By Ilana Mercer
“The top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent … as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent,” roared the independent senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, at the first Democratic primary debate of 2015, in Las Vegas.
Standing for president, Sanders implies, somehow, that there exists in nature a delimited income pie from which a disproportionate amount of wealth is handed over to, or seized, by a class of evil doers: “the rich.”
Clueless Sanders omits the process by which that wealth magically materializes.
Wealth doesn’t exist pristine in nature, until individuals—deserving as much, if not more, of the pope’s love as the poor—apply their smarts, labor and savings to transform raw materials into marketable things that satisfy human desire and need.
But not if one listens to the socialist from Vermont as, sadly, too many Americans did.
You ask, why was it not just as discouraging when even more Americans tuned in to watch the first and second Republican Primary Debates, 24 and 23 million respectively?
For this reason:
Showing posts with label Ilana Mercer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ilana Mercer. Show all posts
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Friday, October 24, 2014
Can’t Appreciate the Private Economy? You Don’t Deserve the Plenty It Provides
By Ilana Mercer
The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace—this magic, organic agora—starts to splutter, and people suffer.
While the argument against the free market presses its case with an impressive array of economic fallacies—even the Hollywood “Idiocracy” is hip to the logic of the free market.
Just for a change, the menstruation lobby is moaning about the movies and its members’ representation therein. By Variety Magazine’s telling, “[Female] characters are still significantly under-represented on the big screen. … The numbers for minority females are even lower. African-American female representation on screen [has] climbed to 14 percent, from 8 percent in 2011, but [is] down from 15 percent in 2012.”
The presence of minorities in movies often signals a two-hour long, oppressive racial lecture. Most movie-goers are no more inclined to turn to “12 Years A Slave” for fun, than they are to subject themselves to Oprah Winfrey and her M.O.P.E. (Most Oppressed Person Ever) “Butler.”
Anti-man moaning notwithstanding, the general public must be on to this, because it is quite clear that Hollywood is giving viewers what they want to see: men in lead roles. If film executives listened to the loathsome Lena Dunham, rather than to the demands of consumers—the industry would go under.
Alas, most liberals (and that includes “conservatives” aplenty) are foolish enough to lump business with government as an eternal source of disappointment to Americans. Noodles Ron Fournier of National Journal:
“Steadily, over the past four decades, the nation has lost faith in virtually every American institution: banks, schools, colleges, charities, unions, police departments, organized religion, big businesses, small businesses and, of course, politics and government.”
As I type, I consume a plate of seven different fruits topped with nuts. Many of the ingredients on my plate are organic. These used to be exorbitantly priced; out of reach. But as demand for organic produce has grown, production has increased and prices have dropped dramatically.
Each day I give thanks to the businessmen who, against all odds, bring such abundance to market and provide such plenty. There is nothing in my home that comes courtesy of the blessings of bureaucrats. I guarantee that it’s the same in your home.
If you, like Fournier, fail to distinguish the blessings of the private economy from the blight of government—you deserve none of the former and all of the latter.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace—this magic, organic agora—starts to splutter, and people suffer.
While the argument against the free market presses its case with an impressive array of economic fallacies—even the Hollywood “Idiocracy” is hip to the logic of the free market.
Just for a change, the menstruation lobby is moaning about the movies and its members’ representation therein. By Variety Magazine’s telling, “[Female] characters are still significantly under-represented on the big screen. … The numbers for minority females are even lower. African-American female representation on screen [has] climbed to 14 percent, from 8 percent in 2011, but [is] down from 15 percent in 2012.”
The presence of minorities in movies often signals a two-hour long, oppressive racial lecture. Most movie-goers are no more inclined to turn to “12 Years A Slave” for fun, than they are to subject themselves to Oprah Winfrey and her M.O.P.E. (Most Oppressed Person Ever) “Butler.”
Anti-man moaning notwithstanding, the general public must be on to this, because it is quite clear that Hollywood is giving viewers what they want to see: men in lead roles. If film executives listened to the loathsome Lena Dunham, rather than to the demands of consumers—the industry would go under.
Alas, most liberals (and that includes “conservatives” aplenty) are foolish enough to lump business with government as an eternal source of disappointment to Americans. Noodles Ron Fournier of National Journal:
“Steadily, over the past four decades, the nation has lost faith in virtually every American institution: banks, schools, colleges, charities, unions, police departments, organized religion, big businesses, small businesses and, of course, politics and government.”
As I type, I consume a plate of seven different fruits topped with nuts. Many of the ingredients on my plate are organic. These used to be exorbitantly priced; out of reach. But as demand for organic produce has grown, production has increased and prices have dropped dramatically.
Each day I give thanks to the businessmen who, against all odds, bring such abundance to market and provide such plenty. There is nothing in my home that comes courtesy of the blessings of bureaucrats. I guarantee that it’s the same in your home.
If you, like Fournier, fail to distinguish the blessings of the private economy from the blight of government—you deserve none of the former and all of the latter.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Wal-Mart, That Economic Wrecking Ball
By Ilana Mercer
To ameliorate the effects of the Obamacare wrecking ball, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is venturing into the business of providing primary health care. For $40, the price of a copay (mine are way more), "you can walk into a Wal-Mart clinic and see a doctor." It's "just $4 for Walmart U.S. employees and family members."
Sandra Fluke: You can have a pregnancy test at Wal-Mart for ... $3.00.
Via MarketWatch:
Let the anti-Wal Mart jousting begin.
Typically, critics of Wal Mart—for example, Marian Kester Coombs, writing for The American Conservative—will do nothing to trace the mysterious mechanism by which Wal-Mart is said to impoverish. By offering “the lowest possible prices all the time, not just during sales”? What precisely is the economic process that accounts for Wal-Mart’s ability to “expel jobs and technology from our own country”? Competition? Offering a product people choose to buy?
“Protecting the home market,” which is what TAC writer advocates, is to the detriment of consumers. It forces them to subsidize less efficient local industries, making them the poorer for it. To keep inefficient industries in the lap of luxury, hundreds of others are doomed to shrink or go under.
The writer aforementioned also froths at the mouth over “the teenage girl in Bangladesh … forced to sew pocket flaps onto 120 pairs of pants per hour for 13 cents per hour.” It sounds dreadful. However, the economic reality is this: Wal-Mart is either offering higher, the same or lower wages than the wages workers were earning before its arrival in Bangladesh. The company would find it hard to attract workers if it was paying less, or the same as other companies. Ergo, Wal-Mart is a benefactor that pays the kind of wage unavailable prior to its arrival. More material, if the entrepreneur were forced to pay workers in excess of their productivity, he would eventually have to disinvest. What will the Bangladeshi teenage girl do when that happens?
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
To ameliorate the effects of the Obamacare wrecking ball, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is venturing into the business of providing primary health care. For $40, the price of a copay (mine are way more), "you can walk into a Wal-Mart clinic and see a doctor." It's "just $4 for Walmart U.S. employees and family members."
Sandra Fluke: You can have a pregnancy test at Wal-Mart for ... $3.00.
Via MarketWatch:
On Friday, a Walmart Care Clinic opened in Dalton, Ga., six months after Walmart U.S., the retailer’s biggest unit, entered the business of providing primary health care. It now operates a dozen clinics in rural Texas, South Carolina and Georgia and has increased its target for openings this year to 17. A ... cholesterol test [will cost] $8. A typical retail clinic offers acute care only. But a Walmart Care Clinic also treats chronic conditions such as diabetes. (Walmart U.S. also leases space in its stores to 94 clinics owned by others that set their own pricing.)
