Category Archives: Reason

UPDATED CONTINUALLY: Independent Against The Establishment

Barely A Blog, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Liberty, Media, Reason, South-Africa

IF YOU ARE new to IlanaMercer.com and its sister site, BarelyABlog.com, welcome! Read a better rounded biographical and professional exposé here.

In brief:

I am a US-based, classical liberal writer. I pen WorldNetDaily.com’s longest-standing, exclusive, paleolibertarian, weekly column, “Return to Reason.” With a unique audience of 8 million, WND.COM has been rated by Alexa as the most frequented “conservative” site on the Internet. I also feature on RT, ranked 999 on the WWW, with the “Paleolibertarian Column.” (Here are some thoughts on RT’s overall excellence as compared to the malfunctioning American media.)

Formerly syndicated by Creators Syndicate, I contribute to London’s Quarterly Review, and am a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an independent, non-profit economic policy think tank.

Dare I say that millions have read this writer’s work over the years on WND.COM (ranked 1,874th on the internet rater, Alexa)?

Nevertheless, I am forever being peppered with patronizing notes from readers—hardly patrons, for a patron is “one that supports, protects, or champions; a sponsor or benefactor.” This persistent condescension (usually from older, authoritarian males, some in position of influence) necessitates that I remind reality bound readers of the following: The age of the Internet guarantees the futility of energetic efforts to marginalize myself and others, who like me, write outside of accepted orthodoxy. In my case, for almost two decades.

BELTWAY LIBERTARIANS
A recent exercise helped me to appreciate just how much the libertarian establishment, much like its mainstream cohort—and desperate to sustain its sinecured monopoly over the marketplace of ideas—will forever opt for the “statist quo” (to use a Jeff Tuckerism), in the face of popular trends to the contrary.

I was asked to attend a workshop and deliver an address at a local chapter of a property rights organization. Closer to the time, however, I was informed that I had been dropped in favor of an individual from a well-heeled think tank.

(Poor me. Instead, I got to travel to Manhattan Le Magnifique, to feature as speaker for the month of May, 2012, at the libertarian-cum-Objectivist New York City Junto gathering.)

You see, this writer is an independent, one-woman band, whose fidelity is to the truth alone. As such, or so I was told, I lacked name recognition. Since I had never heard of the individual who was to fill my much-smaller shoes, I did a few Internet searches. I discovered that the group had opted for establishment, not for name recognition.

GOOGLE threw up 245,000 results for the establishmentarian to my name’s 1,310,000 results.
FACEBOOK had me at 3400 Friends (and no time YET to vet the rest). Mr. Establishment was stuck at … 4. (Here is my FACEBOOK “FRIENDSHIP” POLICY.)
MY BOOK’S FACEBOOK FAN PAGE garnered 594 Likes; Mr. Establishment’s Author Page had all of 25 Likes. Amazon was as dismally populated.
TWITTER: Mr. Name Recognition had 67 followers to my modest 771.
WND & RT, as mentioned, carry my weekly column. They rank, respectively, 1,874 and 999 on the WWW by Alexa, the premier website ranking site. I presume that Mr. Establishment produces the occasional ponderous, desiccated, extremely well-concealed position paper. If so, he does it on a site that ranks 47,094th on Alexa.

How long can these Beltway based think tanks and their patrons delude themselves about their reach or appeal? They excite as much passion as a wet blanket during the perennial, Washington State power outage.

As mentioned, a year on Facebook finds me communicating with a community of over 3400 Facebook Friends and growing. Expanding too is the Facebook following on Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s Fan Page.

Not too shabby for one woman.

Please log-in to, or join, Facebook in order to “Like” The Cannibal. To read The Cannibal is to love it. Guaranteed. To review this book on Amazon is to support what will prove to be a prophetic text.

