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.”

Evil, Not ILL

Crime, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology

CNN’s Erin Burnett tweeted incoherently that “The grandfather of #Chardon H.S. shooting says ‘no one has the right to shoot people because he had a rough life.'” It is unclear from the news anchor’s tweet whose grandfather spoke so unconventionally in favor of conventional morality on her OutFront show.

I saw this “grandfather.” He surprised Burnett with his implicit suggestions that, contra to her other self-serving tele-experts, bad behavior should not be placed beyond the strictures of traditional morality, making it amenable to their “therapeutic” interventions. To listen to the nation’s psychiatric gurus is to come to believe that crimes are caused, not committed. Perpetrators don’t do the crime, but are driven to their dirty deeds by a confluence of uncontrollable factors, victims of societal forces or organic brain disease. The Drew Pinskys of the world conjure so-called mental diseases either to control contrarians or to exculpate criminals.

The paradox at the heart of this root-causes fraud is that causal theoretical explanations are invoked only after bad deeds have been committed. Good deeds have no need of mitigating circumstances. These liberals (including most conservatives, who are now liberals in all but name) acknowledge human agency if—and only if—adaptive actions are involved.

As the psychiatric shaman has it, a killer is not evil, but ill. The modern-day witch doctor’s potions can thus exorcise evil, as evil is merely a manifestation of organic disease. Just like cancer.

US Abroad: ‘White Knighting’ Or White-Hot Hatred?

BAB's A List, Europe, Foreign Policy, History, Islam, Jihad, The West

My good friend Nebojsa Malic has been the Balkans columnist for Antiwar.com since 2000, and blogs at grayfalcon.blogspot.com. I am always thrilled when Nebojsa finds the time to pen an exclusive editorial for Barely A Blog. (Click on “BAB’s A List” for Nebojsa’s articles archive.)

US Abroad: ‘White Knighting’ Or White-Hot Hatred?
BY NEBOJSA MALIC

In my Antiwar.com article last week, I mentioned the call to war in Syria sounded by WSJ contributor Fouad Ajami in early February. According to Ajami, B. Hussein Obama should follow the example of his Democratic predecessor, who launched proxy and air wars to “save” the “Bosnians” and “Kosovars.”

The quotation marks are absolutely necessary here. Because all three factions that fought in Bosnia were actually native Bosnians, the Western media applied the name solely to the Bosnian Muslims, who in 1993 deliberately adopted the name “Bosniak” to stake a claim on the country. At least they use that name for themselves; denizens of the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo don’t even bother with “Kosovar” – a nice, sanitized name bestowed upon them by sympathetic NATO propaganda – and identify themselves simply as Albanian.

Last, but not least, neither were actually “saved” by Clinton. The Bosnian Muslims started a civil war after being given assurances of U.S. support, but in the end settled for an arrangement worse than the one they rejected at Washington’s urging. In Kosovo, Washington embraced a terrorist, drug-running, organ-harvesting cabal of Nazi sympathizers, responsible for killing many more fellow Albanians than the Serb “oppressors,” who used the NATO air war to purge all rivals and set up a mafia “state” thereafter. Both the Bosnian Muslim leadership and the “Kosovo Liberation Army” have shown the most callous disregard for the lives of their kin, so long as their deaths furthered the cause. Whatever was required to mobilize the world opinion, it was provided: fake death camps, fabricated stories of mass rapes, marketplace massacres or “genocides”.

Horrific as it was, such behavior at least had some degree of logic behind it. If you are a weak local actor, the best way to reach power is to get a strong outside power to fight and win your wars; fourth-generation warfare at its most effective. But what had possessed the American Empire to go along? Brendan O’Neill explained it as a quest for meaning following the Cold War: by “saving” the fictitious damsels in distress in Bosnia and Kosovo, the U.S. could present itself as the White Knight, thus earning the everlasting gratitude of Muslims worldwide.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-KLA), a noted interventionist, validated this analysis in 2007, when he called on “jihadists of all color and hue” to take note of the U.S. creating another Islamic state in Europe. By that he meant Kosovo, Bosnia presumably being the first (though over half of its population is Christian).

