Category Archives: Reason

‘Mercer Eats Nails For Breakfast’ (Not)

Classical Liberalism, Ilana Mercer, Old Right, Pop-Culture, Reason, The Zeitgeist

In 2006, Anthony St. John posted interesting, but misguided, comments about me on the blog of Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, whose avid reader I am. (Their archive facility for subscribers seldom works; a big drawback.)

Sir Stothard had noted my praise for the TLS in “Excellence Vs. Offal”: “It’s always good to find a friend in blogland. So let me introduce Iana [sic] Mercer and her views about the TLS.”

Sigh.

As they say, “So long as they spell your name correctly…”

More interesting are Anthony St. John’s comments about me. A while ago, my pal Tom DiLorenzo sent me a note in which I am referred to as “one of the toughest people around.” Sean laughed a lot. (He understood that the comment was directed at my principles, not my person.) I find it puzzling, as I’m one of the softest sorts around, in demeanor too. (And a tiny person at that.)

I suspect that rationality is hard to grapple with in sentimental fin de siècle America. I don’t misplace sympathy; I always bestow it where it is absolutely deserving.

It takes a superficial sort to call me “hard.”

Has any writer written more emotionally than the one who wrote “About a Boy,” or “Betraying Brave Boys”? I doubt it. It’s just that I don’t bleed all over the floor for Oprah’s or Tyra’s archetypal “victims.”

I suspect that comments such as “[d]oes she eat nails for breakfast?” are an extension of the above, and compounded by the impersonal nature of the Internet.

In any event, St. John’s comments are interesting, as I’m not quite sure how he, being a Marxist, would like me to mellow. Or how he, being a Marxist, can even attempt to understand a woman of the Right, which I am–a woman of the Old, libertarian Right. This man has not done his homework. As for me being “crass”; a man who doesn’t recognize a lady is no gentleman at all.

Here goes:

30 June 2006
DO I HAVE TO THROW STONES AT THE MONA LISA BECAUSE IT’S CRACKING, PEELING AND FADING AWAY?
About twenty years or so ago, I (7 October 1944) stopped asking myself “Where’s this world going.” I just had given up. Nothing could surprise me from then on. So when one of my fellows, a woman, wrote back to me–after I had suggested to her to visit www.ilanamercer.com and tell me what she thought–pleading that I “blow Ilana out of the water,” I was not shocked, but I was very disappointed. I have no reason to blow Ilana out of the water. She is a stunningly beautiful woman, a very talented essayist, and I admire gutsy women (and men) who provoke us to think in these days of ambiguity and hypocrisy. A cad I am not! And Ilana offered me a chance to stroll down a Memory Lane of sorts. She reminded me of my stint as a circulation/correspondence assistant at NATIONAL REVIEW magazine in New York where I hobnobbed with those egg-headed US conservative doyens who were planting the seeds of the NeoTheoCon vogue with which we are burdened today. I broke bread with Russell Kirk, Senators Barry Goldwater and John Tower, Eddie Rickenbacher, Jr, James “The Managerial Revolution” Burnham, Robert Welch, Charles Edison, William A Rusher (WAR!), Frank Meyer and many others including, of course, the Prime Mover of the NeoTheoCon fad and the fervent Irish-American Roman Catholic who put God in the first pew of Northamerican conservative politics, William F Buckley, Jr. Ilana is made of that “conservative stuff” I tired of when I left NR in 1962 and went to university. (I am haunted, to this day, by with what my sister once told me: “You, mitigated Marxist, rocked the cradle of the NeoTheoCon movement, too!”) They are smart individuals but they stink to high heaven with their self-righteousness. I read a couple of IM’s articles and I know how her political DNA is mapped out. I could never agree with her on, say, her efforts to extol Oriana Fallaci whom I consider a racist and war-monger. (Nothing would please OF more than if British and Northamerican soldiers fought another “crusade” against the believers of the Islam religion which she, OF, detests.) But, IM is courageous enough to say those things which others might not agree with her on, and she is ready to take the consequences–something which many journalists today are not wont to do. I would like to give Ilana Mercer some advice, if I may. Ilana, you are often crass and insensitive. You also assume too much from your readers. Remember there are many people in this world who are not even interested in what the Left or Right has to offer us in these trying times. Your barbs are probably going to turn people off more than they will win friends and influence people to your side. You must enlighten and delight. Tone your voice down. You have a wonderful ability to see through to the heart of things. But, please be courteous when doing so–for your own benefit. Contain your strength and maintain a calm exterior. Remember that we are pliant. We are flexible when we are born, and we become hard when we die. You must be strong. Not hard. Being strong means you know when to be soft, when to be hard. You are too hard, Ilana. Really. Anthony “The Word Warrior” St. John…

Posted by: Anthony St. John | 30 Jun 2006 18:02:36
24 June 2006

I’ve been called THE WORD WARRIOR…but I would run for my life if I saw Ilana Mercer coming my way! Does she eat nails for breakfast? Anthony St. John

Posted by: Anthony St. John | 24 Jun 2006 10:17:13

‘Mercer Eats Nails For Breakfast’ (Not)

Britain, Classical Liberalism, Ilana Mercer, Old Right, Pop-Culture, Reason, The Zeitgeist

In 2006, Anthony St. John posted interesting, but misguided, comments about me on the blog of Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, whose avid reader I am. (Their archive facility for subscribers seldom works; a big drawback.)