In a gracious note to this writer, the one and only Patrick J. Buchanan wrote: “I believe your book is being sold [or bundled on Amazon] along with my new book, ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America survive to 2025.’ … my 18,000-word chapter on ethnonationalism and tribalism and the surge of both throughout the Third World—as well as our own declining world—tracks pretty much with what you wrote…”

Every bit as gratifying to this writer was a courtesy copy of “Suicide of a Superpower,” thus inscribed: “To Ilana Mercer: Fellow Columnist and Fellow Conservative, with The Respect and good wishes of The Author.”

Still and all, to say that the publication process of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa has been punishing would be an understatement. …

Read on about these travails, but return to this page.

All in all, patrons are preferable to the patronizing. I thank my patrons—you know who you are.

Speaking of patrons, as was announced in July of 2012 , Barely A Blog (BAB) Comments Section was closed down by necessity. (Related are the posts, “The Closing of The American Mind? What Mind?” as well as “Barely A Blog (BAB) Closes Comments (& Says ‘So Long’ To Cowards).”

For years, I’ve moderated this forum, hoping to educate visitors. The goal was noble, but naive. The labor-intense effort involved considerable opportunity costs, and few returns (Comments do not drive traffic to BAB or to IlanaMercer.com).
Time is scarce and thus precious.
With the exception of a few valued voices (who may, like Myron Pauli, submit editorials), this public-minded forum attracted a lot of maladroit, often maladaptive, men and women who, for the most, hadn’t the faintest idea how to behave on private property (BAB).

THE PALEO-PROBLEM
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 more malleable mediocrities. But they avoid like the plague even mention of the weekly output of this hard-right writer. Does the paleo practice of ignoring reality, highlighted in the post “The Paleo Problem: Intellectual Dishonesty Or Senility?”, amount to a child covering his ears and humming loudly, in the hope that reality will magically change?

Yes, and worse.

In his Foreword to Nonsense, Robert J. Gula’s handbook of logical fallacies, Hunter Lewis cautions that it is, in “a broader sense” (“broad” being Gula’s genius and sensibility), a logical fallacy to inject information or arguments that are … incomplete, or to omit some important fact, point, or perceptive, … whether intentionally or unintentionally.

PARSING PALEOLIBERTARIANIMS
In “Ilana Mercer and the Paleolibertarian Ideal,” columnist and political philosopher Jack Kerwick parses paleolibertarianism as “the conviction [first] … that a world in which men and women are free to order their lives in accordance with their own moral purposes, not those of the governments under which they live, is an ethical ideal worth aspiring toward.”

But that’s not all:

For years, Mercer has authored a weekly column — ‘Return to Reason’ — at the very popular WorldNetDaily website. The most casual perusal of her archives there readily reveals that she is as ardent a champion as any of that tradition … applauded for affirming ‘libertarian principles while opposing open borders, libertinism, egalitarianism, and political correctness.’
…It is this conviction that explains why everyone who is familiar with Mercer’s thought locates it squarely within the classical liberal or libertarian tradition. Yet to look at it more deeply — though not much more deeply — is to see why it just as solidly compels us to locate it within libertarianism’s paleo strain.
…Whether addressing a broad range of issues in an equally broad range of arenas — as she does in Broad Sides — or shedding blood, sweat, and tears to draw the Western world’s attention to the systematic injustices to which her native South Africa is daily subjected — as she does in Cannibal — Mercer is forever cautioning readers against succumbing to the contemporary Western temptation to indulge in abstractions. To put it another way, she has been laboring tirelessly to remind us of something that this generation of liberty’s defenders are all too ready to forget: Liberty is as dependent upon historical and cultural contingencies as is any other artifact. And it is just as fragile.

MORE.

******
Help keep the topical commentary on this space coming. Show your support by purchasing “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.” In the same spirit, review it on Amazon.

And/or Contribute to my efforts.

