Update # III: Advice to South Africans Pondering Emigration

I received the following missive from a South African reader.

“Hi Ilana

My wife and I might move from Johannesburg to the US within the next few months. I would very much like to communicate with you regarding plusses and minuses of leaving SA.”

South Africans in a similar predicament may find my reply helpful:

“Rationally and objectively, there are only plusses to being afforded the opportunity to leave South Africa. The facts about South Africa I’ve documented in many essays. These facts, oddly enough, are not always known, processed, or understood by South Africans.
The only question is really how you and your family cope with your good fortune. Some people can’t handle being away from family, friends, and place of birth. They would sooner risk death and a bleak future for their kids than leave. That’s irrational—to me and mine—at least. I am forever shocked at how many South Africans return to that hell hole.

So, it is not the objective facts you and your family must consider, but your psychological grit and resolve to be positive and realize you’ve been afforded a life-saving opportunity. My daughter kicked and screamed at the time—she was 12—but now thanks me for dragging her out of there.

That’s really the most important advice I can give.

Best of luck to those who leave and to those who remain behind, including members of my own immediate family.

Ilana

Update # I (Oct. 23): With respect to my comment hereunder about Dan Roodt’s dismissal of the emigration option for Afrikaners: It is one thing to contend that Anglos are far less attached to South Africa than Afrikaners, and assign the difficulties in departing to this attachment. That’s a valid and true argument. But to claim that immigration is not a life-saving opportunity because, decades down the line, the West will have been turned into another South Africa by its treacherous rulers—that’s wrong, illogical, and, hence, self-immolating.

Right now—and for decades to come— murder rates in suburban Canada, Australia, Europe and the US are negligible. The overall aggregate of 6 per 100,000 for the US (as opposed to between 89 and 120 per 100,000 for South Africa) is a function of factoring in the “contribution” of high-crime areas. When I moved into my home, I inquired at the local police station about the murder rate in my new American community, only to be told that, twenty years back, there was a family murder-suicide. (Since then there has been one Mexican-related brawl resulting in a fatality.)
To a rational person—to whom the sanctity of life is everything—these statistics say it all. I can rest assured that if I haven’t heard from my daughter—far more precious to me than allegiances to a country—she is just busy (or naughty).

A drop in the sea of mass immigration to the West, South African immigration, nevertheless, could help counter the influx from the Third World, and strengthen this part of the world.

There is another serious obstacle to South African emigration. I’m reproducing here the exchange I had on this aspect with Lawrence Auster:

“I asked Ilana Mercer:
If thousands of Afrikaner farmers are being brutalized and murdered like this how is it that they just remain on their farms waiting to be killed? Why haven’t they fled? Yes, it tells of people arming themselves to the teeth, but surely many must have fled, as in Zimbabwe.

She wrote back:
Americans do not understand how hard it is to immigrate. I find most Americans think that if you apply to enter, well then, the U.S., Canada, or Australia will let you in. NOT SO. It is virtually impossible to immigrate legally to the U.S., Canada, and Australia if you do not have the right qualifications or huge sums of money. This of course should make for commentary about our immigration system, which selects for law-breaking, venality, and risk taking, etc. I’ve dealt with that somewhat here [too]. Our refugee policies should favor the Boer, but we favor the likes of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”—more photogenic. Where do you think the Zim. farmers fled to? The U.S.? No. Most left for South Africa, as far as I know. Some might have had British passports. The Boers don’t have that.”

Update # II (Oct. 24): In response to the thoughtful comments of a friend about a possible defining battle for the West looming on the South-African front: I hate to be cynical, but there is no political framework for a fight. There is little hope of the Boers winning, as long as majority rule is the system in place. The only way the Boers (whose leaders relinquished power due the West’s pressure) can achieve self-determination is by seceding. Currently, the designated Afrikaner homeland is Oranje, a bleak, landlocked backwater in the Orange Free State. My friend seems to believe there is fight in the people. I’m pretty up-to-date about matters South African, and all I hear of is cooptation—having no option, the minority population has accepted the decay, and even joined it. A piece written by Dr. Roodt, in particular, even details considerable libertine excesses among a generation of young Afrikaners.

I’d also like to say something to suburban Americans preaching South African resistance: you don’t know what it is to live in fear of your life. Until you have experienced such fear—until you personally know people who’ve been hijacked, raped, murdered, or all of the above, don’t fight by proxy. How naïve and insulated are Americans! They routinely plunge (by proxy) other countries into chaos (Iraq), leaving their poor civilians mired in mayhem, while they continue their suburban existence far away on American soil. Don’t preach the merits of South Africans fighting the good fight until your beloved have been imperiled by killers, who’ll never be apprehended and who rule the roost.

Update # III (Oct. 31): Danie writes from South Africa: “Those who’ve already left have a responsibility to give us hope and not rub our noses in how bad we have it here.”