“It was very important to us that we establish a retail price in the health-care industry because price leadership matters to us,” said Jennifer LaPerre, a Walmart U.S. senior director responsible for health and wellness, in an interview.
Let the anti-Wal Mart jousting begin.
Typically, critics of Wal Mart—for example, Marian Kester Coombs, writing for The American Conservative—will do nothing to trace the mysterious mechanism by which Wal-Mart is said to impoverish. By offering “the lowest possible prices all the time, not just during sales”? What precisely is the economic process that accounts for Wal-Mart’s ability to “expel jobs and technology from our own country”? Competition? Offering a product people choose to buy?
“Protecting the home market,” which is what TAC writer advocates, is to the detriment of consumers. It forces them to subsidize less efficient local industries, making them the poorer for it. To keep inefficient industries in the lap of luxury, hundreds of others are doomed to shrink or go under.
The writer aforementioned also froths at the mouth over “the teenage girl in Bangladesh … forced to sew pocket flaps onto 120 pairs of pants per hour for 13 cents per hour.” It sounds dreadful. However, the economic reality is this: Wal-Mart is either offering higher, the same or lower wages than the wages workers were earning before its arrival in Bangladesh. The company would find it hard to attract workers if it was paying less, or the same as other companies. Ergo, Wal-Mart is a benefactor that pays the kind of wage unavailable prior to its arrival. More material, if the entrepreneur were forced to pay workers in excess of their productivity, he would eventually have to disinvest. What will the Bangladeshi teenage girl do when that happens?
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Friday, October 3, 2014
All The President’s Women (Well, Almost)
By Ilana Mercer
The pols and the pundits are cut up about a breach or two in the White House’s formidably protected perimeter. The People should not be. Working for government ought to be one of the most dangerous jobs ever. Thomas Jefferson, a real prince among men, traveled on horseback and wore plain clothes. Not only was he unguarded, his house in Washington was open to all-comers. Anyone who wrote to Jefferson received a reply in the great man’s hand. He paid for postage out of pocket. Never again will a Jefferson occupy the People’s House. But occupational hazard might just get us a better class of parasite.
In any event, the latest security breach at the White House—there have been many under departing Secret Service Director Julia Pierson—saw 42-year-old Omar J. Gonzalez rush across the lawn and into the first family’s residence, where the trespasser was “confronted by a female Secret Service agent, whom he [naturally] overpowered.” No wonder Pierson and the press have circled the wagons. The same lady officer, or another with a similar skill set, had also failed to lock the front door. Disarmed, too, was an alarm meant to alert officers to intruders.
All in all, officers on-duty stood down and an off-duty officer manned up. (The canine unit, sick of eating Michelle Obama’s carrots, was busy digging for bones.) Gonzales could have bounded up the stairs to the first family’s living quarters had the off-duty officer not tackled him. He must be male. Were he a woman, or something in-between, he’d be up for a medal of honor.
It’s always good to see gender set-asides and affirmative action—in particular, the delusion that women are just as qualified as men to be soldiers, security guards, firefighters and cops—hurt those who inflict it on non-believers.
A for Pierson, like other ciphers in skirts (or pantsuits) promoted by this administration, she is something else—but nothing like stumblebum Marie Harf, the sibilant spokeswoman at the State Department.
Watching Miley Cyrus’ hootchy hoopla is less offensive than enduring a press conference with Ms. Barf, where reasonably intelligent, veteran newsmen attempt to engage this schoolmarmish, tartish young woman in reasoned repartee. Marie Barf is intellectually inconsequential, to put it kindly. Only the other day did she claim, most memorably—and from the safety of her perch—that the outsourcing, in Benghazi, of the safety of American diplomats to the enemy, a local Muslim militia, is justified because it is part of the protocol. The militia hired to protect the compound was late to the scene, possibly complicit in the carnage.
Another exhibit is Lois Lerner. She “is toxic,” conceded Politico, before segueing into a puff piece about this corrupt kleptocrat. The central conceit of the Politico exposé, “Lerner Breaks Silence,” is that she’s a “complicated figure.” The characterization doesn’t jibe with the main character’s actions and demeanor. Lerner is, in fact, consistently one-dimensional. An example: The Treasury Inspector General determined that Lerner’s IRS division used “inappropriate criteria … to identify tax-exempt applications for review,” and that certain organizations applying for tax-exempt status, singled out for their “policy positions,” were harassed for “significant amounts of information.” Translated from bureaucratese, Lerner used a vast, oppressive apparatus—the Internal Revenue Service—to hound right-leaning non-profits, threaten their mission and menace their donors.
In particular, this bloodhound instructed her elite Unit (Determinations U) to BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for tea-party or 9/12 patriots. The GI made his recommendations. Lerner fobbed him off. The Office of Audit grumbled that it does not believe the “alternative corrective action” proposed by the Lerner division “fully addresses” the problems: “We do not consider the concerns in this report to be resolved.” Befitting the flat, uncomplicated, venal personality she is, Lerner showed no commitment to correct her agency’s ways. Post resignation, lippy Lerner remains unrepentant. “I am not sorry for anything I did,” she declared breezily to Politico.
Signally unsuccessful as head of the General Services Administration was Martha Johnson. (Like IRS top officials, she too was in-and-out of the White House.) On YouTube, taxpayers watched Johnson’s jolly bureaucrats having a whale of a time at their expense. Chins, butts and guts wiggling obscenely, the grotesque GSA training conferees stayed in lavish spa resort casinos, as detailed in a damning Office-of-Inspector-General report.
In selecting resorts in which to party, our corpulent public servants conducted “dry runs” and “scouting trips” to destinations like the Ritz-Carlton. Underwritten by taxpayers too were assorted team-building exercises, a bicycle-building project, for one. The OIG lists corrupt contracting practices, a miscellany of employee misconduct, including excessive and impermissible expenditure on luxury suites at Nevada’s M Resort; on 1,000 sushi rolls at $7.00 apiece; and on “$6,325 on commemorative coins ‘rewarding’ all conference participants.”
These are but some of the president’s women—not even the heavy hitters. Barack Obama's liberal utopians, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, lied the country into bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who had done nothing to the U.S.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
The pols and the pundits are cut up about a breach or two in the White House’s formidably protected perimeter. The People should not be. Working for government ought to be one of the most dangerous jobs ever. Thomas Jefferson, a real prince among men, traveled on horseback and wore plain clothes. Not only was he unguarded, his house in Washington was open to all-comers. Anyone who wrote to Jefferson received a reply in the great man’s hand. He paid for postage out of pocket. Never again will a Jefferson occupy the People’s House. But occupational hazard might just get us a better class of parasite.
In any event, the latest security breach at the White House—there have been many under departing Secret Service Director Julia Pierson—saw 42-year-old Omar J. Gonzalez rush across the lawn and into the first family’s residence, where the trespasser was “confronted by a female Secret Service agent, whom he [naturally] overpowered.” No wonder Pierson and the press have circled the wagons. The same lady officer, or another with a similar skill set, had also failed to lock the front door. Disarmed, too, was an alarm meant to alert officers to intruders.
All in all, officers on-duty stood down and an off-duty officer manned up. (The canine unit, sick of eating Michelle Obama’s carrots, was busy digging for bones.) Gonzales could have bounded up the stairs to the first family’s living quarters had the off-duty officer not tackled him. He must be male. Were he a woman, or something in-between, he’d be up for a medal of honor.
It’s always good to see gender set-asides and affirmative action—in particular, the delusion that women are just as qualified as men to be soldiers, security guards, firefighters and cops—hurt those who inflict it on non-believers.
A for Pierson, like other ciphers in skirts (or pantsuits) promoted by this administration, she is something else—but nothing like stumblebum Marie Harf, the sibilant spokeswoman at the State Department.
