|
|
April 2005
From:
WILLIAM ANDERSON
Sent:
Friday, April 29, 2005 3:26 PM
Subject:
Unlearned Rabbi Rages at Ratzinger
Ilana,
Lerner is the guy who put "smash monogamy" on his wedding cake—a
wedding which had Hillary and Bill Clinton in attendance. (They did a
damn good job of smashing monogamy.) Lerner also is the jackass who
coined the phrase "politics of meaning," repeated in 1993 by, who
else, Madame Hillary.
Thanks for taking a shot at this blowhard. Maybe he will be the Senate
chaplain if Hillary is elected president [heaven help].
—Bill
IlanaMercer.com welcomes a new reader, courtesy of
Ron Smith of WBAL Radio.
From:
Craig Y.
Sent:
Saturday, April 30, 2005 7:00 PM
Subject:
What a pleasure to have discovered you!
Ilana:
A die hard Republican through the years, I have found my allegiances
changing as the Grand Ol' Party morphs into a triple-headed monster,
equal parts liberal democrat, traditional conservative republican, and
wage-war-around-the-globe neocon. It is scary, the level of hypocrisy
in the current leadership: it is all over the map. What does the
Republican Party stand for today? They are waging a war we can't win,
at least not in any conventional sense, while almost daily threatening
to widen the conflict to Iran and N. Korea. We enact legislation such
as the Patriot ACT that erodes our personal constitutional liberties.
We are literally forced to strip naked just to board an aircraft and
yet we allow hundreds of thousands of illegals to walk across the
border (any which of whom might be Osama himself), establish
residence, drain our resources, with nary a whimper from the current
administration or the Republican Congress (we wouldn't want to lose
any Latino votes now would we?).
Once again, glad to have found your forum of level headed ideas. I
have Ron Smith of WBAL in Baltimore for uncovering such a delightful,
intelligent mind by having you on his talk radio program. What a
contrast to the neocons: a true conservative who, in my limited
exposure to your writings, seems to be on the right side of all the
major issues of the day. I am wondering how your writings escaped me
for so long?
Anyway, I
have spent the past 2 hours perusing your web page—Great Stuff! I
will be back often.
—Craig Y.
Frederick, MD
Some very ugly heads were reared in response to my Antiwar.com-column
about
Ward Churchill. When these readers let their hair down, it’s the
Israeli spy/Jewish fifth columnist epithets they reach
for first. It doesn’t get nastier. They need to be exposed. I have not
edited the broken English.
Speaking of which, I don’t know about you, but when a writer uses a
word I don’t know (my
British father-in-law has an arsenal of those), I reach for the dictionary. What’s wrong with
learning from others? However, many readers get furious, sometimes
even at mere expressions they've not heard before. A reader took the
time to protest the adjectival “piss-poor.” What is it about “piss”
that he doesn’t get? What is it about “poor” that’s a mystery to him?
Another Churchill fan insisted Churchill was a thoroughbred Indian
because he "self-identifies" as an Indian.
I am an Indian because I feel Indian?
Apparently,
and in all seriousness, this
bit of circular reasoning
is
one of the
official criteria for qualifying as an Indian.
Lastly, my thanks to
Antiwar.com reader, Dirk Sabin, for reminding me of Passover
(terrible of me, I know). The main message of this Jewish celebration,
and the Exodus from Egypt to Israel, is that of deliverance from
bondage to freedom. I hope we in the U.S. are delivered speedily from
the Federal Pharaohs.—ILANA
From:
Theodore Turner
Sent:
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Subject:
Yes, Some People Do Push Back: Don't silence Ward Churchill – sack him
How does an Israeli transplant herself, South Africa, Canada and now,
my country? How do you walk in and start telling people what f--ks
they are when you aren't even from here? If you are Israeli, yes? so
one would suppose you have lots to tell regarding your country [The
U.S. is my country—ILANA]. But no. You come here from somewhere to
attack Ward Churchill. What does he have to do with you? Why aren't
you talking about Nathan Sharansky, Benny Netanya & Sharon? There's
some real Pigs for ya, wouldn't you agree? You can't disguise your
true disposition. You work for Israeli Intelligence, that's my best
guess. Listen, shut the f--k up about my country. Ward Churchill is a
hero. If you are going to try an discredit a man who tells the truth
about this country and it's genocide and murder of many many millions
of Indian Americans, then I guess you are one of those too who, being
Jewish, want to stake their claim to being the most abused in history.
So that's why you attack Churchill? To try and steal the Indian
Nation's Truth?! I am asking all readers of Antiwar to read your
tragic little missive, and call in for your dismissal - you've been
found out honey. Oh, and say hello to everyone over at Shabac. Your
cover is out &, OVER!
—antiwar
reader
From: A.
Kamara
Sent:
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 8:30 AM
Subject:
Yes, Some People Do Push Back: Don't silence Ward Churchill – sack him
Why are you upset about what he [Ward Churchill] wrote? Is it that
anything which equates the vile and demented Aryan murderers and
their now living eternally accursed offspring that slaughtered
their way through 3 whole continents and most of Southern
Africa with Hannah Arendt's poster boy for banality, is
verboten.
Your point about WC's ancestry is cheap ad hominem
stuff. Can you prove what he claims about his ancestry
wrong? And how about a tu quoqe? All that bogus history
supposedly going back 2,000 years is just a claim. Prove it!
The real criminal is the other WC who slaughtered Africans
for fun in the Sudan and Southern Africa. Let's see your
article on him. He would also fit Arendt's profile on
banality.
—A.
Kamara
From: Bob
M.
Sent:
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 2:24 PM
Subject:
Yes, Some People Do Push Back: Don't silence Ward Churchill – sack him
Gosh Ilana,
Are you sure that Professor Churchill, (if that IS his real name),
really deserves such a grilling just for endorsing mass-murder,
misleading impressionable students, and perpetrating academic,
artistic and racial fraud (not to mention having really bad hair)?
I was just starting to consider "higher academia," as a fall-back
career for my retirement, (or perhaps my second adolescence or
childhood). See also in Mr. Horowitz's publication, notes on a
Ms. Christiensen's course offerings, which make Churchill seem
positively scholarly.
Gotta go—it takes forever to line-dry one’s Che Guevara shirts, and
other fine washables.
Cheerio,
—Bob
From: Michael Hardesty
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 9:38 AM
Subject: Thank You for Your Great Comments on
Terri Schiavo
Really appreciated it. You wouldn't believe the arguments I've gotten
in with scores of libertarians and Objectivists on prominent
sites [libertarians are drifting dangerously to the far-gone Left.
The Schiavo case is one example—ILANA], with the whole Left on
Pacifica and Air America, and with Cockburn, and even with Robyn
Blumner, whom I formerly admired. Though I'm an atheist [neither am
I religious in the least—ILANA], I say thank God for you, Nat
Hentoff, and a few others on this matter. I'm pro-abortion choice
[ditto] but do believe one acquires some rights once one exits the
womb.
You are even forcing me to revise my stereotypes about Israelis! For a
long time the Palestine issue was one of the very few issues I agreed
with the Left on. Glad you escaped from socialist Canada. That crazy
Zundel trial proves what a police state they are and yet we have all
these idiots down here who want to adopt their socialist
medical system!
Best regards,
—Michael Hardesty
Time Europe mentions me and the Mises Institute in the Business
section of its March 28, 2005 print edition. The article is “Trading
Places”; the journalist is Peter Gumbel of Business.com, the
former Los Angeles bureau chief of Wall Street Journal.
About “recent rulings [that] put the embattled WTO on the same side
as its critics,” Gumbel writes: “The very fact that Oxfam has a Geneva
office at all is evidence of the growing clout of the WTO. This will
surprise the organization's many free-market critics, such as
polemicist Ilana Mercer and the Auburn, Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises
Institute, who've derided it as a paper tiger.”