Sir Stothard had noted my praise for the TLS in “Excellence Vs. Offal”: “It’s always good to find a friend in blogland. So let me introduce Iana [sic] Mercer and her views about the TLS.”

Sigh.

As they say, “So long as they spell your name correctly…”

More interesting are Anthony St. John’s comments about me. A while ago, my pal Tom DiLorenzo sent me a note in which I am referred to as “one of the toughest people around.” Sean laughed a lot. (He understood that the comment was directed at my principles, not my person.) I find it puzzling, as I’m one of the softest sorts around, in demeanor too. (And a tiny person at that.)

I suspect that rationality is hard to grapple with in sentimental fin de siècle America. I don’t misplace sympathy; I always bestow it where it is absolutely deserving.

It takes a superficial sort to call me “hard.”

Has any writer written more emotionally than the one who wrote “About a Boy,” or “Betraying Brave Boys”? I doubt it. It’s just that I don’t bleed all over the floor for Oprah’s or Tyra’s archetypal “victims.”

I suspect that comments such as “[d]oes she eat nails for breakfast?” are an extension of the above, and compounded by the impersonal nature of the Internet.

In any event, St. John’s comments are interesting, as I’m not quite sure how he, being a Marxist, would like me to mellow. Or how he, being a Marxist, can even attempt to understand a woman of the Right, which I am–a woman of the Old, libertarian Right. This man has not done his homework. As for me being “crass”; a man who doesn’t recognize a lady is no gentleman at all.

Here goes:

30 June 2006
DO I HAVE TO THROW STONES AT THE MONA LISA BECAUSE IT’S CRACKING, PEELING AND FADING AWAY?
About twenty years or so ago, I (7 October 1944) stopped asking myself “Where’s this world going.” I just had given up. Nothing could surprise me from then on. So when one of my fellows, a woman, wrote back to me–after I had suggested to her to visit www.ilanamercer.com and tell me what she thought–pleading that I “blow Ilana out of the water,” I was not shocked, but I was very disappointed. I have no reason to blow Ilana out of the water. She is a stunningly beautiful woman, a very talented essayist, and I admire gutsy women (and men) who provoke us to think in these days of ambiguity and hypocrisy. A cad I am not! And Ilana offered me a chance to stroll down a Memory Lane of sorts. She reminded me of my stint as a circulation/correspondence assistant at NATIONAL REVIEW magazine in New York where I hobnobbed with those egg-headed US conservative doyens who were planting the seeds of the NeoTheoCon vogue with which we are burdened today. I broke bread with Russell Kirk, Senators Barry Goldwater and John Tower, Eddie Rickenbacher, Jr, James “The Managerial Revolution” Burnham, Robert Welch, Charles Edison, William A Rusher (WAR!), Frank Meyer and many others including, of course, the Prime Mover of the NeoTheoCon fad and the fervent Irish-American Roman Catholic who put God in the first pew of Northamerican conservative politics, William F Buckley, Jr. Ilana is made of that “conservative stuff” I tired of when I left NR in 1962 and went to university. (I am haunted, to this day, by with what my sister once told me: “You, mitigated Marxist, rocked the cradle of the NeoTheoCon movement, too!”) They are smart individuals but they stink to high heaven with their self-righteousness. I read a couple of IM’s articles and I know how her political DNA is mapped out. I could never agree with her on, say, her efforts to extol Oriana Fallaci whom I consider a racist and war-monger. (Nothing would please OF more than if British and Northamerican soldiers fought another “crusade” against the believers of the Islam religion which she, OF, detests.) But, IM is courageous enough to say those things which others might not agree with her on, and she is ready to take the consequences–something which many journalists today are not wont to do. I would like to give Ilana Mercer some advice, if I may. Ilana, you are often crass and insensitive. You also assume too much from your readers. Remember there are many people in this world who are not even interested in what the Left or Right has to offer us in these trying times. Your barbs are probably going to turn people off more than they will win friends and influence people to your side. You must enlighten and delight. Tone your voice down. You have a wonderful ability to see through to the heart of things. But, please be courteous when doing so–for your own benefit. Contain your strength and maintain a calm exterior. Remember that we are pliant. We are flexible when we are born, and we become hard when we die. You must be strong. Not hard. Being strong means you know when to be soft, when to be hard. You are too hard, Ilana. Really. Anthony “The Word Warrior” St. John…