Watching Miley Cyrus’ hootchy hoopla is less offensive than enduring a press conference with Ms. Barf, where reasonably intelligent, veteran newsmen attempt to engage this schoolmarmish, tartish young woman in reasoned repartee. Marie Barf is intellectually inconsequential, to put it kindly. Only the other day did she claim, most memorably—and from the safety of her perch—that the outsourcing, in Benghazi, of the safety of American diplomats to the enemy, a local Muslim militia, is justified because it is part of the protocol. The militia hired to protect the compound was late to the scene, possibly complicit in the carnage.
Another exhibit is Lois Lerner. She “is toxic,” conceded Politico, before segueing into a puff piece about this corrupt kleptocrat. The central conceit of the Politico exposé, “Lerner Breaks Silence,” is that she’s a “complicated figure.” The characterization doesn’t jibe with the main character’s actions and demeanor. Lerner is, in fact, consistently one-dimensional. An example: The Treasury Inspector General determined that Lerner’s IRS division used “inappropriate criteria … to identify tax-exempt applications for review,” and that certain organizations applying for tax-exempt status, singled out for their “policy positions,” were harassed for “significant amounts of information.” Translated from bureaucratese, Lerner used a vast, oppressive apparatus—the Internal Revenue Service—to hound right-leaning non-profits, threaten their mission and menace their donors.
In particular, this bloodhound instructed her elite Unit (Determinations U) to BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for tea-party or 9/12 patriots. The GI made his recommendations. Lerner fobbed him off. The Office of Audit grumbled that it does not believe the “alternative corrective action” proposed by the Lerner division “fully addresses” the problems: “We do not consider the concerns in this report to be resolved.” Befitting the flat, uncomplicated, venal personality she is, Lerner showed no commitment to correct her agency’s ways. Post resignation, lippy Lerner remains unrepentant. “I am not sorry for anything I did,” she declared breezily to Politico.
Signally unsuccessful as head of the General Services Administration was Martha Johnson. (Like IRS top officials, she too was in-and-out of the White House.) On YouTube, taxpayers watched Johnson’s jolly bureaucrats having a whale of a time at their expense. Chins, butts and guts wiggling obscenely, the grotesque GSA training conferees stayed in lavish spa resort casinos, as detailed in a damning Office-of-Inspector-General report.
In selecting resorts in which to party, our corpulent public servants conducted “dry runs” and “scouting trips” to destinations like the Ritz-Carlton. Underwritten by taxpayers too were assorted team-building exercises, a bicycle-building project, for one. The OIG lists corrupt contracting practices, a miscellany of employee misconduct, including excessive and impermissible expenditure on luxury suites at Nevada’s M Resort; on 1,000 sushi rolls at $7.00 apiece; and on “$6,325 on commemorative coins ‘rewarding’ all conference participants.”
These are but some of the president’s women—not even the heavy hitters. Barack Obama's liberal utopians, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, lied the country into bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who had done nothing to the U.S.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Friday, September 19, 2014
D’Souza’s Epic ‘America’ Error
By Ilana Mercer
There are certainly good things about Dinesh D’Souza’s film "America: Imagine a World Without Her," as sharp-eyed critics like Jack Kerwick have observed. But those don’t matter much for this reason: The central question asked and answered by the film maker is premised on an epic error of logic.
But first, in honor of Bad Eagle, a friend and a great American, it is imperative to counter D’Souza’s claim about the fate of the Amerindians at the hands of the U.S. government. The late Bad Eagle, aka David Yeagley, was the namesake and great-great-grandson of Comanche leader Bad Eagle.
According to D’Souza, Native Americans were decimated not by genocide or ethnocide, but by diseases brought from Europe by the white man.” Not entirely true. In his magisterial “History of the American People,” historian Paul Johnson, a leading protagonist for America, details the “destruction of the Indians” by Andrew Jackson.
Particularly poignant are Red Eagle’s words to Jackson, on April 14, 1814, after the president-to-be had rampaged through villages, burning them and destroying crops in a ruthless campaign against the Indians east of the Mississippi: “I am in your power. My people are gone. I can do no more but weep over the misfortunes of my nation.” Jackson had just “imposed a Carthaginian peace on 35 frightened Indian chiefs,” forcing them to part with the lion’s share of their ancestral lands.
As moving is the account of another philoamerican, philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville. The Frenchman describes a crowd of displaced Choctaw warriors—having been subjected to ethnic cleansing (in today’s parlance): “There was an air of ruin and destruction, something which gave the impression of a final farewell, with no going back; one couldn’t witness it without a heavy heart. … it is an odd coincidence that we should have arrived in Memphis to witness the expulsion, or perhaps the dissolution, of one of the last vestiges of one of the oldest American nations.”
Facts fudged notwithstanding, D’Souza’s theories about “America,” good or bad, can be dismissed out of hand because of rotten reasoning. The reader will recognize the central error of logic in the following excerpts from interviews conducted by D’Souza’s biggest booster, Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
In “Bill Ayers, Dinesh D'Souza debate [on]American values,” both Kelly and D'Souza “challenge” the Weather Underground terrorist-cum-educator Ayers for his part in the “blame America first” crowd; for holding that “American history is a series of crimes visited upon different [peoples],” for his contention that, in their words, “America is bad,” “America is a force for evil.”
Noodles neoconservative D'Souza: “America is benign in the way it exercises its power.” “America has made mistakes. But there is a difference between making a mistake and doing something inherently wicked.”
Is the reader getting the gist of the D'Souza doozie?
The duo’s almost-identical exchange with Ward Churchill, former chairman of the ethnic studies program at the University of Colorado, should instantiate D'Souza’s cock-up, amplified by megaphone Megyn Kelly:
“Is there anything good about America?” the anchor asks the author of the screed “Some People Push Back.” Kelly continues to conflate the “we” pronoun with the U.S.: “The United States of America; have we done any good?” D'Souza, for his part, doubles down with the example of immigrants to the U.S.: “They’re coming here, voting with their feet, leaving everything that matters behind. Are they coming to an evil empire?”
My reply to Dinesh should give the game away:
Good immigrants come to America to be part of the “little platoons” that make up its glorious private economy: the people of Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Amazon, Google, Marriot, Mattel, FedEx, Costco, Coca-Cola, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Fred Meyer, Overstock.com, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and millions of local franchises run by innovative, everyday Americans.
Bad immigrants come to America to partake of the state. Or the very thing D'Souza and his cheerleader call “America.”
“Is America a good country? Are we a bad country?”: The two professional gabbers collapse the distinction between “America” and the U.S. government. This is a mistake. The state is not the same as America. Opposing the policies of the American state is not synonymous with opposing “America.”
It is possible to disavow every single action taken by the U.S. government and still love the “little platoons” of America, as Edmund Burke described a man’s social mainstay—his family, friends, coreligionists, coworkers. By logical extension, it is dishonest to malign those who assign the “bad” category to the state, on the ground that they hate “America.”
One might say that D'Souza’s case for “America” is undergirded by a confusion of category.
“Dinesh D'Souza is winning,” writes National Journal’s Simon van Zuylen-Wood. The jigging dance steps might be premature. D'Souza’s is a box-office success. The statist meta-structure of his argument for “America,” however, is rooted in error. Serious thinkers should give it no quarter.
On this front, D'Souza, Da Kelly and their acolytes are out to lunch.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
There are certainly good things about Dinesh D’Souza’s film "America: Imagine a World Without Her," as sharp-eyed critics like Jack Kerwick have observed. But those don’t matter much for this reason: The central question asked and answered by the film maker is premised on an epic error of logic.