“Paper tiger” implies a wish for a more
effective WTO.
It’s more accurate to say that I’ve plain derided the WTO and wish it
didn’t exist.
It may on occasion strike a blow against
protectionism, but, ultimately, the WTO is “a powerful bureaucracy
concerned with managing trade, not freeing it,” to quote "Simians in
Seattle,”
the essay in
Broad Sides. Still
I'm grateful to Gumbel for this nice mention—ILANA
**
Nicki Fellenzer contributes her opinion on the case of
Jason Tharp, but not before I return to the
barbaric killing by the state of Terry Schiavo (yes, it continues
to haunt) with another angle: In his book, Aiming to Kill: The
Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia, Nigel Biggar allows that
“intentional killing of an innocent human being may in principle be
morally permissible,” when a patient lacks “the possibility of a
responsible life because permanently bereft of the physical
preconditions of consciousness, or because of intense irremediable
suffering” (TLS, March 25, 2005). But even Biggar thinks the
law should not allow euthanasia in these cases, “For its legalization
is likely to lead in practice to the toleration of forms of killing
that should only be treated as murder.” The Dutch have lead the way
down this slippery slope, allowing doctors to terminate a life on a
patient’s request or whenever the doctor thinks the patient would be
better off dead.—ILANA
From:
Nicki Fellenzer
Sent:
Sunday, April 10, 2005 7:00 AM
Subject:
About a Boy
I've spent four years on active duty. My opinion: the NCOs
(noncommissioned officers) in this kid’s boot camp unit failed him.
Period. Yes, the recruiter is partially responsible. Yes, they have
quotas. But the Marine Corps is a small branch of the military. They
made their recruiting goals last year, and there was no reason to put
this kid in out of desperation to make their numbers.
I don't want to speculate about what happened during his recruiting
process [neither do we, which is why we qualified the story with
Eugene Fidell’s assessment—ILANA], but I know sometimes the wrong
kind of people slip through the cracks. It happens. But I also know
that sometimes, guys like Tharp, who are meek and mild in the
beginning, turn out to be outstanding warriors. You just never know.
However, the drill instructors in basic training are trained to spot
troubled soldiers. They are supposed to be professionals, who are
capable of discerning a genuinely weak recruit who cannot make it.
These NCOs are supposed to train recruits to become the best
Marines possible, and recognize when a recruit is truly in trouble.
That's where I think the failure truly occurred. [Although, as
a reader on this page observed, not saving the boy when he
drowned was another major blunder. I mean, unless NCOs believe
recruits are supposed to become anaerobic, how difficult is it to
recognize someone is not coming up for air? —ILANA]
—Corporal
Nicki Fellenzer
Virginia
Army National Guard
"About a Boy" was not a protest against the military or the
Marines. There was no attempt to generalize from this case. I aimed
only to tell a story; the story of one boy, Jason Tharp. He did not
belong among the praise-worthy Marines, but neither should he have
died.—ILANA
From:
Christopher K. Hall
Sent:
Wednesday, April 06, 2005 6:13 AM
Subject:
"About a Boy"
Ilana,
I served as commander of a rifle platoon in the Marines in Vietnam. It
is impossible to meaningfully describe the pressure, stress, and fear
one experiences in an engagement with the enemy. Until you hear the
sound of bullets zip past you, often only inches from your head, the
thump that sounds like someone hitting a catcher's mitt with their
fist when a bullet strikes one of your men, the shouting, screams and
chaos from all around
you, and the calls from your CO on the radio generally at the most
inopportune times—it is not possible to fully understand in any other
but an intellectual way, the stress it puts on a person. It was only
after experiencing all those things that I finally understood what
Marine Corps training was all about. It is designed to push you to
your physical, psychological, and emotional limits so that you will
have a chance at least of functioning under such conditions. It is
tough and stressful but it is designed to save your life and the lives
of your comrades. I doubt there was ever a single Marine who did not
entertain thoughts of leaving boot camp. I doubt there was ever a
single Marine who served in combat that was not grateful for the
training he received under the unforgiving hand of a DI.
I am not familiar with the training as it is practiced today. Some say
it not as rough as it once was. It would be a mistake to water it
down. This would only weaken the force and cost more lives in combat.
Surprisingly, some of the people one might think of as "not Marine
material" turn out to be the very ones that can be most relied on in a
combat situation. It is almost impossible to tell beforehand who those
will be. Conversely, those that many would think of tough, hard, true
Marines fall apart in the same environment [Tharp was falling apart
and had no will to continue. I don’t think there can be any doubt he
did not belong in a top unit—ILANA]. The Marines do not couch their
mission statement in euphemisms. It is "to close with the enemy and
kill him."
It is a tragedy that the recruit you wrote of lost his life in
training. Military training is not play; loss of life in training does
occur but it is not common. The real tragedy is that the boy's life
was not saved when he began to drown [good point—ILANA]. That
is where the fault lies—not in the instructor's treatment of the
recruit. If we begin to legislate what methods can and cannot be used
in military training, we will only be weakening our military and
placing the young men who serve in it in more dire danger.
Regards,
—Chris
Hall
From:
George Treheles
Sent:
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Subject:
"About a Boy"
Hi Ilana,
After reading your great column about Jason Robert Tharp, I’ve come to
the conclusion that Marine recruiters and Marine psychologists made a
fatal mistake in allowing Jason to join the Marines. I’ve been reading
your columns for the past couple of years and I find that you’re quite
intuitive, a quality that in my experience is par for women who share
Mediterranean/European genetics. I’m sure that you and similarly my
wife can size up an individual quite quickly, so why can’t the Marine
recruiters and the Marine intake psychologists “size-up” an
individual?
In my opinion there can only be two answers to my question, first,
Marine recruiters and intake personnel are incompetent or Marine
recruitment has dropped and in order for the Marines to prop up their
numbers they are lowering their standards. [Again, Jason Tharp did
seem easy to rule out.—ILANA]
As a father my heart goes out to the parents of Jason, no one knows
the anguish they’re going through and it’s a type of anguish no parent
should go through, but at the same time there was a sort of Darwinian
selection at work at the Marine basic training. If Jason’s “hand was
held” during basic training, imagine how many parents would have been
devastated if Jason didn’t perform his duty in the heat of a battle?
As the love of your life [the “unrequited love of my life,” in the
sense of a young love that is no longer. The boy was beautiful
and magnificent in all the wrong ways.—ILANA] will tell you,
soldiering is a team effort; one bad player can shatter a team effort.
In Jason’s case he was [seemingly] a victim of unethical recruiting
and screening [we don’t know yet how he slipped through the
cracks.—ILANA], which in my opinion borders on criminal
negligence.
—George Treheles
Toronto Canada
More
Casuistry from Central Planners in the Matter of
Terry Schiavo, RIP:
An
excellent essay by Mark Steyn, who invoked Canadian prime minister
Pierre Trudeau to drive home the distinction between the congenital
statism of those who touted this “most grotesque judicial
overreaching” and natural justice. Steyn wrote: “This is not a
criminal, not a murderer, not a person whose life should be in the
gift of the state. So I find it repulsive, and indeed decadent, to
have her continued existence framed in terms of 'plaintiffs' and
'petitions' and 'en banc review' and 'de novo'
and all the other legalese.
Some “commentators” approved the state-sanctioned starving of Schiavo,
not because she wanted
it (which was in fact the legal premise ), but because,
like a vegetable, they deemed her unworthy of individual or human
rights. They finessed their poor reasoning and
meager morals with convoluted and crude attempts at a cut-off point
whereby a human being ceases to be a human being, and henceforth can
have his inalienable rights revoked by the demiurges of science
or state.