My answer: As a writer, I have only one obligation and that is to the truth. My mandate doesn’t include making people feel better in the face of reality—not about South Africa, Iraq, tyranny, the consequences of the national debt, etc.

Updated: The Boring Idea (Or Donny Vs. Annie)

Ann Coulter, Christianity, Judaism & Jews, Media

The verbose, vacuous Donny Deutsch had the leggy, one-trick Coulter on his big bore of a show, “The Big Idea.”

The exchange:

“Deutsch said to her: ‘You said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians,’ and Coulter again replied, ‘Yes.’ When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like ‘the head of Iran’ and ‘wipe Israel off the Earth,’ Coulter stated: ‘No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws.’”

Deutsch promptly took offense. Left-liberals, Jews included, followed. I don’t have the time or patience to search for links to their apoplexy (here’s one). However, let me say this: If Coulter was more than a brash babe (she’s looking bonny), she’d have explained (as I did in “Unlearend Rabbi Rages at Ratzinger“) that a filament of the Christian faith is the belief that the path to God is predicated on accepting Christ. The centrality in Christianity of accepting Christ is a doctrinal issue, plain and simple. To get past the Pearly Gates, Christians believe one has to accept Christ.

So what? I don’t hear Christians telling orthodox Jews to ditch their maddening dietary laws, because these make people of other faiths feel excluded.

So long as they don’t use the Rack to convert others, why do these immutable doctrinal issues matter?

On a slightly different tack (but still on the topic of Coulter and Christianity), I wrote the following in February, 2005:

“Most real people had a 9/11 moment. Ann Coulter’s call to arms was particularly memorable. For exhorting, ‘We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,’ she was even banished from National Review. This was indeed a puzzling purge, considering neoconservatives promptly adopted her recommendations, invaded Muslim countries, and killed their leaders.

The neocons have adopted all of Coulter’s recommendations, save the peaceful one. So long as it’s voluntary and doesn’t involve The Rack, I think that unleashing an army of missionaries on the Islamic patrimony would be far more efficacious than the military offensives currently underway. In fact, I’ve always suspected that an aversion to Christian conversion was at the core of the ‘girlie boys’’ horrified response to Coulter’s cri de coeur.”

Update (12:25 AM): A brief comment on Coulter’s clinging to the instant clemency Christianity offers:

Here’s more of Coulter the theologian, in the punch-up with Deutsch:

“[The New Testament] is more like Federal Express,” she barked at Deutsch. “You have to obey laws. … As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to live up to all the laws. What Christians believe—this is just a statement of what the New Testament is—is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins.”

Yes, a Jew can’t expect to go to heaven if he whoops it up for an unjust war, and pimps for a corrupt president (that is if you believe all the heaven hocus pocus; I don’t). In Judaism, your actions determine your fate on earth and in the hereafter (the first being more important than the last).

A rabbi can’t wave a wand and absolve the wicked, as a priest does following confession. A Jew has to obey certain imperatives toward G-d and his fellow man. In other words, he must live justly and do good deeds.

So, yes: I can see the appeal amnesty express à la Christianity would hold for Coulter.

‘Sixteen the Number of the Beast’

Individual Rights, Private Property, Taxation

(The title of the post is that of an essay on the 16th Amendment in Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture.)

A self-satisfied, beaming U.S. Marshal, Stephen Monier, boasted about busting the elderly tax resisters, Ed and Elaine Brown. “They invited us in, and we escorted them out,” Monier strutted, as he described the ruse the feds used to gain access to the couple’s home. At least the feds didn’t kill the Browns.

Doug Powers covered the story here.

Income tax is immoral, not illegal. Most of what the federal government does is immoral, but not illegal. After all, those in power determine what’s licit and what’s elicit. As I’ve written:

“…the right of ownership is an extension of the right to life. If ownership is not an absolute right but is instead subject to the vagaries of majority vote, then so is the right to life…
However you slice it, there is no moral difference between a lone burglar who steals stuff he doesn’t own and an “organized society” that does the same. In a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also apply to the collective. A society founded on natural rights must not finesse theft.
The Founders intended for government to safeguard man’s natural rights. The 16th Amendment gave government a limitless lien on a man’s property and, by extension, on his life. The Amendment turned government into the almighty source – rather than the protector – of man’s rights and Americans into indentured slaves.”

(Please post comments here rather than send me e-mails; unfortunately, I don’t have the time to reply. More importantly, worthy information is best shared on the blog, where it reaches more people.)

On The George Putnam Show (More About a Great American)

America, Celebrity, Elections 2008, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, Media

Tomorrow (Oct. 9, 2007) I will be on George Putnam’s nationally syndicated show, Talk Back (more about Mr. Putnam here as well). It is “distributed nationwide on the Cable Radio Network.” I’ll be on from 1:30 to 1:58 PT.