Posted by: Anthony St. John | 30 Jun 2006 18:02:36
24 June 2006

I’ve been called THE WORD WARRIOR…but I would run for my life if I saw Ilana Mercer coming my way! Does she eat nails for breakfast? Anthony St. John

Posted by: Anthony St. John | 24 Jun 2006 10:17:13

Updated: Michelle’s No Belle

Barack Obama, Democrats, Education, Reason

I suspect I’ll be proven correct down the line when it’s discovered that the militant Michelle Obama was a big motivator in her husband’s racial radicalization. As I’ve written, “to me, Obama has always seemed a reluctant recruit to racial politics; driven more by expediency and fear—fear of his overbearing wife and the Reverends Jackson, Sharpton,” and Wright, of course.

The more I hear Michelle, the less I like this rather handsome, Amazon-like, statuesque woman. She’s both belligerent, banal, and not very bright.

And, at every opportunity, Mrs. Obama rabbits about “our under-funded school system.”

Wrong. “The education system is a hog of huge proportions. In 1890, ‘annual current spending per pupil was $275.’ In 1999-2000, it was $7,086. ‘Adjusted for inflation and expressed in year 2000 dollars,’ that’s ‘25-fold.’ If GDP has since increased on average by only 1.9 percent per year, the spending on education has outpaced it, increasing 3 percent per year.”

“Simultaneously, the student-to-teacher ratio has been declining – there are ever more teachers compared to the number of students. One of the union’s goals is to pile on the personnel – this means more members and more union dues. Consequently, the teacher-to-student ratio is now down to an astonishing 1:16.5. (Include non-teaching staff, and there is now one adult for every eight or nine children in government schools.)”

Much to the approval of menstrual media interviewing her, Mrs. Obama recently shared another of her unmoored yearnings. She had been praising her poor little girls. You know, the tiny mites suffering for daddy and mommy’s ambitions. The prolix Mother Obama waxed on expressing the hope that we could all become more like children in their eternal equanimity and wisdom. (Okay, she didn’t put it quite like that; I’ve said she’s not very intelligent.)

Michelle’s “notion of childhood innocence” and wisdom is Rousseauist rubbish—as “fresh” and “new” as the ideas Jean-Jacques Rousseau proclaimed in Emile, according to which
“‘[T]here is no original perversity in the human heart’ and children were naturally good, perverted only by society.”

As I’ve observed, “Government schools [do help] produce misguided, mediocre and frightfully monolithic minds.” Michelle’s is one.

Update (May 7): back in March of 2007 and again early this year, I voiced my sense of Michelle Obama as the woman who steered Obama in the direction of Wright and other crackpots. Christopher Hitchens is coming to the same conclusion: Mrs. Obama is a radical fool, who’ll have considerable sway in the White House:

“I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama’s 1985 thesis at Princeton University. Its title (rather limited in scope, given the author and the campus) is “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be “read” at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language. Anyway, at quite an early stage in the text, Michelle Obama announces that she’s much influenced by the definition of black “separationism” offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. I remember poor Stokely Carmichael quite well. After a hideous series of political and personal fiascos, he fled to Africa, renamed himself Kwame Toure after two of West Africa’s most repellently failed dictators, and then came briefly back to the United States before electing to die in exile. I last saw him as the warm-up speaker for Louis Farrakhan in Madison Square Garden in 1985, on the evening when Farrakhan made himself famous by warning Jews, “You can’t say ‘Never Again’ to God, because when he puts you in the ovens, you’re there forever.” I have the distinct feeling that the Obama campaign can’t go on much longer without an answer to the question: “Are we getting two for one?” And don’t be giving me any grief about asking this. Black Americans used to think that the Clinton twosome was their best friend, too. This time we should find out before it’s too late to ask.”

Steve Sailer disagrees.

Updated: Deifying the Dalai Lama

Celebrity, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, Reason

“… While the Dalai Lama seems a sweet enough fellow down to his conventional, simplistic, unoriginal quips, he is, nevertheless, a caricature, the creation of pseudo-spiritual, faux-intellectual liberal elites…”

More poignantly: “The story of Tibet is a story with more twists than a serpent’s tail. Unfortunately, most Americans are as unequipped as Lauren Caitlin Upton of the 2007 Miss Teen USA fame to locate Tibet on a map, much less preach about its politics…”

Read the rest in “Deifying the Dalai Lama,” my new WorldNetDaily.com column. (Readers of Barely a Blog will be familiar with the theme.)

Update (April 24): There’s an interesting new letter in our Comments Section from a skeptical (read: thinking) health-care professional who’s recently encountered the Lama.