These confused casuists are no better than—and in perfect agreement
with—environmentalists. Here’s why: placing innocent human
beings on a continuum, whereby one’s inalienable rights are
contingent on one’s level of cerebral functioning is just what the
greens would welcome. See if you have the cerebral agility to figure
out why! The Truly Civilized Man sees innocent, fully-formed human
beings as qualitatively different from animals and deserving of
a vigorous defense, always.—ILANA
March 2005
From: Tom
DiLorenzo
Sent:
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 3:51 AM
Subject:
Mr. States’ Rights Himself Tells it like it is on
Terry
Ilana,
Those who say that "States' rights" or federalism dictates that the
central government should not intervene in this case do not understand
what States' Rights really meant to the Founders. Madison called it
"divided sovereignty." The states were empowered in many ways to
protect their citizens from federal tyranny, but the central
government was also delegated certain powers that could be used to
protect the citizens from being tyrannized by their own state
politicians. The Schiavo case is a perfect example of this. James
Madison, the most famous "federalist" of all, would be completely
comfortable if Bush intervened to save Terri from her killer husband.
—
Tom DiLorenzo
Alan Dershowitz is one liberal who described
Michael Schiavo’s case as a thin reed and made a rights-based argument
in Terry Schiavo’s favor. Of course, he is not to be mentioned in
polite company, remind me why? Oh, he supports some use of torture. I
have little respect for so-called intellectuals who refuse to ever
credit their opponents, not even when they are right, as Dershowitz.
is about Terry. Similarly, being
wrong on the war and right on Terry is not mutually
exclusive. I don’t have a religious bone in my body and I support a
person’s right to die (as opposed to be killed). My
arguments for Terry’s life derive from natural rights and reason.
Religious conservatives defer to revelation. So what? They
arrived at the correct conclusions.
A paleoconservative commentator who disagreed on Terry Schiavo, pointed out that my position is
anarchistic. I like that—it’s a perceptive observation. Although
temperamentally not suited to obedience, I’m no anarchist. But my
position that, “It matters not who saves her—which state or federal
official—just so long as someone does” comes from wholesale disrespect
for all the rogues—legislators and judges—who rule us. If of
this sorry lot someone does the right thing, I’ll be amazed, but I
won’t complain.
Lawrence Auster (thanks Lawrence for the
generous
compliment) points out that Jeb Bush
tried to do something. One can’t predict which issue will set a
politician off. I suspect that if religious freedom, the right to bear
arms, and “Our Children” were at stake, Democrats would support
storming the hospice like Janet Reno raided one compound in Waco. Equally difficult to fathom is what cause célèbre will rally
feminists in all their pitiful permutations. In a piece that descends
into hyperbole toward the end, but is otherwise magnificent,
Peggy Noonan writes: “There are passionate groups of women in
America who decry spousal abuse, give beaten wives shelter, insist
that a woman is not a husband's chattel. This is good work. Why are
they not taking part in the fight for Terri Schiavo? Again, what
explains their lack of passion on this? If Mrs. Schiavo dies, it will
be because her husband, and only her husband, insists she wanted to,
or would want to, or said she wanted to in a hypothetical conversation
long ago. A thin reed on which to base the killing of a human being.”
—ILANA
From: Lynn Manley
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005
Subject:
As She Lay Dying [From a liberal]
Dear Ilana,
I am definitely liberal but I agree with
your statements concerning Terri Schiavo saying that "the only
authority that has jurisdiction over Terri Schiavo is Terri Schiavo.
In the absence of a living will or a clear directive from her, a
court's decision – no matter which court – cannot be equated with her
will. Ditto her husband's hearsay." and "As a society, we have no
right to decide Terri's fate; ours is an obligation to do her no harm
– to uphold her right to life in the absence of a directive from her,
and in the overwhelming presence of evidence she is being harmed." No
court or Congress has the right to decide whether she should live or
die, and the decision should not have been made to remove her feeding
tube in the first place.
However I resent the aspersions you cast on
both liberals and on
animal species in your column "As she lay dying." I'm a liberal
precisely because I don't like to see either people or animals suffer.
The greed which led Michael Schiavo to try and strangle his wife, and
now to try and have her starved to death, is typical of today's
conservative Republicans, who would rather see corporate CEO's make
millions than see average middle-class Americans be able to afford
health care. As for animal species, many do care for the weak and sick
among them, while there are cultures among humans that cast out the
old and sick to die [I included “primitive societies” on my list of
the uncivilized—ILANA]. Unfortunately, the U.S. seems to be
becoming one of them!
—Lynn Manley
North Berwick, Maine
From: Mike Younger
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 1:31 PM
Subject:
As She Lay Dying
Great article!
It seems to me though that liberals are not
the only ones that bear some blame. Conservatives (if there is such a
beast anymore) have shown themselves irrelevant and
unneeded. Indeed, the whole of congress and the Presidency has. If the
President and Congress are not willing to defy the Judicial branch on
a matter as fundamental as this is - then what is their purpose? What
difference does it make what laws they make or measures they take. The
Judicial system trumps them all.
Several of the founding fathers spat in the
Supreme Court's eye when deemed necessary. After all, the Judiciary is
only one branch of the government.
Anyway, I'm sickened by just about every
aspect of this tragedy.
Thank you again for a great article.
—Mike Younger
Stuart, Florida
From: Blake
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 6:54 AM
Subject:
As She Lay Dying
Dear Ms. Mercer,
I would also mention I'm appalled at how
little people know about history, any more.
The very same people who decry President
Bush as a fascist, yet support this state sanctioned suicide evidently
don't want to remember that Hitler was a big proponent of euthanasia.
[Bush’s reverence for Terry’s life and irreverence about the lives of
American soldiers and Iraqis is perplexing, to say the least—ILANA]
Anyone who doesn't want to admit there is a
valid slippery slope argument (at the very least!) is also denying
what happened when abortion became legal.
Who ever thought abortion would lead to the
atrocity known as Partial Birth Abortion?
My mom is a pro-choice person and even she
admits PBA is obscene and shouldn't be allowed [agreed—ILANA].
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we
have Terri Schiavo. From my vantage point, this looks like nothing
more than an "unviable tissue mass." Or, at least, that is what the
proponents of her death are saying.
Sincerely,
—Blake
From: Tom
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 8:47 AM
Subject: Congrats on
WND article and Is the
Libertarian Party salvageable?
Hello! You were on my radio show once
("Constitutional Perspective"). I am glad to see you again on the
pages of WND. I hope you will continue to be on WND because they
seriously need your truth and perspective; they just don't get the
degree of corruption and betrayal by the U.S. government which has
basically declared war on the Bill of Rights, the American people, and
the rest of the planet.
Question; Do you think there is any hope of
salvaging the Libertarian Party? [It’s safer if I quote the spouse:
“no”—ILANA] They are so seriously out to lunch on immigration. I
can't tell you how many "You lose your borders you lose your country"
letters I have written but it's been like water off a duck's back.
They seem dogmatically blind to their very anti-libertarian
anti-private property stance on open borders.
I have moved to Southern Oregon - Coquille
- and I understand the LP is going to hold their convention in
Portland in '06. I was wondering if there was any way to crow-bar open
some dogmatic minds up there? I feel pretty partyless right now, a
"Bill of Rights" party of one. Where are you on all this? Is the U.S.
just toast and have I to resign myself to the coming gulag? My problem
is that I make for a lousy slave. Can anything be done?
Best Wishes to You!
—Tom
From: Richard
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 6:07 AM
Subject: Is Terri a Symbol? One Reader
Thinks So
Hi Ilana,
Once again thank you for a thought provoking
article. As always, it is filled with common sense, which I have found
is not so common after all. I have reduced the Schiavo affair down to
one simple statement. If we save her perhaps we may save ourselves.
[This is interesting. There was indeed something deeply
spiritual about the young, magnificent people who congregated at
Terry’s hospice. I’d agree with Richard if the same souls also
protested the senseless carnage and economic drain that is
Iraq—ILANA.]
To understand my statement, a person must be
prepared to think for themselves. You, on the other hand give valid
reasoning. I keep overestimating my fellow Americans. Most will not
take the time to research something themselves.
