who, as Aditya mentioned, had endorsed my book without flinching, was fired by the intellectual pygmies of NRO, for a tract titled “The Talk: Nonblack Version,“ published at Taki’s Magazine.


UPDATE I: NRO did at least employ John for a long time. They have never considered my work and have never replied to submissions.

UPDATE II: When you read Amy Davidson’s inane histrionic piffle, published in an elite magazine, you realize that ousting John for his views is more about enforcing mediocrity than enforcing conformity.

Americans cannot abide enormous talent, unless it is in a mindless or uncontroversial field such as sport or hard science. You have to be mediocre in writing and thinking and echo one of two party lines. I lived in Canada (I’m a Canadian) where my stuff appeared in the national press, no less. That could never happen in the US.

UPDATE III: Richard Spencer: “… it’s hard to mistake the trajectory of official ‘Conservatism’ as anything other than a gradual degeneration and dumbing-down. NR has gone from James Burnham and Russell Kirk to Kathryn Jean Lopez and various man-children spouting human-rights doctrines. … the mainstream Right [is] much stupider…more defined by the Goldbergs, Ponnurus, Lowrys, and Lopezes of the world…and more obviously a racket and dead-end. …”

UPDATE IV (April 10): In reply to the Facebook thread. Aditya, AMM, and others: To me, the Derb issue is never about whether you agree or disagree with his article, as Richard Spencer does (on FB, I quoted a slice of Spencer’s piece with which I agree). This perennial Soviet-style purging is never about “agreement,” to me. I do not know why people think that if you want to see a lot of well-written, wickedly witty, controversial writing in print (pixels or paper), as I do—you necessarily endorse all of it.

NONSENSE.

During the Iraq war, when the likes of Paul Craig Roberts, myself and other non-Beltway libertarians and paleos were writing up a storm against Bush’s barbarity–and being ousted and banished for it—Roberts noted that readers wanted to see a mirror of their opinions in his writing. This is so true. Readers judge me not in terms of style, thinking; quality of writing, a challenge to consensus, etc., but in accordance with how much I reflect their opinions; do they agree with me.

Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about.

The narrowing of the American mind is not the fault of corporations; its The People’s fault, for heaven’s sake. Corporations would not survive if they ceased to cater to The People, who are tyrants in their own right. This leftist argument misconstrues the direction of the dumbing of America.

I am on record as saying that I am not comfortable with the racialist right’s tack. (To quote: “I think I reflect Western man’s disdain for race as an organizing principle, and for broad generalizations. Good luck with organizing modern westerners around race. I prefer to beat back the state so that individuals regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will. That’s the route to freedom.”)

But I simply love—and think it is necessary to a free society—to see all well-expressed, eloquent opinion and argument in print, at the pleasure of that print’s owners.

Of course, self-interest plays a role in wanting to see Derb and his work prevail. Derb is one of many canaries in this minefield of our own making.

UPDATE V: Maureen O’Connor of Gawker.com has actually done the job of a journalist in interviewing Derb. I hope he gets a book deal or makes a ton of money out of this shameful episode in the annals of NR.

UPDATE VI: “The first pessimists were the Old Testament prophets.” I love the Prophets, Jeremiah being my favorite. John Derbyshire on The B.S. of A. with Brian Sack (Full)

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.”