Updated (Oct 9, 2007): I’m hugely privileged to have spoken fleetingly with a great and brilliant American. (Excuse the adjectival banality, but words fail me here.) Mr. Putnam is a national treasure, who should be on TV to remind Americans how incisive, sonorous and super smart some of their media mavens used to be. (Now none of them are.) I was also touched by Mr. Putnam’s graciousness about me and my work. This is a man whose counsel Nixon and Reagan sought, and who “has a star on the Hollywood Boulevard ‘Walk of Fame.’” Again, an honor. (I did get a chuckle out of Mr. Putnam when I said that at www.ilanamercer.com, his listeners could read columns as funny and as well-written as Ann Coulter’s, only principled. Incidentally, I endorsed Ron Paul as the hope for America; Mr. Putnam agreed enthusiastically and expansively.

Roger Grace wrote a series of columns about the great man. Here is one.

George Putnam: the Voice That Keeps Booming

By ROGER M. GRACE

In a 1984 “Salute to KTTV’s 35th Anniversary,” former President Richard Nixon, on videotape, said of veteran Los Angeles newscaster George Putnam:

“He won the admiration and respect of millions of people in Southern California due to the fact that everybody could count on him to say exactly what he believed, whether it was popular or not. Some people didn’t like what he said; some people liked what he said. But everybody listened to George Putnam. That is why he has been one of the most influential commentators of our times.”

At the time of that program, Putnam was weekend anchor at KTTV, after having been off television for a spell. The station’s news director publicly stated when he brought Putnam back on board that people told him he was nuts.

Putnam no longer enjoyed the popularity he had in the 1950s and into the early 1960s. Nonetheless, unalterable is the fact of Putnam’s unparalleled attainment when his career was at its zenith. He was a powerhouse. Among those who sought his counsel back then was Nixon.

Putnam is associated in the minds of many with Channel 11. However, in the mid-1960s, he was wooed away by KTLA, Channel 5, located one block west of KTTV on Sunset Boulevard. Channel 11 later enticed him back, and Putnam was again turning east from Van Ness into the KTTV lot. KTLA once more lured Putnam away in the early 1970s, and he was again turning west from Van Ness. (He was now doing his twice-nightly news show, as well as “Talk Back,” with viewers phoning in.)

When his high-priced contract expired, it was not renewed. Putnam’s style, once viewed as one which evinced enthusiasm, was now perceived as affected and passe. He worked for awhile at KHJ and KCOP, at one point doing a two-man chat show with Mort Sahl.

In 1976, Putnam returned to radio, where he got his start in 1934. During the 1950s, he had been heard on KFI (the NBC affiliate), later on KABC-AM (as was fellow KTTV news personality Paul Coates). His new home, however, was not so prestigious. It was KIEV, a station in Glendale that was little known outside that burgh. The station, licensed by the Federal Radio Commission in 1932, had its dedicatory program on Feb. 11, 1933. It broadcast from the basement of the Glendale Hotel, receiving free rent in exchange for advertising. It began broadcasting at a meager 100 watts, but worked its way up to 250 watts the next year. It was at 5,000 watts when Putnam got there with his “Talk Back” show.

Putnam gave the theretofore obscure station credibility, and enabled it to attract other top personalities, such as Mr. Blackwell. For years, Putnam’s broadcasts emanated each noontime from the bottom level of the Arco Plaza, in downtown Los Angeles. Lunchtime shoppers could bob in to join the studio audience.

The station on Jan. 1, 2001, acquired the abandoned call letters of a better known station, KRLA. That year, Putnam left his broadcasting home after 27 years when the station wanted to air his commentaries during the week, but relegate his call-in show to weekends.

But that did not end Putnam’s career in broadcasting. At age 88, he’s still broadcasting, his new venue being KPLS, a right-wing station in Orange County.

In 1995, at the local Emmy awards ceremony, Putnam was given the Governors’ Award for career achievement. He has a star on the Hollywood Boulevard “Walk of Fame.”

An article in the April 20, 1956 issue of TV Radio Life observed: “Some people say he is hammy. Others say he is the best in the field.”

He was—and is—a ham. Whether he was the “best in the field” may be debated. My own local journalistic “heroes” from that supplemental news medium known as television—supplemental to newspapers, that is—are Clete Roberts, Bill Stout and Paul Coates.

Though there was bravado to his manner, he was far from a Ted Baxter. He was informed.

In offering “One Reporter’s Opinion,” he did not merely read words crafted by another; the opinion was his, the words were his.

I do find fault, however, with the lack of clear demarcation during Putnam’s early days on L.A. television between his role as a reporter and as a commentator. He did, in my view, assume the role of an advocate in contexts where journalistic ethics would have dictated neutrality.

But this cannot be denied:

There has never been a more popular and influential newsman in Los Angeles television than Putnam. He’s a legend.