Thank you again.
A loyal fan
—Richard W.
From: Mike Holmes
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Subject:
Second Thoughts, First Principles
Another brilliant column. Rich and full of
insights based on clear headed thinking.
Another fact for your thesis: What about
Algeria, a rather large and strategically important country, with lots
of LNG now being exported to the US. Algeria is ruled by a military
junta which rejected relatively fair elections in the – what, early
90s, late 80s? – which convincingly supported radical Islamic
candidates (about whom little seems known) and created a very violent,
still on-going insurgency for “democracy.” Rather curiously, this very
dangerous insurgency never seems to be linked, even in the perfervid
neocon demonology of Middle Eastern politics, with al Qaida or Osama
bin Laden himself. The Algerian Salafist groups fighting for
“democracy” are only indirectly linked to al Qaida and perhaps it is
no accident that they are disappeared into the current Memory Hole.
Somehow Algeria never gets mentioned in the current hoo-hah for
Democracy.
So far as I know Bush has not altered the
pro-Algerian government (and presumably, French backed) policy of
politely ignoring this wholesale rejection of “democracy”.
The wisdom of this policy may be debatable.
We may want to give our French friends the benefit of the doubt here.
But clearly this is at considerably odds with the Emperor’s crusade of
the moment. What gives?
—Mike H. CPA
From: Dennis Spain
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005
Subject:
Second Thoughts, First Principles [Finding The Truth—libertarianism—can
be lonely—ILANA]
Dear Ilana,
I haven't written to you in a while about
your thoughtful and, as always, give-'em-hell essays, although I
continue to read them avidly.
Honestly, you and your fellow libertarian
essayists are the only writers who can define, in fifty words or less,
the principles by which you proceed, and then write an essay that
actually has something to do with those principles.
No one in mainstream editorial journalism
sees the importance of this modus operandi. Good Lord, no one
in mainstream journalism is even vaguely interested in working from
first principles, let alone defining them.
Four years ago I started to read seriously
in the libertarian tradition. The upshot is that now I no longer
understand my fellow countrymen, their ideas or their economics. I
have become somewhat of a pariah in my little community here in
Hawaii, and were it not for antiwar.com, lewrockwell.com, mises.org,
and writers such as yourself, I think the isolation would be very
unpleasant.
It is heart-rending to see our country, led
by smug leaders, inexorably lurch off course. How can these talented
people be committed to such a disastrous heading?
Regards,
—Dennis Spain
Reductio ad absurdum
I had a vanity nightmare last night.
In it my (admittedly still smooth) forehead was baggy and crisscrossed with
wrinkles. (Dad doesn’t have them yet. It’s some Jew gene we’re
blessed with.) This morning I said to my Old Man, “If that ever
happens to me, please put me down.” Black humor aside, it’s so bloody
unlikely that any spouse would have requested what poor Terry
Schiavo is getting. In fact, I am sure all over the country—nay, the
world—couples are promising not to do unto the other what Michael
Schiavo is doing to Terry. That’ll be her legacy .—ILANA
From: Paul zaffaroni
Sent:
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Subject:
A Canadian English Professor Protests Characterization of Canadians
Dear Ms.
Mercer:
First of all I would like to start this letter by acknowledging your
journalistic skills and your deep insight into world affairs, i.e. the
debacle of the Iraq war. I am an avid reader of
anti-war.com and also enjoy
your commentaries. I am quite a bit miffed however with your
comments about Canadians on your
website. I am a Canadian, and while I readily admit that many of
my fellow countrymen (and countrywomen) can be cold, I resent being
classified as "uninspired and morose". I find that to be an offensive,
sweeping generalization.
For a person such as yourself with such keen acumen and insight I find
these statements disappointing, and unfair. If you knew Canada, you
would have said that in the Eastern part of the country (e.g. Prince
Edward Island, Nova Scotia, etc.) the people are very warm, friendly,
and energetic [although chronically wedded to welfare, which makes
at least part of my
“composite of the Canadian Character” correct, not so?—ILANA].
Obviously you've never had much contact with Canadians [I tried for
“seven lean years,” and with little success, to make contact—ILANA],
hence the characterization.
I would
like to see a correction on your webpage, with a little more fairness
and balance. [Dr. Zaffaroni’s counterpoint is now linked to my
original point. That ought to take care of the problem.] After
a cordial exchange, in which I promised to air his complaint, Dr.
Zaffaroni added:
Thank you for your prompt reply. I appreciate your recognition of my
grievances, and I am sorry your Canadian experience was not a better
one. I traveled across Canada, and I met Canadians who fit your
description, however many were quite the opposite. I would not like
your readers to get the wrong idea about us. As you well know, the
average American is painfully ignorant of Canada, and misconceptions
about Canada seem to flourish in the States. But I appreciate your
reply; it shows a breadth of mind that is refreshing.
I admire
your lexical dominance of English, and as an English professor I would
like to use your articles with my students.
Sincerely
—Paul
Zaffaroni
From:
KJHLAW
Sent:
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 8:07 AM
Subject:
The International Highway to Hell
Hi Ilana,
In this
column, you wrote:
“Does suppressed manhood in America result in rampant militarism
abroad?
Who knows? But the arid, abstract, creepy, and self-destructive
sentiments too many American soldiers express – their willingness to
give their lives for Iraqis; their wish to rejoin their battalions as
soon as they heal from being carved up in combat – indicate a profound
alienation from all that's important.”
There is an interesting point you made here. Perhaps it takes knowing
a typical recruit going into our armed forces today to understand it.
My 19 year old nephew is one of those. Alienated, a poor student with
relatively few interests and no direction (public schooling did a lot
to help him out in this department), two parents who worked fulltime
to make ends meet and had little extra time to spend with him in his
formative years, this young man, fully aware of all of the American
deaths in Iraq and the vile facade that put us there in the first
place—felt that he was actually needed there. Not just needed in the
sense of a dwindling numbers game, mind you, but his years of less
than stellar school performance, lack of any decent job prospects,
lack of a sense of purpose, lack of a closeness with family due to
socioeconomic engineering—all led him to the conclusion that he was
better off in Iraq! I suspect that many like him had similar
situations. An insidious, pervading void gives way to a sense of
becoming part of something bigger than themselves—a justification of
their existence, if you will, that they lacked before. It is a truly
tragic phenomenon. [Thanks Kathryn for telling this sad story so
well.—ILANA]
Take
Care,
—Kathryn
Hanes (faithful reader)
From:
Randy McCoy
Sent:
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Subject:
The International Highway to Hell [Or, from the Wenches to the
Trenches]
Thanks,
Regarding your article at antiwar.com, and particularly the last
question you posed about American men and emasculation, it really hit
the mark.
Having spent 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, and sometimes asking
the question why? No major regrets mind you, but I really had to laugh
at myself in light of your question, a partial answer to my own
question, and the recent comment I heard about FDR's response to a
reporter who queried him in those days on why he wanted war. He is
quoted as saying, "There's war - and there's Eleanor, I CHOSE WAR."
Keep up
the good work.
And
Again, thank you -
—Randy
McCoy
From:
KidistDesigns
Sent:
Friday, March 11, 2005 8:45 AM
Subject:
The International Highway to Hell
Dear
Ilana,
I
understand your bewilderment at the American army's apparent
masochism. I felt the same way when they were in Somalia, a place
where they were not wanted, and ultimately greatly humiliated. I
think, though, the men in Iraq are soldiers first. They are obeying
commands for a war that was initially retaliation against an attack on
American soil.
Also,
with all the media and their terrorist activities, these soldiers are
forced to be 'nice', so they don't appear like mindless butchers on
TV, although their mandate is to kill, maim and destroy the enemy.
Their
supremely conflicting roles of ruthless soldiers, goodwill
ambassadors, and missionaries must have profoundly confused them,
where they would now willingly step onto any landmine.