But first, in honor of Bad Eagle, a friend and a great American, it is imperative to counter D’Souza’s claim about the fate of the Amerindians at the hands of the U.S. government. The late Bad Eagle, aka David Yeagley, was the namesake and great-great-grandson of Comanche leader Bad Eagle.
According to D’Souza, Native Americans were decimated not by genocide or ethnocide, but by diseases brought from Europe by the white man.” Not entirely true. In his magisterial “History of the American People,” historian Paul Johnson, a leading protagonist for America, details the “destruction of the Indians” by Andrew Jackson.
Particularly poignant are Red Eagle’s words to Jackson, on April 14, 1814, after the president-to-be had rampaged through villages, burning them and destroying crops in a ruthless campaign against the Indians east of the Mississippi: “I am in your power. My people are gone. I can do no more but weep over the misfortunes of my nation.” Jackson had just “imposed a Carthaginian peace on 35 frightened Indian chiefs,” forcing them to part with the lion’s share of their ancestral lands.
As moving is the account of another philoamerican, philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville. The Frenchman describes a crowd of displaced Choctaw warriors—having been subjected to ethnic cleansing (in today’s parlance): “There was an air of ruin and destruction, something which gave the impression of a final farewell, with no going back; one couldn’t witness it without a heavy heart. … it is an odd coincidence that we should have arrived in Memphis to witness the expulsion, or perhaps the dissolution, of one of the last vestiges of one of the oldest American nations.”
Facts fudged notwithstanding, D’Souza’s theories about “America,” good or bad, can be dismissed out of hand because of rotten reasoning. The reader will recognize the central error of logic in the following excerpts from interviews conducted by D’Souza’s biggest booster, Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
In “Bill Ayers, Dinesh D'Souza debate [on]American values,” both Kelly and D'Souza “challenge” the Weather Underground terrorist-cum-educator Ayers for his part in the “blame America first” crowd; for holding that “American history is a series of crimes visited upon different [peoples],” for his contention that, in their words, “America is bad,” “America is a force for evil.”
Noodles neoconservative D'Souza: “America is benign in the way it exercises its power.” “America has made mistakes. But there is a difference between making a mistake and doing something inherently wicked.”
Is the reader getting the gist of the D'Souza doozie?
The duo’s almost-identical exchange with Ward Churchill, former chairman of the ethnic studies program at the University of Colorado, should instantiate D'Souza’s cock-up, amplified by megaphone Megyn Kelly:
“Is there anything good about America?” the anchor asks the author of the screed “Some People Push Back.” Kelly continues to conflate the “we” pronoun with the U.S.: “The United States of America; have we done any good?” D'Souza, for his part, doubles down with the example of immigrants to the U.S.: “They’re coming here, voting with their feet, leaving everything that matters behind. Are they coming to an evil empire?”
My reply to Dinesh should give the game away:
Good immigrants come to America to be part of the “little platoons” that make up its glorious private economy: the people of Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Amazon, Google, Marriot, Mattel, FedEx, Costco, Coca-Cola, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Fred Meyer, Overstock.com, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and millions of local franchises run by innovative, everyday Americans.
Bad immigrants come to America to partake of the state. Or the very thing D'Souza and his cheerleader call “America.”
“Is America a good country? Are we a bad country?”: The two professional gabbers collapse the distinction between “America” and the U.S. government. This is a mistake. The state is not the same as America. Opposing the policies of the American state is not synonymous with opposing “America.”
It is possible to disavow every single action taken by the U.S. government and still love the “little platoons” of America, as Edmund Burke described a man’s social mainstay—his family, friends, coreligionists, coworkers. By logical extension, it is dishonest to malign those who assign the “bad” category to the state, on the ground that they hate “America.”
One might say that D'Souza’s case for “America” is undergirded by a confusion of category.
“Dinesh D'Souza is winning,” writes National Journal’s Simon van Zuylen-Wood. The jigging dance steps might be premature. D'Souza’s is a box-office success. The statist meta-structure of his argument for “America,” however, is rooted in error. Serious thinkers should give it no quarter.
On this front, D'Souza, Da Kelly and their acolytes are out to lunch.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Friday, September 12, 2014
Leave ISIS To The Homies
By Ilana Mercer
There was a great cry throughout the land. Non-stop propaganda from a monolithic media-military- congressional complex had convinced a petrified people of the need for a military offensive in Iraq and Syria, in pursuit of a pack of wild dogs: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL). A plurality of Americans canvassed has indicated that it is in the United States’ interest to take military action against ISIS.
The people wailed and railed. The Leader, they complained, lacked a plan to combat this force, which, they had been told, posed a grave existential threat to them. The war network led in jingoism. What precisely did President Barack Obama say that had Chucky Krauthammer and the chicken hawks in the Fox News coop so exercised? He told reporters that he didn’t have a strategy yet for confronting ISIS “on a regional level.”
Anchor Megyn Kelly—her show has degenerated into a rah-rah, flag-waving, hour-long session, bemoaning diminished US world hegemony—poured scorn on one wag’s non-combative suggestion: Let the Arab League deal with ISIS.
Throughout, ISIS’s neighbors, Israel included, didn’t seem particularly concerned about the barbarians at the gate. The promise of eternal American intervention had, likely, enabled inertia and apathy among regional players.
Despotism and populism finally coalesced. Driven by polls and craving plaudits from the pundits, the president cobbled together a strategy. Within hours, love was in the air again. Members of a lovelorn liberal media scurried about like teens on prom night. It had been a long time since they felt the same rush about Obama. In his televised address to the nation, the president committed to increasing the ongoing airstrikes in Iraq; said he would take the fight to ISIL in Syria, too. The hormonal monitors at CNN spiked with each paternal promise of protection. “If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” roared Big Daddy.
Gullible Americans did not seem to compute that King Hussein’s commitment to take care of them was preposterous. Consider: “The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism” did not even mention the threat of Islamist terror. Like his predecessor, this president and his malevolent minions consider the signal danger to the homeland (i.e. to their reign) to emanate from local yokels: “anti-government militia groups,” “white supremacy extremists,” “sovereign citizen nationalists,” and, naturally, “Puerto Rican nationalists.” And, while He has thrown a bone to the ISIS-obsessed boneheads at home, the homeland’s southern border remains, by His decree, open to all.
Easily the most ludicrous aspect of Dr. Feelgood’s “plan” is the promise of “military assistance to the Syrian opposition”: “I again call on Congress, again, to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.”
There is no telling the good Syrian opposition from the bad. If anything, there is a “growing preponderance of radical Islamists in the Syrian rebel force fighting Assad’s army,” seconds the outstanding intelligence provider DEBKAfile. Currently fighting ISIS is Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s embattled leader, whom Hussein, McCain and Clinton wanted to unseat.
The unseating of yet another extremely effective law-and-order leader, Saddam Hussein, is what unleashed ISIS. Despite what Delphic Oracle Dana Perino says in praise of her “prescient” boss’s “strategizing”; Bush 43 owns ISIS. Iraq has gone from a rogue state to a failed state, where mad dogs thrive. Fidelity to historical fact demands that Bush get Brownie points for that.
Mere weeks back, when Israel and Hamas were locking horns, two organic coalitions emerged in the Middle East. By DEBKAfile’s telling, the one “regional coalition” in the conflict included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, the UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and … the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. The rival axis consisted of Hamas, Qatar, Turkey and a turkey named Kerry (John). U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and “a brace of European ministers” joined this last group, known in the neighborhood as the “Save Hamas Squad.”
The first alliance was borne of “Netanyahu’s dilemma: Back Obama’s save Hamas policy, or fight for its downfall with Egypt and Saudis.”