Yours,
ilana

UPDATED: Author Replies to Amazon Reviews of ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’

Anti-Semitism, Fascism, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Literature, Race, Racism, Reason, South-Africa

“Compassionate Fascist” has reviewed Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa on Amazon. Here is my reply:

AUTHOR REPLIES TO A REVIEW BY A SELF-PROFESSED RACIST AND ANTI-SEMITE. “Compassionate Fascist” was indeed expelled from this author’s moderated weblog, after a long “tenure” as the resident racist and anti-Semite. That’s how much I value free speech. This character openly admits to hating Jews qua Jews and blacks qua blacks, in opposition to the philosophy of individualism. On 09.24.11, “Compassionate Fascist” wrote on Barely a Blog: “I intend to live long enough to see the power of organized Jewry broken, and Israel off the map. Have a nice day.” He was forthwith expelled for advocating the eradication of Jewish Israelis.

Up until his expulsion from Barely a Blog’s comments section, I had imagined, naïvely, that by extending my hospitality in cyberspace to “Compassionate Fascist,” and letting him vent his disdain for Jews openly, he would come to see the error of his collectivist, contemptuous ways. After all, did not his “theorizing” about the evil of Jews as a group fly in the face of the generosity and hospitality this frustrated man was receiving from a Jewish individual (me)? Of course it did.

Historian Alan Charles Kors once observed that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth; being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.” Malevolent, irrational individuals like “Compassionate Fascist” have no qualms about falling into self- contradiction, and being “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

THE FASCIST’S LIES. “Mercer,” writes “Compassionate Fascist,” above, “does make a few admissions about the leading role of Jews-including, not to put too fine a point on it, her father and herself-in bringing down the White regime.” This is a ridiculous claim; it is simply untrue. This so-called admission is nowhere in the book under review. Read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” to see for yourself.

THE FASCIST’S LITERARY RECOMMENDATIONS. I don’t know much about the unfortunately named Revilo P. Oliver, except that he was, according to Wikipedia, “an editorial advisor for the Institute for Historical Review, an organization devoted primarily to … Holocaust denial.” In promoting myth and conspiracy under the guise of scholarship, “the nutball Institute for Hysterical Review” is hostile to the truth. And I care a great deal about standards of truth and honest inquiry. Of course, it is quite possible to deny the historic truth about the Holocaust and, at the same time, write well on other issues.

KEVIN MACDONALD. Profound? I doubt it. You’ll get more truth about Jews from watching Woody Allen films than from MacDonald’s Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum Science of Jews and their intellectual habits. For example, MacDonald claims somewhere in his elusory analysis that Jewish women are oppressed. He has clearly not met many Jewish women. I refuted some of his silly, discursive stuff in a column called “BLAME THE JEWS.”

*****

Get a glimpse into another not-so-Wonderful Mind by reading my response to Avery Morrow’s review of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa:

ILANA MERCER (Author) replies: This is a baffling review as it impugns the scientific method. In other words, according to the reviewer (Avery Morrow), the book’s deductions, drawn as they are from a critical mass of data, are unreliable–even iffy–because the author (me) has not divulged more about herself. The claim is that I ought to have introduced more personal bias into the data for these to be believable. This is how bad the miseducation of America has become! OFFERING PROOF IN SUPPORT OF ONE’S CASE IS TAKEN AS EVIDENCE AGAINST THAT CASE! The truth is the exact opposite of this reviewer’s gripe. A one-case study does not a rule make. The point about the scientific method is to prove your case beyond doubt. Of course, as was stated subtly in the Introduction, “In the interstices of this polemic, the reader will find my story and the story of those I love and had to leave behind” (p. 10). And more about crime vis-à-vis my family is on pp. 12-13. Like almost every other member of South Africa’s minority, so have they been brutalized by barbarians. The book is studded with the personal stories of South Africans, some my own. But no, the reviewer wants the author on Oprah’s couch; writhing in a vulgar, uniquely American display. Good schools once taught that good writing was understated, not hysterical or excessively personal, and that using the “me, me,” imperial “I” was plain self-indulgent, piss-poor prose. The bumper crops of ignoramuses our educational institutions now disgorge are ignorant of these eternal verities-and are, in fact, taught the exact opposite.