By the
way, if you read war blogs of ordinary soldiers and marines etc. it is
interesting to note that they feel they’re serving their country.
All the
best,
—KPA
From:
Stanton Peele
Sent:
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 2:54 AM
Subject:
The International Highway to Hell
Ilana,
This is a
remarkable document—I can’t imagine anyone else in North America
writing it—NO ONE takes on these cheesy sentiments—Fox News is going
to send a hit man to your home.
Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D., Author, 7 Tools To Beat Addiction.
Of Stanton Peele’s many books,
Diseasing of America has
profoundly influenced me. I highly recommend this classic
(especially to the twits on the television).
—ILANA
From:
George Treheles
Sent:
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Subject:
Comment from Soviet Canuckistan
I read your column
"The International Highway to Hell" at
antiwar.com and this line I find very poignant:
"Does suppressed manhood in America result in rampant militarism
abroad?"
One would think that it’s not sexual/behavioral but sociological i.e.,
indoctrination.
Reading your biography and looking at your
photo gallery at your web site [another gallery featuring the
Old World is under construction, so do check back periodically.—ILANA],
I've come to the conclusion that you became "American" for financial
reasons (not that its a bad thing) and not for any
ideological/patriotic reasons (again, not that its a bad thing). [I
love the “Idea of America,” not what it has become. And George is
right: part of that Idea was that you got to keep what was yours and
that you were not carted away for defending yourself and your
possessions. That has changed, of course.—ILANA]
I find your "look" and intellect very European and dare I say
"un-American"—can't see your style of discourse being discussed at any
Starbucks in the USA. You must really find it difficult to rationalize
life in the US.
— George Treheles
From:
Lawrence Auster
Sent:
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 4:45 AM
Subject:
The International Highway to Hell
Dear
Ilana,
You
wrote:
“It's
a question of self-confidence. If you're sufficiently secure in who
you are, if you possess a distinct sense of yourself as separate from
The Other, you'll be less likely to become enmeshed in his affairs,
and interfere with – or rescue – him. The last is a rotten impulse
that enables and compounds helplessness in others.
Perhaps the admixture in so many American men of maniacal, missionary
militarism and humbug humanitarianism follows decades of emasculation
– legal and cultural – at home.
Does
suppressed manhood in America result in rampant militarism abroad?
Who
knows? But the abstract, creepy, and self-destructive sentiments too
many American soldiers express – their willingness to give their lives
for Iraqis; their wish to rejoin their battalions as soon as they heal
from being carved up in combat – indicate a profound alienation from
all that's important.”
That is brilliant. You have expressed a thought that has occurred to
me, but that I hadn't articulated. Specifically, when I see our men
NOT MIND the fact that most of them who are being killed are not being
killed in the act of fighting the enemy, but in the act of driving or
walking along a highway and just being blown up by a roadside bomb,
and when they say that "this is for freedom," that has struck me as
utterly strange. If they were dying in combat, fighting a war aimed
at defeating the enemy, that would be one thing. But in the
overwhelming majority of the cases, that is not the case. Instead,
they are dying like Eloi, passively (though very bravely) presenting
themselves to the Morlocks.
But your analysis needs to be worked out more [a topic for another
column—ILANA]. It's hard to see our soldiers as being
"emasculated" in any sense. Unless you're saying, not that they are
emasculated, but that the normal channel of masculinity, defense of
one's country and one's own, has been unnaturally blocked in them by
liberalism and Bushism, so that their masculinity, courage, and
willingnessness to sacrifice themselves seeks this unnatural channel
in being willing to die for "freedom," which consists in walking
meaninglessly along an Iraqi road and being blown up.
—Larry
View From The Right
American men have been metaphorically emasculated at home.
Perhaps decades of not being let to be chivalrous (equated with
sexism, or something—I’m not up on the latest feminist terminology),
protective, the strong sex; not being allowed to be armed, hunt, and
rescue damsels in distress—maybe that leads to some mass neurosis—a
mass contagion that accounts for their eagerness to act out in a
faraway land. That, and the Disneyfied, shallow mentality that
pervades the Zeitgeist—where everything is reduced to a
cartoon—could combine to shed light on this craziness.—ILANA
From: Eric Ferre
Sent: Tuesday, March 08
Subject:
Your Latest Articles [And some thoughts on “the spin of war.”]
Hello Ilana,
I am not much of an anti-war activist but I feel, probably like
millions of others, powerless when I see the spin of war in the US.
I am not even too sure of what is politically correct and what is not
when it comes to expose one's point of view. One of the things that
really shook my conscience lately is the fact that in Italy there two
new orphans. Their dad was a special agent and he was killed by Mr.
Bush's soldiers in Iraq. Mr. Bush will never be able to give their dad
back to these two kids and he probably does not even care. It is so
easy to wage war on other countries when your own blood is not even
spent. There are tens of thousands of kids in Iraq who will never see
their dads or mums thanks to Mr. Bush's madness. Nobody cares because
they are Iraqi children. I think that the American public opinion
might be more receptive to a couple of Italian orphans than 10,000
Iraqi ones. They go to church every Sunday but they don't really care
as long as death is someone else's business.
As to
Lebanon, reports quote 500,000 pro-Syrian demonstrators in the
streets. With a population of 3.7 million, hat is pretty impressive
(12%). If a demonstration of similar proportion was to take place in
the US, that would be a rally of 37 million people. Yet the US
government shrugs off this peaceful demonstration?
Sincerely,
—Dr Eric Ferre
Assistant Professor
Department of Geology
Southern Illinois University
February 2005
From
Backtalk:
Letters to
Antiwar.com
[Ann Coulter’s web manager is peeved about
Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies]
February 28, 2005
Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies
We have someone constantly chasing Marsden around on our board who
goes by the name of Dormy2. She has done nothing out of the ordinary
on our forum at all, and I have no idea why she is being treated like
this.
By the way, Ms. Mercer may have talked to Coulter's webmaster, but I
am the owner of her official forum, and I haven't heard a peep about
this, other than from disgruntled people who want to complain about
Marsden. I don't know her from Adam, other than as a poster under
another user name, but as long as she does nothing untoward on the
forum, I have no reason to allow just another forum member to be
attacked.
I'm really tired of this apparent vendetta against someone who has a
small Vancouver radio show and who does nothing wrong while visiting
Coulter's forum. If there's a problem, you are free to contact me with
proof that she's a female Jack the Ripper or something; otherwise, I'd
just find a new target.
~ Anthony
B. Ford
Ilana Mercer replies:
This is too rich for words, sir. As I documented in
my column, Marsden is a recently convicted stalker. Her résumé
boasts another major "achievement": she attempted to destroy a young
man's life by falsely accusing him of sexual assault and siccing the
Canadian sexual harassment kangaroo court on him, in a case that
"rewrote sexual harassment policy in Canada." Marsden has had nothing
but positive reinforcement for what she did – she has never paid for
what she did to her first victim, Liam Donnelly. But apparently, you,
Mr. Ford, think nothing of falsely accusing a man of rape and reaping
the publicity therefrom.
By your account, since she hasn't chopped someone into tiny bits, you
consider her a victim of a vendetta.
I wouldn't worry too much about cleaning up your blogs or chat rooms –
like all such forums, those are usually full of unsavory,
self-important losers (I am here paraphrasing Miss Coulter, with whom
I agree in this respect. See
"On the Importance of Boundaries." She called these bloggers
losers who sit around in pajamas all day.). However, I had approached
Ms. Coulter's webmaster (Tom Scerbo) quite a while ago, to ask if she
was aware that he had posted on her site columns by this notorious
Canadian. Ms. Coulter's other front man's response was similar to
yours: "We all have baggage, forgive and forget."
Since I take it you are speaking for Law-and-Order Ann Coulter, I
thank you for seconding the official stance of the Coulter Web site
with respect to those who violate the rights of others (but happen to
be neoconservatives).