My point? America thinks that it must and can be a force for good in the Middle East. Closer examination suggests that the region’s players march to their own drumbeat. In “Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923,” Efraim and Inari Karsh marshaled prodigious scholarship to show that, “Twentieth-century Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate.” The trend obtains.
American efforts notwithstanding, Assad is hanging on for dear life. The Israeli government is already endeavoring to “radically change its tack on Syria, reversing a policy and military strategy that were long geared to opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad.” U.S. meddlers should grow a brain too and quit degrading the Syrian Army. Leave ISIS to Syria, Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Let the locals take out their trash.Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
There was a great cry throughout the land. Non-stop propaganda from a monolithic media-military- congressional complex had convinced a petrified people of the need for a military offensive in Iraq and Syria, in pursuit of a pack of wild dogs: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL). A plurality of Americans canvassed has indicated that it is in the United States’ interest to take military action against ISIS.
The people wailed and railed. The Leader, they complained, lacked a plan to combat this force, which, they had been told, posed a grave existential threat to them. The war network led in jingoism. What precisely did President Barack Obama say that had Chucky Krauthammer and the chicken hawks in the Fox News coop so exercised? He told reporters that he didn’t have a strategy yet for confronting ISIS “on a regional level.”
Anchor Megyn Kelly—her show has degenerated into a rah-rah, flag-waving, hour-long session, bemoaning diminished US world hegemony—poured scorn on one wag’s non-combative suggestion: Let the Arab League deal with ISIS.
Throughout, ISIS’s neighbors, Israel included, didn’t seem particularly concerned about the barbarians at the gate. The promise of eternal American intervention had, likely, enabled inertia and apathy among regional players.
Despotism and populism finally coalesced. Driven by polls and craving plaudits from the pundits, the president cobbled together a strategy. Within hours, love was in the air again. Members of a lovelorn liberal media scurried about like teens on prom night. It had been a long time since they felt the same rush about Obama. In his televised address to the nation, the president committed to increasing the ongoing airstrikes in Iraq; said he would take the fight to ISIL in Syria, too. The hormonal monitors at CNN spiked with each paternal promise of protection. “If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” roared Big Daddy.
Gullible Americans did not seem to compute that King Hussein’s commitment to take care of them was preposterous. Consider: “The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism” did not even mention the threat of Islamist terror. Like his predecessor, this president and his malevolent minions consider the signal danger to the homeland (i.e. to their reign) to emanate from local yokels: “anti-government militia groups,” “white supremacy extremists,” “sovereign citizen nationalists,” and, naturally, “Puerto Rican nationalists.” And, while He has thrown a bone to the ISIS-obsessed boneheads at home, the homeland’s southern border remains, by His decree, open to all.
Easily the most ludicrous aspect of Dr. Feelgood’s “plan” is the promise of “military assistance to the Syrian opposition”: “I again call on Congress, again, to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.”
There is no telling the good Syrian opposition from the bad. If anything, there is a “growing preponderance of radical Islamists in the Syrian rebel force fighting Assad’s army,” seconds the outstanding intelligence provider DEBKAfile. Currently fighting ISIS is Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s embattled leader, whom Hussein, McCain and Clinton wanted to unseat.
The unseating of yet another extremely effective law-and-order leader, Saddam Hussein, is what unleashed ISIS. Despite what Delphic Oracle Dana Perino says in praise of her “prescient” boss’s “strategizing”; Bush 43 owns ISIS. Iraq has gone from a rogue state to a failed state, where mad dogs thrive. Fidelity to historical fact demands that Bush get Brownie points for that.
Mere weeks back, when Israel and Hamas were locking horns, two organic coalitions emerged in the Middle East. By DEBKAfile’s telling, the one “regional coalition” in the conflict included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, the UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and … the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. The rival axis consisted of Hamas, Qatar, Turkey and a turkey named Kerry (John). U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and “a brace of European ministers” joined this last group, known in the neighborhood as the “Save Hamas Squad.”
The first alliance was borne of “Netanyahu’s dilemma: Back Obama’s save Hamas policy, or fight for its downfall with Egypt and Saudis.”
My point? America thinks that it must and can be a force for good in the Middle East. Closer examination suggests that the region’s players march to their own drumbeat. In “Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923,” Efraim and Inari Karsh marshaled prodigious scholarship to show that, “Twentieth-century Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate.” The trend obtains.
American efforts notwithstanding, Assad is hanging on for dear life. The Israeli government is already endeavoring to “radically change its tack on Syria, reversing a policy and military strategy that were long geared to opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad.” U.S. meddlers should grow a brain too and quit degrading the Syrian Army. Leave ISIS to Syria, Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Let the locals take out their trash.Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Killing English by Bill O’Reilly
By Ilana Mercer
The brilliant Richard Burton exulted in his love of English. “I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman,” exclaimed the great actor.
Bill O’Reilly, however, kills it—the English language, that is. The TV personality has a segment on “The Factor," where he introduces his listeners to English words that he supposedly uses, but whose pronunciation he often botches. Botched this week was the verb “cavil,” pronounced by Mr. OReilly as “kevile,” emphasis on the last syllable. Evel ‘Kevile’!
Mr. O’Reilly once introduced his viewers to the noun “chimera.” The “ch” he enunciated as you would “ch” in “chimp.” It is pronounced as a “k.” Listen.
Conjugation doesn’t come easily on the host’s “Talking Points.” These are festooned with errors like, “Laying around,” when he means “lying around.” Too many American writers have a problem with the verb to “lie.” Why? You’re lying on the bed, you lay on the bed last night, and you will lie on it tomorrow. And by the way, a politician can both “lie” through his teeth and be made to “lie” down on The Rack. They’re a nimble lot.
In the early 2000s, when Mr. O’Reilly's column was featured on WND, he would make this same conjugation error. I was sufficiently piqued to drop him a polite note. He failed to reply. The mistake, however, was quickly corrected. Myself, I thank my readers profusely when they save me from myself, as they often do, and take this opportunity to ask that they keep their eyes peeled for future faux pas.
Another common error in enunciation is “macabre.” The Americanized dictionary supports the native habit of saying “macabra.” Sorry. The “re” in “macabre” is silent.
Still on enunciation: “PundiNts.” Greg Gutfeld and Hillary Clinton, among many, share the habit of inserting an “n” between the “i” and the “t” when pronouncing the word “pundit.” It’s not there.
“Flaunting” laws instead of “flouting” them is an especially infuriating error of meaning even Colin Powell makes (although killing English is the least of the man’s offenses, given that he helped lie the country into a bloody war).
I recall running for cover, last year (1/3/2013), as Bob Costa, National Review’s youthful editor, spoke about a GOP revolt against House Speaker John Boehner. Costa said the following on the "Kudlow Report":
“… if he lost 17 Republican votes, that means he would have went to a second ballot.”
Noooooo. Flog him! Costa should have said, “He would have GONE.” Together, let’s conjugate the verb to “go,” Mr. Costa. “I am going. I will go. I went. I have previously gone. I had gone. I would have gone.” (My conjugation drill sergeant back in Israel was an ace English teacher from Germany; a Yekke, in every way.)
Still, Bill O’Reilly and his ilk are semantic saints compared to the rotten writing—it comports with the aberrant thinking—taught in the American English department.
In its December 12, 2008 issue, the Times Literary Supplement had some fun exposing the incomprehensibility factor in the impenetrable prose of a pompous graduate in the postmodern tradition:
“Once the habit of writing comprehensible English has been unlearned, it can be difficult to reacquire the knack. Here is an example of a sentence which purports to be written in English, but which, we propose, is incomprehensible to all but a few. It is taken from ‘Coincidence and Counterfactuality’: Plotting time and space in narrative fiction by Hilary P. Dannenberg”:
About Jane Austen’s "Mansfield Park," the Dannenberg dolt writes that it “undertakes a more concerted form of counterfactualizing, in which both the character and the narrator separately map out counterfactual versions of the concluding phase of the novel’s love plot.”