Next: The evidence the reader doubts comes from the painfully politically correct “Bureau of Justice statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United states, `Victims and Offenders,'” report of 2005. (And, contrary to the reviewer’s assertion, blacks are not 20 percent of the US’s population.) Read about “Sexual Subjugation” on p. 37: “Every year, approximately 37,460 white women are raped by blacks. As the BJS’s 2005 `Criminal Victimization Statistical Tables’ reveal, blacks, at 12.3 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION [emphasis added], were responsible for thirty-six percent of the 111,490 incidents in which whites were raped. And blacks committed 100 percent of the 36,620 incidents in which blacks were raped. …” But, for reporting these facts, the author is maligned!

Finally, the reader fails to offer a citation in support of his claim that I implied, “East Asians don’t volunteer at African hospitals in large numbers.” On page 181 I addressed a South African hospital only. “Baragwanath,” I wrote, is “the only hospital in South Africa’s biggest township. Now as then, the staff members ministering to the multitudes in Soweto are supervised and mentored by selfless Christian and Jewish medical men and women.”

UPDATE (Oct 18): Contemplationist: For someone whose name often appears in BAB’s Comments Section your question shows laziness or a lack of retention. Ad nauseam have I moderated and indulged discussion on what you and your ilk refer to as the “Jewish Question.” Apparently, you are unwilling or unable to search this blog’s archives (sidebar, under “Categories,” dah), especially, and those of the mother site under the relevant search categories. (Gosh, let me see: neoconservatism, Jews & Judaism, ilana mercer, South Africa, etc., get the drift?)

The following mental exercise is probably beyond the ken of our typical “gritty” Jew-focused “thinker.” How about we discuss the role of Jews in the freedom movement, the disease-conquering (or medicine) movement, the invention sphere, or the general-beneficiaries-of-humanity cabal? Hmmm: What might we conclude from that small exercise? (Insert Beavis and Butthead grunts here.) That a lot of Jews rise to to the top in society, and that many do untold good and many a good deal of harm, as individuals. Like a lot of other left-liberals, progressive Jews can do things we hard rightists view as bad. (I know one thing; most Jewish parents would never feed their kids fairy tales so that they come within an inch of losing their lives, as in the example in “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism.”

A Jewish parent, liberal or conservative, would have taught the kid as follows: “I don’t care what you learn at school, you klutz; but If I ever catch you jogging through THAT neighborhood again, I’ll … I’ll … Forget about the allowance and inheritance. Get that?” You get the drift.

UPDATE VIII: America’s Angelic O.J. (No Hearsay, Please!)

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Etiquette, Europe, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Morality, Racism, Reason, The Zeitgeist

The following is from “America’s Angelic O.J,” now on WND.COM:

“The conviction of America’s sweetart du jour, Amanda Knox, was overturned this month. Based on O.J.-like evidence, Knox was convicted of murdering her British roommate. The vicious and depraved Nov. 1, 2007 killing took place in the historic, university city of Perugia, Italy. Police bungling notwithstanding, the biological and circumstantial evidence stacked against Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito was considerable. …

…The once-convicted killers were declared innocent, no less, and released, due in no small part to a PR blitz mounted by Knox’s family and their Seattle-based publicist. They were assisted by the country’s national media, left and right. With the exception of Bill O’Reilly, former homicide prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Jeanine Pirro; Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC—all worked tirelessly on behalf of the attractive, white kids. The conviction of Rudy Guede the American media let stand. Guede, the pretty pair’s (alleged) partner in crime, is a black man who lacked their appeal and assets. …

… On Nov. 5, 2007, after cartwheeling and canoodling with Sollecito at the police station, Knox framed Patrick Lumumba for Meredith’s murder and rape which she claimed to have overheard. (At that stage, only the cops knew Ms. Kercher had been sexually assaulted.) Lumumba was Amanda’s innocent employer. Knox even committed this evidentiary concoction to writing in a five-page memorandum. Later she blamed police for making her. Amanda’s allergy to the truth cost Lumumba – another black man who remained voiceless in the American media – his livelihood and reputation. …