You'll probably be pleased to know that both of you (speaking on
behalf of Miss Coulter) are at least as confused about ethics as Bill
O'Reilly. He, too, mumbled something about the "personal attacks" on
his Canadian commentator. (Of course, he would never have dared ask
the opinion of one of the few principled men left on the Canadian
Right. Like myself,
Kevin Michael Grace has been quick to note the irony of soliciting
Marsden's "opinions," such as they are.)
Apparently, you all "think" that to document a commentator's recent
criminal conviction and history of aggression against innocent victims
amounts to ad hominem.
So here's a 101 in ethics for neocons: perpetrating aggression against
innocent victims is not in the realm of "her personal life"
(O'Reilly's characterization); it's public, and it's germane to her
credibility in all endeavors.
In any case, the Marsden peccadillo is just more evidence that
neoconservatives scoff at all the things conservatives once valued,
not least probity and upstanding character.
From: BR [This, from one of my
WND readers.]
Sent:
Wednesday, February 23, 2005 1:04 AM
Subject:
Syria Out Doesn't Mean U.S. In
Dear Ilana,
We are not war weary in the United States. I agree with Ann Coulter.
As to the part about converting them to Christianity, that is just
what is going on in the Middle East and God is the One leading
the charge.
At some point in time, according to Isaiah Chapter 17, Damascus is
going to become rubble. Somewhere in the 20s in Ezekiel, it says that
Tyre is going to become a flat rock upon which fishermen dry their
nets. I was reading portions of The Book of Jubilees over the weekend
and in there it says ALL of Esau's descendants will be wiped out. I
saw in the news today (or yesterday) that Iran had another earthquake.
Now is the latter days.
Yours very truly,
—(Mrs.) BR
Florida
From: Dirk Sabin
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2005 8:08 AM
Subject:
Broad Sides Report
Dear Ilana,
I did obtain a copy of your book and am reading it now....It is a
pleasure to read someone clearly explaining the disjunction concerning
"liberal" -"conservative" nomenclature. The National Review and Wall
Street Journal...hell, nearly the entire media is so profoundly
delusional and full of half-truths and pabulum for the mind. The level
of historical illiteracy and the junk food nature of the mass media
makes it entirely too easy for statist pimps like Rove and his perfect
shill Bush II , to perpetrate their fraud on the citizenry of the
erstwhile Republic.
It is a daunting thing though to attempt to repaint Lincoln in stark
terms. His rhetoric is so beautiful and the abolition of slavery was
such a good thing. It is interesting that his hero Clay, opponent of
"nullification" and champion of "internal improvements," was a
southerner as was Lincoln himself. Another interesting thing regarding
spin is that early official documents referred to the conflict as "The
War of the Rebellion"... It all points to the dire need to place the
actions of a government within the context of the principles and
traditions of the Framers/their Constitution rather than the
mythology, personality and lofty rhetoric.
I just finished Fromkin's 90's book "In the Time of the Americans"
spanning the TR to Wilson to FDR and Eisenhower years. On the eve of
the First World War Fromkin asserts that the Republic had spent
approx. $24 billion bucks to operate since its inception. We had a
standing army of 20,000 largely employed in chasing Pancho Villa
around northern Mexico. The World Wars changed this and once into the
wars of the twentieth century, a different type of idealism asserted
itself and the era of big government was born. Even then, old pictures
show the Washington Mall lined with temporary structures during the
FDR years, purposely designed as temporary so that they would not
outlast the "current emergency". Even Democrats were aware of a need
to check the Federal Beast. Would that this current government even
attempted to provide lip service in this vein.
Greenspan is ably demonstrating his toad-like character, croaking in
agreement with every breezy whim this dim-witted and petulant imbecile
of a president spouts.
With every passing year, I believe the spark of the Revolution passes
farther into the mists and it will soon be impossible to return to a
forward path without huge dislocation and strife. Then again, the
people of this fine Republic may snap out of it but, given that they
exhibit all the clinical pathologies of the addict, I am less than
optimistic.
I do believe you give the southerners too much credit as victims, for
it is this new Dixiecrat, southern GOP that is hellbent upon erasing
the lessons of Madison, Jefferson and Washington.
The first 50 or so pages of your book met my expectations and I shall
report back when I'm done. Keep pointing to the essential truths
Ilana. The new American Statism and it's Corporatist-Statist-Religious
aims are a perversion of humanity and a rebuke of the possibilities of
the Republic—born of and altogether too typical of humanity, but a
perversion of it, nonetheless.
Would that there were more like you.
—Best Regards,
D.W. Sabin
From: Antranik
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Subject: A new, interesting reader from Armenia speaks of war, but
also of June in his homeland, when the mulberries are ripe.
—ILANA
Dear Ilana,
War will definitely be bad news for us. With the Americans in Iraq it
is already to close for comfort. We have a lot of trade with the
Iranians so an American attack on Iran will definitely screw us
royally here. The Azeris are already rattling their sabers and with an
American attack on Iran I expect an Azeri attack on Nagorno Karabakh
and a Turkish attack on Armenia, unless the Turks get pre-occupied
with invading Kirkuk to prevent an independent oil-rich Kurdistan. It
seems the vise is closing on us in any case. I am most grateful for
one thing though: as a soldier and freedom fighter in Nagorno
Karabakh I get to fight for survival and freedom against an enemy that
heavily outnumbers and outguns us (yet nevertheless, we kicked their
butts outta town in the last war! :) Were I in the American army I
would just be mowing down innocent civilians and destroying someone's
national infrastructure all in the name of preserving profits and
power for the oil companies, arms dealers, and international banksters.
At least here I can live a life that isn't meaningless and when the
time comes, die with a clear conscience.
So I really hope you will be able to make it out here with your
husband. Best time is in late June when the mulberries are ripe. One
very nice thing about Armenia is the very low street crime rate. Out
here a woman can walk in the city at any hour of the night and never
have to worry about being mugged or raped etc.
Take care,
—Anto
From: SB
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005
Subject:
Ink Stains and Blood Stains
Bush, Blair, The Neocons at Fox News knew the inspectors had
effectively disarmed Saddam and by knowing this it made an attack upon
Iraq a reality with expectations of suffering very few casualties. One
leading Neocon predicted a "cakewalk" in which our troops would be
strewn with roses by the Iraqi people thankful for their liberation.
We now know Saddam had realized he would be defeated and created a
strategy of retaliation against the American occupying troops. For a
full decade the Iraqis had suffered two wars by Bush, daddy and son,
and the death of many thousands due to the genocidal U.S. sanctions.
There was no way the Iraqis could successfully fight against ships
lobbing shells at them from the safety of offshore or retaliate
against planes dropping bombs
on them from 30,000 feet above. But as Hitler discovered when he
occupied Eastern Europe, insurgency against an occupational force is a
natural outcome of war. Apparently our leaders never discovered this.
— SB
This is not a blog, but since I've made an exception for Kevin's
quixotic quarrel with Fox "News" (scroll down), I'll certainly do the same in defense
of Prof. Hans H. Hoppe:
From: Ilana Mercer
Sent: Sunday, February
06, 2005 4:47 PM
To: 'harter@ccmail.nevada.edu'
Subject: Prof. H. Hoppe
Dear President Carol C. Harter,
Universities are supposed to contribute to the development of
character in their young charges. All too often they prefer to breed
spineless, spoilt youngsters, forever poised to
receive offence and ever eager to deploy Soviet-style procedures
to destroy careers and reputations.
The complaining student was offended by Prof. H. Hoppe’s comments
about the connection between broad group characteristics and life
styles and time preference. For his own sake, make the student
apologize for his snide tactics and teach him to debate, not defame.
Respectfully,
Ilana Mercer
www.ilanamercer.com
An afterthought: The breakdown of civilizing social boundaries is
near complete when law-abiding, upstanding adults are forced to grovel
before petulant pipsqueaks.