In studied contempt, the TLS marveled that “Coincidence and Counterfactuality” “is published by the University of Nebraska Press. Just think: someone read the book and endorsed its publication, someone edited it, someone else set it in type, designed a cover, compiled an index, read the proofs—yet hardly anyone can understands what’s in it.” [Nobody reads these books.]
Now that’s pellucid prose everyone gets.
A friend—she’s a successful novelist—related this amusing incident:
“I once got hired by the University of Chicago to edit their academic press. The manuscripts were atrocious. I could not understand what was written, and used a red pen heavily in the margins of the manuscripts. After my corrections arrived, I was fired immediately. They told me I was not ‘intellectually sophisticated’ enough for the job. To which I replied: ‘You’re right: F-ck you.’”
Incongruously —after bemoaning the progressives, and how, having infiltrated America’s institutions, they toiled to alter the meaning of the Constitution—Glenn Beck proposed revisionism of his own: rewrite the “Federalist Papers” so that Americans may understand these brilliant, but difficult, debates.
The founders’ English, like Richard Burton’s, is an essential part of the American heritage. Let’s not lose it in translation.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
The brilliant Richard Burton exulted in his love of English. “I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman,” exclaimed the great actor.
Bill O’Reilly, however, kills it—the English language, that is. The TV personality has a segment on “The Factor," where he introduces his listeners to English words that he supposedly uses, but whose pronunciation he often botches. Botched this week was the verb “cavil,” pronounced by Mr. OReilly as “kevile,” emphasis on the last syllable. Evel ‘Kevile’!
Mr. O’Reilly once introduced his viewers to the noun “chimera.” The “ch” he enunciated as you would “ch” in “chimp.” It is pronounced as a “k.” Listen.
Conjugation doesn’t come easily on the host’s “Talking Points.” These are festooned with errors like, “Laying around,” when he means “lying around.” Too many American writers have a problem with the verb to “lie.” Why? You’re lying on the bed, you lay on the bed last night, and you will lie on it tomorrow. And by the way, a politician can both “lie” through his teeth and be made to “lie” down on The Rack. They’re a nimble lot.
In the early 2000s, when Mr. O’Reilly's column was featured on WND, he would make this same conjugation error. I was sufficiently piqued to drop him a polite note. He failed to reply. The mistake, however, was quickly corrected. Myself, I thank my readers profusely when they save me from myself, as they often do, and take this opportunity to ask that they keep their eyes peeled for future faux pas.
Another common error in enunciation is “macabre.” The Americanized dictionary supports the native habit of saying “macabra.” Sorry. The “re” in “macabre” is silent.
Still on enunciation: “PundiNts.” Greg Gutfeld and Hillary Clinton, among many, share the habit of inserting an “n” between the “i” and the “t” when pronouncing the word “pundit.” It’s not there.
“Flaunting” laws instead of “flouting” them is an especially infuriating error of meaning even Colin Powell makes (although killing English is the least of the man’s offenses, given that he helped lie the country into a bloody war).
I recall running for cover, last year (1/3/2013), as Bob Costa, National Review’s youthful editor, spoke about a GOP revolt against House Speaker John Boehner. Costa said the following on the "Kudlow Report":
“… if he lost 17 Republican votes, that means he would have went to a second ballot.”
Noooooo. Flog him! Costa should have said, “He would have GONE.” Together, let’s conjugate the verb to “go,” Mr. Costa. “I am going. I will go. I went. I have previously gone. I had gone. I would have gone.” (My conjugation drill sergeant back in Israel was an ace English teacher from Germany; a Yekke, in every way.)
Still, Bill O’Reilly and his ilk are semantic saints compared to the rotten writing—it comports with the aberrant thinking—taught in the American English department.
In its December 12, 2008 issue, the Times Literary Supplement had some fun exposing the incomprehensibility factor in the impenetrable prose of a pompous graduate in the postmodern tradition:
“Once the habit of writing comprehensible English has been unlearned, it can be difficult to reacquire the knack. Here is an example of a sentence which purports to be written in English, but which, we propose, is incomprehensible to all but a few. It is taken from ‘Coincidence and Counterfactuality’: Plotting time and space in narrative fiction by Hilary P. Dannenberg”:
"Historical counterfactuals in narrative fiction frequently take an ontologically different form in which the counterfactual premise engenders a whole narrative world instead of being limited to hypothetical inserts embedded in the main actual world of the narrative text."
About Jane Austen’s "Mansfield Park," the Dannenberg dolt writes that it “undertakes a more concerted form of counterfactualizing, in which both the character and the narrator separately map out counterfactual versions of the concluding phase of the novel’s love plot.”
In studied contempt, the TLS marveled that “Coincidence and Counterfactuality” “is published by the University of Nebraska Press. Just think: someone read the book and endorsed its publication, someone edited it, someone else set it in type, designed a cover, compiled an index, read the proofs—yet hardly anyone can understands what’s in it.” [Nobody reads these books.]
Now that’s pellucid prose everyone gets.
A friend—she’s a successful novelist—related this amusing incident:
“I once got hired by the University of Chicago to edit their academic press. The manuscripts were atrocious. I could not understand what was written, and used a red pen heavily in the margins of the manuscripts. After my corrections arrived, I was fired immediately. They told me I was not ‘intellectually sophisticated’ enough for the job. To which I replied: ‘You’re right: F-ck you.’”
Incongruously —after bemoaning the progressives, and how, having infiltrated America’s institutions, they toiled to alter the meaning of the Constitution—Glenn Beck proposed revisionism of his own: rewrite the “Federalist Papers” so that Americans may understand these brilliant, but difficult, debates.
The founders’ English, like Richard Burton’s, is an essential part of the American heritage. Let’s not lose it in translation.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Friday, August 29, 2014
Rand Paul Opportunistic—And Wrong—On Race
By Ilana Mercer
Police brutality? Yes! Militarization of the police force? You bet! “A Government of Wolves”? Yes again! “The Rise of the Warrior Cop”? No doubt! But racism? Nonsense on stilts! So why have some libertarians applied this rhetoric to the murder-by-cop of black teenager Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri? The same people who would argue against color-coded hate-crime legislation—and rightly so, for a crime is a crime, no matter the skin pigment of perp or prey—would have you believe that it is possible to differentiate a racist from a non-racist shooting or beating.
Predictably, BBC News had taken a more analytical look at the “unrest in Ferguson,” pointing out that
Police brutality? Yes! Militarization of the police force? You bet! “A Government of Wolves”? Yes again! “The Rise of the Warrior Cop”? No doubt! But racism? Nonsense on stilts! So why have some libertarians applied this rhetoric to the murder-by-cop of black teenager Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri? The same people who would argue against color-coded hate-crime legislation—and rightly so, for a crime is a crime, no matter the skin pigment of perp or prey—would have you believe that it is possible to differentiate a racist from a non-racist shooting or beating.
Predictably, BBC News had taken a more analytical look at the “unrest in Ferguson,” pointing out that
Monday, August 25, 2014
Liberal Vs. Libertarian Response To Ferguson (Rand’s Just An Opportunist)
By Ilana Mercer
“Liberal outrage over what some see as racial injustice” vs. libertarian anger “that connects the perceived overreaction by a militarised local law enforcement to [a libertarian] critique of the heavy-handed power of government”: As expected, BBC News adopts a more analytical angle on the “unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer.”