… Nor did Megyn Kelly, Shepard Smith, Wolf Blitzer, Piers Morgan, Dr. Drew, Oprah (on and on), give the time of day to the victim’s family. In defense of our homegrown popularizers and poor thinkers, however, the Kercher family was way too classy to partake in the circus created by the Ugly Americans and their aides. …

… Comprehending circumstantial evidence demands analytical and deductive thinking. These faculties are becoming rare in the Age of the Idiot now upon us, as was glaringly apparent in the deliberations of Casey Anthony’s jurors. The average individual seldom reads; he knows only what is palpable and perceivable—what he can see and feel. If he can’t picture something—see it happen on YouTube or on CSI—he certainly cannot think about it in the abstract. …”

Read the rest of “America’s Angelic O.J” on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE I: A MEASURE OF THE ZEITGEIST. BuzzFeed wants to know “Who’s Hotter: Amanda Knox Or Casey Anthony?” Intellectually, this item is more honest than what mainstream media has been dishing on the noxious Knox. By lumping the two ex-convicts together—both implicated in “vicious and depraved” deeds—BuzzFeed is disrespecting the duo. At least this is how I optimistically read this contest.

UPDATE II: An interesting thread on my Facebook Wall. I say ideas should not exist in the arid arena of pure thought. Chris Baker disagrees.

UPDATE III (Oct. 7): A comment at TrueJustice.org links to “America’s Angelic O.J.”:

Great article on WND that you linked to Peter. Some nice quotes in it too, such as:

“Ann Coulter offered up a few tart tweets about Knox’s exoneration: – Amanda Knox not guilty, Casey Anthony rolls eyes, says; ‘well, duh…’”

“Comprehending circumstantial evidence demands analytical and deductive thinking. These faculties are becoming rare in the Age of the Idiot now upon us…”

How true, and I must remember that line.

Someone else on the same site’s comments section, however, impugns my column solely because I write for WND, which the writer calls (fairly) “Obama Birth Certificate Central.”

But I am not a “birther.” The comment is precisely the kind of argument to expect in the “age of the Idiot now upon us”: The comment relies on the “well-known logical error known as the ad hominem fallacy. This is the fallacy of thinking one can undermine the status of a claim or argument by undermining the motives or character” or associations of the person who makes it. (I’ve paraphrased writer Mark Rowland’s definition, which I particularly liked.)

UPDATE IV: I like the way writers with a blind spot for crime perpetrated by sweet young females or whites harp-on, and hide behind, the misguided theory of the crime: a ritual or a sexual game gone wrong. As if today’s youngsters don’t sometimes experiment along the lines of the vapid, vampiric films they devour; as if they never enact the alternate reality they occupy. Some kids don’t exist outside their hand held devices, and the stuff they see in these toys.

More to the point, the obsession with motive is another CSI hangover. In “America’s Angelic O.J.,” I clearly say that, “Police bungling notwithstanding,” there is often no accounting for the “subterranean irrational forces that so often propel evil.”

This central stupidity conjures the manner in which Geraldo Rivera exculpated Casey Anthony: “Why would a mother kill her child?”, the Fox host wanted to know.

UPDATE V: Via the grapevine, I am getting word of certain racialists, never rationalists, who are admonishing me for my deductions vis-a-vis the evidence in the Knox case. The claim being that I’ve failed to grasp and formulaically highlight the prevalence of “black dysfunction” in our society. Their implication, I imagine, is that the indisputable involvement of a black man in the murder must automatically exclude the whites. The “case” against me is a grotesque joke, coming as it does from the quintessential American chauvinists who’ve generally ignored (except for tokenism) the largest, if disorganized, racial ethnocide in the 21st century: that of rural, white South Africans. And its chronicler: Guess who wrote the definitive text on that racial enthnocide? And guess who’s ignored that text yet is now lecturing its author about not being sufficiently racial in her treatment of the Knox crime? Your typical, navel-gazing American, Race-Über-Alles paleo. Give me a break!