—ILANA
Canadian writer Kevin Michael Grace scrutinizes Fox News’
“poisonous post-modern philosophy.” Listen to Kevin’s
CBC Commentary (or read the transcript), and make a point of
visiting his blog.
The Ambler has been cited in the Times Literary Supplement,
no less.
—ILANA
From
Backtalk: Letters to
Antiwar.com:
February 5, 2005
His Rhetoric, Our Reality
Dear Ms Mercer,
I totally agree with the statements you make in your "His Rhetoric,
Our Reality" article. Bush is romanticizing imperialism, that's all
there is to it.
What makes even less sense is the concept of forcing "freedom" onto
the other people. How can somebody be forced into freedom (it's no
longer freedom if it is forced)? And when I hear the rhetoric "they
hate our freedom" I say that it's all nonsense. The precise reason
they hate us is because we stick our nose everywhere.
Finally, you mention the causes that would be dishonorable to abandon.
Arguments of the similar nature were made about Vietnam: "We can't
leave now." The solution of the current administration is to stay on
the "honorable" course, and let the blood of the Iraqis and the
American soldiers flow.
Also I have a personal question for you. You seem to express a strong
sentiment against the war in Iraq. As a Jew, it must take a great deal
of courage. I get attacked all the time (I am Jewish), that being
against the war in Iraq is being anti-Israel (since Iraq and Israel
were not the best of friends). Many Jewish people support the war in
Iraq (and the neocons behind it); do you believe that by opposing the
war in Iraq we are (in a way) betraying Israel?
~ MG
Ilana Mercer replies:
Most Jews are leftists. As such, they are more inclined to vote for
the Democrats, and thus, if anything, are more likely to be against
the war. Jews are well represented in antiwar circles—I hear quite a
few Jewish names among antiwar protesters. Tikkun and
Forward have certainly not been on board with Commentary.
Opinions ought not to be based on who a policy benefits but on what is
right. Injustice is not beneficial, although, even if it were one
would be obliged to oppose it. (The Hebrew Testament repeatedly
instructs, "Justice, justice you shall seek." The biblical narrator
uses the verb "to pursue" – much stronger than "to seek." There is a
reason he never shut up about justice, going as far as to repeat it
twice in one sentence.)
The war is good for Israel? I doubt it. As I wrote in
"Who's the Boss – Israel or the US?":
"It so happens that Israel, incorrectly, thinks that American foreign
policy serves her well – although, arguably, for Israel to have
endorsed the war on Iraq so enthusiastically is bad for a future
Arab-Israeli relationship. As one who supports the Jewish state, but
also opposes current American foreign policy, I would prefer to see
Israel refrain from conflating America's unlimited worldwide war on
terror with the narrowly delimited battle for survival that Israel has
conducted since her inception. But once again reality bites. Israel is
a small country that is necessarily dependent on a large state. It is
Israel who is obliged to support the US and acquiesce to American
foreign policies, not the other way round."
Since Israel is riddled with leftists, you'll find there a respectable
opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
Of one thing I am sure: debate there would be more robust and open
than here. The Hannitization of discourse would not be tolerated in
Israel.
Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies
Ilana,
Just read your funny and right-on piece about neocon women from
December 2004. I had to laugh at your insights into Coulter and gang.
If it helps any, beautiful women aren't only in the GOP and DNC, but
apparently the Libertarian Party as well! [I’m not a party member.]
The difference: you don't need to bleach and you actually have a
brain! Coulter apparently was sick the day they taught the
Constitution at her law school.
~ Chris Campbell
Ilana Mercer replies:
Dear Chris,
I'm glad "Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies" made you laugh. Ann
Coulter? I regret being soft on her. She and the malevolent Sean
Hannity were vibing again on Fox today. At the same time, CNN screened
a program about the murdered, maimed, and mentally crippled American
soldiers in Iraq. (If you want to learn anything about Iraqis under
"freedom," I'm afraid you'll have to watch the Canadian Public
Broadcaster.)
I'll say this: Coulter, in black leather, was dressed for the part.
She looked like a character from a Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda
film.
Thanks
to Lawrence Auster for mentioning
His Rhetoric, Our Reality on his
blog, View from the Right.
I like the title of the Auster post: "Natural rights, Bush-style: their
rights, our obligations."
—ILANA
Muslim Immigration Time Bomb Ignored by American Jews
continues to
generate angry letters. The more malevolent the reader, the greater
his or her textual difficulties. Or so it seems.
So for once and for all, I’ll post the paragraph that has caused
countless jeers and hoots from these sorts. You be the judge. The able
editors who scrutinized and approved the column had no problem with
it, for obvious reasons—the paragraph is unproblematic, other than to
the linguistically challenged:
"In
Canada, Muslims now greatly outnumber Jews. What remains of a
European Jewry devastated by the Holocaust comes under
daily assaults and
threats, mostly from the 20-million strong Muslim community."
The repeated complaint is that: “you don’t even know that in Canada
there aren’t 20 million Muslims.”
Come again?
What part of "A
EUROPEAN JEWRY" don't they get? What part of "A EUROPEAN JEWRY
DEVASTATED BY THE HOLOCAUST" don't they get? How does a EUROPEAN JEWRY
DEVASTATED BY THE HOLOCAUST relate remotely to the Canadian Jewry,
mentioned in the previous sentence, and separated from the last with
what is commonly known as a full stop?
—ILANA
January 2005
From
Backtalk:
Letters to
Antiwar.com:
January 17, 2005
Yes to US Aid, No to USAID
R egarding Ms Mercer's
comments about private as opposed to official aid: What she fails to
address, and perhaps doesn't know about, is the fact that a
significant proportion of USAID aid funds are actually programmed
through American NGOs such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and Save
the Children. Most often the USAID-supplied funds are used to match
privately raised funds. Sometimes the USAID match is five to one,
meaning they put in $5 to every $1 the NGO contributes. (I would guess
that as much as half of the tsunami aid the president pledged will go
through the NGOs already on the ground in the affected region.) I know
this to be fact. I was a CARE director for two decades and worked with
USAID on many occasions.
~
Neil R. Huff
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear Neil,
I am not aware of this, but I do think that so-called private-public
collaboration must be discouraged, especially if it comes with
subsidies (and the attendant attached strings and regulation).
What NGOs don't seem to grasp is that accepting subsidies from
governments not only co-opts their organizations but has unintended
consequences – government subventions to non-profits tend to crowd out
private philanthropy. This is because, Arthur C. Brooks observes in
the Fraser Forum, "The perceived need of the recipient organization
declines in the eyes of potential donors."
T hanks for Ilana Mercer's
article distinguishing USAID from U.S. largesse. As one who has had
firsthand knowledge of how USAID works to put walls up against U.S.
citizens volunteering their help to nations in need (in my case a
program to provide energy conservation techniques to Estonia), I can
verify how agents of USAID use the same procedures as our intelligence
agencies to head-off volunteer efforts. The results of their
subterfuge usually provide off-the-books profits for "investing"
corporations.
~
Roger Conway
Mercer does not realize that this "private giving" in the U.S. is
mainly for tax write-off reasons. That's just one of the reasons why
billionaires and millionaires can continue to keep the vast bulk of
their profits and dividends each year. "Charity" donors are just using
a system that's designed for them.
~ Al
Ilana Mercer replies:
Al,
True, taxpayers get a
reduction in taxes for making charitable donations. What's wrong with
that? It simply means that charity gets you a (tiny) reprieve from
government theft.
But, even with a deductible, a person will keep more of his money if
he simply AVOIDS giving charity and pays higher taxes.
An example:
If you earn $100,000 and pay 28% tax then the government robs you of
$28,000 for tax.
If you give a gift of say $2000 to charity the government will only
charge you tax on 100,000 – 2000 = $98,000.
Pay your 28% tax on this remainder and you have paid $27,440 of tax.