Expected too is BBC’s take on the libertarian scene. As its libertarian stand-bearers, BBC News has chosen from the ranks of Beltway libertarians, conservatives and Republican congressmen and senators.
“The state is big and powerful and violent and can hurt you, whether it’s the FDA, the state prosecutor or the local police force,” writes Hot Air blog’s Mary Katharine Ham, concisely summarising the gist of this libertarian argument.
Breitbart’s John Nolte puts it a bit more sharply: “The media hate police but without them, who will ultimately force us to buy ObamaCare and confiscate our guns?”
On Wednesday night Congressman Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning Republican embraced by the grass-roots Tea Party movement, tweeted that the news from Ferguson was “frightening”, asking: “Is this a war zone or a US city? Gov’t escalates tensions w/military equipment & tactics.”
One of the leading figures in today’s libertarian movement, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul …
In his response to Ferguson, as is his wont, Sen. Rand Paul managed to straddle liberal and libertarian narratives, vaporizing idiotically as follows:
“Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention.”
Rand is the very embodiment of political opportunism.
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. ©2014 By ILANA MERCER
Friday, August 8, 2014
American Rabbis For Israel First
By Ilana Mercer
“Here is an angry and cogent Israeli response to incessant provocation and violence, and one of the factors that triggered the Gaza campaign,” wrote a reader. In his missive, the reader had attached an article for my edification. Chief among the problems with the article is that its author, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, is not an Israeli. Rabbi Boteach is an American. Online, he describes himself as “‘America's Rabbi,’ whom The Washington Post calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.”
Rabbi Boteach’s Huffington Post defense of Israel titled “Fed Up With Dead Jews” is thus not an “Israeli” response to the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, but a Jewish-American one.
Mistaking a Jewish-American defense of Israel for an “Israeli” one is understandable. When it comes to things Israel, very many American Jews sound like
“Here is an angry and cogent Israeli response to incessant provocation and violence, and one of the factors that triggered the Gaza campaign,” wrote a reader. In his missive, the reader had attached an article for my edification. Chief among the problems with the article is that its author, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, is not an Israeli. Rabbi Boteach is an American. Online, he describes himself as “‘America's Rabbi,’ whom The Washington Post calls ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.”
Rabbi Boteach’s Huffington Post defense of Israel titled “Fed Up With Dead Jews” is thus not an “Israeli” response to the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, but a Jewish-American one.
Mistaking a Jewish-American defense of Israel for an “Israeli” one is understandable. When it comes to things Israel, very many American Jews sound like
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Robbing Peter To Pay Pedro
By Ilana Mercer
When it comes to the vexation of immigration, the goalposts have shifted in mere weeks. Overnight has the barking fest on TV turned from how much immigration and amnesty the country can sustain, to an acceptance of a borderless America as the American way.
“No deportation without representation,” declared the minority leader in the lower chamber. Unabashed, Nancy Pelosi had previously held a meet-and-greet with the in-coming Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley. “We are all Americans,” she gushed to the Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorians streaming into South Texas. The hapless American taxpayer has no say in the matter. Drunk with power, wicked representatives like Pelosi now believe they
represent the world.
When it comes to the vexation of immigration, the goalposts have shifted in mere weeks. Overnight has the barking fest on TV turned from how much immigration and amnesty the country can sustain, to an acceptance of a borderless America as the American way.
“No deportation without representation,” declared the minority leader in the lower chamber. Unabashed, Nancy Pelosi had previously held a meet-and-greet with the in-coming Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley. “We are all Americans,” she gushed to the Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorians streaming into South Texas. The hapless American taxpayer has no say in the matter. Drunk with power, wicked representatives like Pelosi now believe they
represent the world.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism
By Ilana Mercer
WARNING: If you suffer from spineless conformity; a deformation of the personality often euphemized as political correctness—quit reading this column, NOW!
If you don’t quite know whether you are thus afflicted, ask yourself this: “Do I police what people say for political propriety? To the extent that I seek it out, do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?
Still unsure if you belong to the tyrannical, joyless tradition of cultural Marxism, read on. In the event that you convulse with
WARNING: If you suffer from spineless conformity; a deformation of the personality often euphemized as political correctness—quit reading this column, NOW!
If you don’t quite know whether you are thus afflicted, ask yourself this: “Do I police what people say for political propriety? To the extent that I seek it out, do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?
Still unsure if you belong to the tyrannical, joyless tradition of cultural Marxism, read on. In the event that you convulse with
Friday, June 20, 2014
Don’t Know Shiite From Shinola
By Ilana Mercer
Almost unanimous on the right is the mystifying notion that a reduced American footprint in the world, President Barack Obama’s doing, has brought about the “sudden” eruption across Iraq of a particularly savage faction of Sunni fundamentalists called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This small band of zealots has conquered a third of Iraq, including the metropolis of Mosul, from which 500,000 residents have fled. Tikrit too is under ISIS control. Fallujah fell in January.
Odd too is the idea that ISIS, currently barreling toward the capital, Baghdad, is somehow a new killer on the block. While the gang, led by newcomer Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not
Almost unanimous on the right is the mystifying notion that a reduced American footprint in the world, President Barack Obama’s doing, has brought about the “sudden” eruption across Iraq of a particularly savage faction of Sunni fundamentalists called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This small band of zealots has conquered a third of Iraq, including the metropolis of Mosul, from which 500,000 residents have fled. Tikrit too is under ISIS control. Fallujah fell in January.
Odd too is the idea that ISIS, currently barreling toward the capital, Baghdad, is somehow a new killer on the block. While the gang, led by newcomer Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not
Saturday, June 14, 2014
The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)
By Ilana Mercer
Hillary Rodham Clinton has done some "conscious uncoupling" from reality. The term was disgorged by a celebrity, Gwyneth Paltrow, to announce a separation from her spouse. In the same breath, the actress bemoaned her gilded, glamorous life, and offended America’s military sacred cow by comparing the cyber-attacks she endures to the experience of war.
As heir to a political dynasty founded by a powerful man, Hillary has received millions of dollars to write books. Over the years, she and husband Bill Clinton have made hundreds of millions from both book deals and speaking engagements. Yet in a recent ABC interview, the former “First Housewife” complained about emerging from the White House not only “dead broke, but in debt”: “We had no money when we got there and we struggled to … piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.”
Another reality Hillary has worked to deconstruct is
Hillary Rodham Clinton has done some "conscious uncoupling" from reality. The term was disgorged by a celebrity, Gwyneth Paltrow, to announce a separation from her spouse. In the same breath, the actress bemoaned her gilded, glamorous life, and offended America’s military sacred cow by comparing the cyber-attacks she endures to the experience of war.
As heir to a political dynasty founded by a powerful man, Hillary has received millions of dollars to write books. Over the years, she and husband Bill Clinton have made hundreds of millions from both book deals and speaking engagements. Yet in a recent ABC interview, the former “First Housewife” complained about emerging from the White House not only “dead broke, but in debt”: “We had no money when we got there and we struggled to … piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.”
Another reality Hillary has worked to deconstruct is
Friday, June 6, 2014
Praying To The Military Moloch
By Ilana Mercer
For the past few weeks, the country’s distinct national navel-gazing has shifted to the military. It began with horror stories about the treatment of veterans at Veterans Affairs facilities across the country and has reached a crescendo in the curious case of Taliban hostage Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, exchanged for five fierce-looking Muhammadans from Afghanistan’s Jihad Central.