UPDATE VI (Oct. Eight): NO HEARSAY, PLEASE. Jerri Lynn Ward: As a lawyer, you know that hearsay is inadmissible, and is wrong argument. I try to avoid it on BAB. The information you’ve provided us falls in that category. The source I studied and quoted is a veteran reporter in Italy who was actually THERE, in the thick of the case. She writes for liberals (who generally love Knox) and has no agenda. I know agenda when I see it. Barbie Latza Nadeau’s reporting was as impartial and impeccable as they come, in my opinion. This woman fits the old mold of journalism.

UPDATE VII: Jack kindly left a link to his source on the Knox case, a man called Steve Moore. I perused the site and saw not one hyperlink to a primary source document, meaning court documents, briefs, etc. This is one of those individuals who is postulating from afar. I’m loathe to promote this kind of individual’s verbiage on the blog. For an “investigator” to offer nothing more than a narrative, and no primary documents: that’s is suspect. You are free to look him up on Jack’s advice.

UPDATE VIII: Jennifer mentioned the love-making at the scene of the crime:

Oblivious to the cameras—or perhaps for them—-Amanda Knox (22) and Raffaele Sollecito (25) exchanged a slow, sensual kiss in full view of world media. Not far from where the two kissed lay the body of Meredith Kercher, the English girl with whom Knox had shared student accommodation in Perugia, Italy. Her throat slit, Meredith had expired in slow agony.
The kinky canoodling of Knox and her paramour outside the house of horrors conjured the climactic moment in the film noir “The Comfort of Strangers.”
Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren play an older couple (Robert and Caroline) who live in a palazzo in Venice. They gain the trust of the vacationing Mary and Colin (played by the late Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett), a young English couple. As Colin sips a cocktail with Robert at the latter’s Venetian residence, Robert suddenly and swiftly (as planned) moves to cut Colin’s throat. He then steps over his gurgling victim and the gushing blood to engage in frenzied sex with his eager wife Caroline.
The two have fulfilled a shared fantasy.

[From “O.J.-Like Evidence Convicts Noxious Knox.”]

UPDATE II: Public Enema # 1 (Bum Doctors Spread AIDS)

Africa, Etiquette, Healthcare, Pseudoscience, Reason, South-Africa

It is one thing to have voodoo for values, but what about a sense of propriety?

The N2 is a major highway in South Africa that starts in my hometown of Cape Town. A repulsed reporter at The Daily Voice snapped images of a traditional “healer” administering a treatment for bewitchment alongside the road, in full view of motorists careening down the highways. The shameless sangoma (witch doctor), whose fees are probably reimbursed by the medical scheme (in the New South Africa), elaborated on his methods. Prepare to be repulsed (if you click on the image).

“Liberals labor under the romantic delusion that the effects of millennia of development-resistant, self-defeating, fatalistic, atavistic, superstition-infused, unfathomably cruel cultures can be cured by an infusion of foreign aid, and by the removal of tyrants. … the values and cultural influences which people (and peoples) bring to the polity cannot be tweaked out of existence like some unsightly nose-hair. … (From Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.)

UPDATED I (Sept. 5): Gray Falcon, AKA historian Nebojsa Malic—one of the top authorities in the US on the Balkans (if you want the truth)—has reviewed Into the Cannibal’s Pot on Amazon. Do read Mr. Malic’s insights, titled “A cautionary tale beyond black and white.”

UPDATE II: The common, communal and irrational practice described above should help explain to the perpetually perplexed West why the spread of AIDS/HIV is so hard to curtail in Africa. You know that the bum “doctor” does not use disposable equipment. Nor does he have an autoclave with which to sterilize his home-made enema.

Perforations are bound to happen. Infection likely to follow.