Trouble is, the expected gratitude of worldwide jihadists manifestly failed to materialize. Washington’s white-knighting in the Balkans was followed by 9/11. “Bosnians” mocked international humanitarian aid efforts with a kitschy monument to canned beef. Albanians may have erected a gilded statue of Bill Clinton, but what is one to make of a stream of Albanian jihadists since the “liberation”? Meanwhile, the “nation-building” programs in Iraq and Afghanistan have been a complete fiasco. U.S. activists may have helped steer the Egyptian “revolution” but now find themselves on trial.

None of this is going to make the slightest dent in Washington’s reality-distortion field, unfortunately. Odds are there will be an intervention of some kind in Syria, on the pretext of “saving lives”, but definitely with the expectation of Muslim gratitude.

Ajami and his fellow interventionists are missing a key difference between Clinton and Obama. While Clinton embarked on white-knighting wars to cover up scandals at home and would do anything to be loved, Obama is a paragon of virtue in comparison, and treats adulation as his due. Remember, he got a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up, and a statue in Indonesia just for being a schoolboy there once. In other words, he has no need to prove himself now – not with the Republican establishment candidates being so absolutely inept, that Obama’s second Imperial mandate is all but guaranteed.

Then again, Obama didn’t really care about Libya, either. The three Valkyries ran that operation. They may yet do the same in Syria, hoping perhaps for statues of their own – and gratitude that will never come.

UPDATE II: ‘Absolute Invulnerability for America Means Absolute Vulnerability For Others’

Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Middle East, Propaganda, Republicans, Russia, Terrorism

Truth is truth no matter who propounds it (and why, pray tell, am I forced to repeat this no-brainer year-in and year-out?). The next statement is immutably true—even profound—although Americans will first look at the man who uttered it, and will denounce his wise words, given that he is not a member of the DC duopoly and the comitatus that props these Demopublicans up (i.e., the “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”).

Via Eurasia Review:

“’The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ensuring their absolute invulnerability – a thing, I would point out, that is utopian and achievable neither from a technological nor a geopolitical standpoint.
And herein lies the problem. Absolute invulnerability for one means absolute vulnerability for all the others. It is impossible to agree with this perspective.’
Addressing the unrest in the Arab world, Putin said Russia would not permit a ‘Libyan scenario’ to take place in Syria, where he said Moscow wanted to see an immediate halt in violence and a national dialogue to resolve the crisis.
He defended the decision by Russia and China to veto a resolution earlier this month pushed by Washington and its European and Arab allies that Moscow said would have opened the door to foreign military intervention in Syria.
Russia in particular faced blistering criticism that ‘bordered on hysterical’ from Western countries for its decision, Putin said, adding that Moscow strongly hoped the United States and others would not resort to force in Syria without UN approval.
Referring more widely to the Arab Spring, Putin said that efforts backed by the United States and the West to bring about ‘democracy with the help of violent methods’ were unpredictable and often led to precisely the opposite result.

UPDATE I (Feb. 28): Finally, China stands up to the ludicrous Hildebeest:

“The United States’ motive in parading as a ‘protector’ of the Arab peoples is not difficult to imagine,” it said in a commentary. “The problem is, what moral basis does it have for this patronising and egotistical super-arrogance and self-confidence?”
“Even now, violence continues unabated in Iraq and ordinary people enjoy no security. This alone is enough for us to draw a huge question mark over the sincerity and efficacy of US policy,” it added.

UPDATE II (March 4): “Putin [has] said the main problem is that the United States wants ‘to acquire complete invulnerability’ through missile defense. He also mentioned Washington’s refusal to provide written guarantees that the system will never be aimed at Russian territory.” [RT]