As to the first: Backlogs, limited services, fewer service providers, substandard treatment, filthy facilities and the ensuing fatalities—these have been features of the VA system for
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Bawbawa’s Journalistic Porn
By Ilana Mercer
Barbara Walters has promised to retire. But then so did that lip-licking lizard, Larry King. You can’t take them at their word.
In my journalism-school days one looked up to the legendary, late Oriana Fallaci. These days, it’s mediocrities like Walters and colorectal crusader Katie Couric who’re considered cutting-edge clever. And they’ve sired a new crop of
Barbara Walters has promised to retire. But then so did that lip-licking lizard, Larry King. You can’t take them at their word.
In my journalism-school days one looked up to the legendary, late Oriana Fallaci. These days, it’s mediocrities like Walters and colorectal crusader Katie Couric who’re considered cutting-edge clever. And they’ve sired a new crop of
Friday, May 23, 2014
Waiting to Die on the Government’s Watch
By Ilana Mercer
Why would a talented, dedicated cardiologist choose to be coffined in a medical gulag, weighed down by incompetents, his wages capped; his rewards incommensurate with his drive and dedication? He wouldn’t. Surprising as this seems to some, the best and brightest do not work for the state. Increasingly, government workers are carefully selected for
Why would a talented, dedicated cardiologist choose to be coffined in a medical gulag, weighed down by incompetents, his wages capped; his rewards incommensurate with his drive and dedication? He wouldn’t. Surprising as this seems to some, the best and brightest do not work for the state. Increasingly, government workers are carefully selected for
Monday, May 19, 2014
Mercer On Charges of Racism; Hoppe on Charges of Racism
Stay Out Of The Dark World Of A Racism-Sniffing Bloodhound
By Ilana Mercer
"You're a racist." "No, you're a bigger racist." "No way; you hang with the Hoppe, Rockwell and Ron Paul crowd of libertarians; they're ‘known’ racists, so you're racist." The tiff is between defenders of the anti-establishment libertarians, aforementioned, and an establishment libertarian, or a "regimist," as Mr. Rockwell likes to say.
The "regimist" in question is Cathy Reisenwitz, a sally-come-lately libertarian, whom Justin Raimondo, a life-long, creedal libertarian, has "smoked out" for libeling Paul, Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell and Hans-Hermann Hoppe as racists.
Mercifully, Reisenwitz, the S.E. Cupp of libertarianism (light and fluffy), is not on a mission to rearrange the income curve. But like any member of the egalitarian project, she vaporizes
By Ilana Mercer
"You're a racist." "No, you're a bigger racist." "No way; you hang with the Hoppe, Rockwell and Ron Paul crowd of libertarians; they're ‘known’ racists, so you're racist." The tiff is between defenders of the anti-establishment libertarians, aforementioned, and an establishment libertarian, or a "regimist," as Mr. Rockwell likes to say.
The "regimist" in question is Cathy Reisenwitz, a sally-come-lately libertarian, whom Justin Raimondo, a life-long, creedal libertarian, has "smoked out" for libeling Paul, Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell and Hans-Hermann Hoppe as racists.
Mercifully, Reisenwitz, the S.E. Cupp of libertarianism (light and fluffy), is not on a mission to rearrange the income curve. But like any member of the egalitarian project, she vaporizes
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Fee-Fi-Fo-Fems (Who Smell The Blood Of A Racist)
By Ilana Mercer
"You're a racist." "No, you're a bigger racist." "No way; you hang out with Lew Rockwell, Hans Hoppe and Ron Paul; they're racists, so you're racist." What on earth is going on here? Why are serious libertarians engaging in tit-for-tat spats with a twat? She is Cathy something or another, a sally-come-lately libertarian. Justin Raimondo, a life-long libertarian, has been credited with "smoking out" this woman---who has libeled Paul, Murray Rothbard, Rockwell and Hoppe as racists.
Are libertarians as dazed and confused as Republicans? The latter have certainly dignified the rival gang's Stalinist show-trial tactics, partaking in the same silly tit-for-tat: “You’re a racist, I’m not. Democrats are racists; we’re the party of Lincoln.” Blah-blah.
And what will Mr. Raimondo do if
"You're a racist." "No, you're a bigger racist." "No way; you hang out with Lew Rockwell, Hans Hoppe and Ron Paul; they're racists, so you're racist." What on earth is going on here? Why are serious libertarians engaging in tit-for-tat spats with a twat? She is Cathy something or another, a sally-come-lately libertarian. Justin Raimondo, a life-long libertarian, has been credited with "smoking out" this woman---who has libeled Paul, Murray Rothbard, Rockwell and Hoppe as racists.
Are libertarians as dazed and confused as Republicans? The latter have certainly dignified the rival gang's Stalinist show-trial tactics, partaking in the same silly tit-for-tat: “You’re a racist, I’m not. Democrats are racists; we’re the party of Lincoln.” Blah-blah.
And what will Mr. Raimondo do if
Friday, May 9, 2014
Is Dissing ‘Dynamism’ A Form Of ‘Brutalism?
By Ilana Mercer
Other than lite libertarian Virginia Postrel, who uses the word "dynamism"?
Ms. Postrel is an establishment-endorsed libertarian. A filament of the Postrel faith, expressed in her first book, "The Future and its Enemies," is that all change is good, always. All that glitters is gold was the essence of Ms. Postrel's second manifesto, "The Substance of Style."
Profound fluff.
In any event, the answer to the question about “dynamism” posed above is: neoconservative columnist George Will and a bunch of libertarians on blogtalkradio's "Anarchy Time."
Will was lecturing radio host Laura Ingraham about the “economic dynamism” with which millions of low- or no skill illegal immigrants slated for amnesty will infuse the American workforce. (Harvard economist George Borjas disagrees.)
During a libertarian love-in on blogtalkradio.com, the dynamism concept was floated to diss those who're not as hip about the proven miseries of diversity. "They hate 'dynamism'" was the phrase used 19 minutes into this broadcast. The dynamically deficient are also said to harbor a "xenophobic attachment to the way things are."
Brutal.
Far and away more damning than the use of the cant phrase dynamism is the absence of intellectual oscillation among the participants of this blogtalkradio.com broadcast. This particular anarchist forum conjures Dorothy Parker's immortal words about Jack Kerouac and his buddies: "When they speak at all it is to tell each other how great they are."
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. She blogs at BarleyABlog.
Other than lite libertarian Virginia Postrel, who uses the word "dynamism"?
Ms. Postrel is an establishment-endorsed libertarian. A filament of the Postrel faith, expressed in her first book, "The Future and its Enemies," is that all change is good, always. All that glitters is gold was the essence of Ms. Postrel's second manifesto, "The Substance of Style."
Profound fluff.
In any event, the answer to the question about “dynamism” posed above is: neoconservative columnist George Will and a bunch of libertarians on blogtalkradio's "Anarchy Time."
Will was lecturing radio host Laura Ingraham about the “economic dynamism” with which millions of low- or no skill illegal immigrants slated for amnesty will infuse the American workforce. (Harvard economist George Borjas disagrees.)
During a libertarian love-in on blogtalkradio.com, the dynamism concept was floated to diss those who're not as hip about the proven miseries of diversity. "They hate 'dynamism'" was the phrase used 19 minutes into this broadcast. The dynamically deficient are also said to harbor a "xenophobic attachment to the way things are."
Brutal.
Far and away more damning than the use of the cant phrase dynamism is the absence of intellectual oscillation among the participants of this blogtalkradio.com broadcast. This particular anarchist forum conjures Dorothy Parker's immortal words about Jack Kerouac and his buddies: "When they speak at all it is to tell each other how great they are."
Popular Politics Internet Radio with Movement Radio on BlogTalkRadio
Ilana Mercer is author of Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. She blogs at BarleyABlog.
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