This is the "tax break" you got as a result of being charitable. But
there is a total of $2000 + $27,440 = $29,440 not in your pocket.
($2000 you gave; $27,440 was stolen from you.)
So by being charitable you did have a reduction in tax but still have
$1440 less to your name.
The situation may be different for some corporate donation options – I
know little about them. I do know that American individuals are
tremendously generous.
From
Backtalk:
Letters to
Antiwar.com:
January 15, 2005
The Neoconnerie's Plan For Iran
I
immensely enjoyed your
characterizations of neocon logic as something akin to space-cadets
parked in orbit around Pluto, but your final stroke of the pen (or
keyboard)
of "a pest is a pest" rocked my cradle.
Your tongue in cheek summarization of
Neoconnerie exemplifies your mastery of the art of writing and command
of the subject. I have to rank you as serious competitor to
Justin himself.
Justin: watch out!
~
Robert Koehler,
St. Clair, Michigan USA
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear Rob,
Thank you so much for enjoying my
column, "The Neoconnerie's Plan for
Iran." The Standard's "policy paper" must be credited for
providing the inspiration – a truly unbelievable piece. "The
Struggle for the Middle East" would not be so outrageous had Ben
Shapiro penned it, but the thing was written by an adult.
The comparison to Mr. Raimondo's skill
is a huge compliment, but there are big differences, one of which is
that
Justin Raimondo writes prolifically and effortlessly; I have to work
very hard at it.
P atrick
J.
Buchanan's and Ilana Mercer's
filings of December 29 continue to shed more light on the
scurrying rats of this administration's brain-free brain-trust but I
wonder, are we really getting anywhere? The crusading conservatives of
"red state" America remain immune from wider reproach despite the
manifold failures of their actions and an unseemly degree of cheeky
chutzpah in the face of mounting falsehoods. Thousands die or are
maimed; cities are leveled; terror, isolation and recrimination
multiply; debt dangerously escalates; and these entranced missionaries
do not fail to spout their sophistry and claim that "freedom is on the
march." Like the president in his former life as a failed oil
prospector, these chattering ideologues continue to demonstrate an
ability to fall into murky dry holes and still be picked up, dusted
off and sent back out into public with a wad of cash stuffed in their
pockets. Failure, in this administration, has its rewards. Meritocracy
meets malitocracy.
Someone, somewhere should add up the
mounting worldwide death toll in both the military and civilian
populations, the dollars spent on war and armament vs. dollars spent
on civil or humanitarian efforts, the mounting costs of environmental
carelessness (in particular, the death throes of the post-peak
production oil economy),
the continuing consolidation of oligarchic wealth in concert with
repressive government and corporatist statism of all stripes as well
as the ongoing rate of extirpation of a healthy middle class and
publish these figures as widely as possible. ...
American liberty and the rustic
skepticism of the independent American citizen have been hijacked by
mountebanks who peddle fear and war. We are in thrall to manifold
perversions and hence cannot see the forest for the trees. The numbers
would provide clarity and a platform from which to begin our
reclamation as a revolutionary force. I believe it was Dominique de
Villepin, the French Interior Minister and former Foreign Minister,
who best summed up what confronted the Bush administration when it
announced its plans to export democracy at gunpoint: "The World is a
perverse place, ill-suited to grand plans." The rabid evocation of the
Peter Principle that has assumed the leadership of this country could
not think it's way out of a fortune cookie. Whenever and wherever it
thinks, people are hurt and American principles are tainted. It is
well past the time that we begin to do the thinking and acting for a
government gone bad. While I am myself guilty of the personal
pleasures of polemics, I am tiring of the noise and crave action and
results. Truth in stark documented numbers is the platform from which
to begin.
~ Dirk W. Sabin, recovering Republican,
Washington, Connecticut
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear Dirk,
Thanks for writing – and sharing – this
remarkable and passionate polemic.
From: Maco Stewart
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 12:56 PM
Subject:
The Silly Sex?, VDARE.COM
I'm the membership officer for the
Triplenine Society and I saw your 06 Jan piece on
VDARE.COM in which, among many other right-on observations, you
point out the subtle dumbing-down of standards for admission to
engineering schools. When I read that, I experienced a "eureka"
moment. In October 2001, for no discernible (hitherto discernible)
reason, the scoring of the GRE quantitative test was dumbed-down (a
la the 1995 SAT massacre, but worse) to such an extent that now
Mensa, with a 98%ile cutoff, hesitates to use the GRE for admission
purposes, and we, with a 99.9%ile cutoff, similarly have jacked in
this formerly useful admissions vehicle.
The proposition that this change was part of such an institutional
covering-up strikes me as so likely that I'm now proceeding with that
as my default explanatory hypothesis.
Many thanks-
—Maco Stewart
From: Mark Wilkinson
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 3:06 PM
Subject:
"Where Are all the Men!?"
A politically incorrect piece of journalism...though nevertheless an
interesting and thought-provoking read!
What strikes me is how different my personal experience has been when
it comes to women in sciences compared to the apparent experience in
the general population. Either I am seeing a dramatically skewed
sample, or the reality in the "outside world" is not accurately
reflected in these statistics! Certainly the students I work with are among the best I have ever worked with, and I
don't know how often I pause and wonder "where are all the Men!?".
(And I'm not just saying that to be P.C. - you know me better)
I wonder if these observations (not Ilana's, but the ones that she is
quoting) simply represent a lag-phase, and that the picture will
balance out (with or without employment equity schemes) over time? My
own experiences certainly suggest that the statistics quoted here are
terribly off compared to any "reality" that I know...
—Mark Wilkinson
Assistant Professor (Bioinformatics)
From: Robert
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 8:02 AM
Subject:
The Silly Sex? And "Jeopardy!" Contestants
I believe I've noticed a significant male advantage in number and
success of
“Jeopardy!” contestants, even though the producers don't even
pretend to choose contestants entirely on merit. Entertainment value
is everything to the show's producers, after they've assured
themselves that the potential contestant won't disgrace himself.
The counter-example to this, I guess, would be the woman who beat Ken
Jennings. But how long did she last? I can't think of a female
super-contestant. One has to wonder how much of a role IQ plays in
this phenomenon, and how much is traceable to greater male
competitiveness. "Jeopardy!", by the way, is a superb social
experiment that has gone on for decades now. The questions are hardly
culture-neutral, but still, assessing the variation among those
contestants with equal knowledge of the culture would be interesting.
I wonder if anyone has done an in-depth analysis of why certain people
win? The data must include tens of thousands of contestants by now.
[In a 2002 paper for the British Journal of Psychology,
Professor Richard Lynn verified the reader’s hunch about sex
differences in general knowledge and semantic memory.—ILANA]
—Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida
From: Allan
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 1:00 PM
Subject:
The Silly Sex?
Ilana,
I can hardly believe that you did not commit sociology in your
article, "The Silly Sex?" You are not silly, but intelligent and
honest.
Bless you.
—Allan
December 2004
From: W., Chuck
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Subject:
The Neoconnerie's Plan For Iran
[And a father’s anguish over his deployed son.]
Ilana,
I read your column criticizing any possible plans for a pre-emptive
strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program facilities. So, Ilana, what
exactly do you think we should do with regard to this very real threat
– talk them to death [have we talked at all?]? Iran will
complete its plans to deploy an intermediate range nuclear missile
delivery system in the very near future. These missiles will be able
to strike targets throughout southern Europe, North Africa, Israel and
the entire Middle East. This includes all our military forces deployed
in these geographic regions. These maniacs will use these weapons
against our military forces and our allies.
My son is a sergeant in the U.S. Army and is now in Iraq. What are you
going to tell me when these monsters incinerate him with one of these
weapons? Do you really think we will remove our military forces from
either Iraq or this area of the world before they have these weapons
in place and are ready to use them? You may be a brilliant commentator
but with all due respect you appear to know absolutely nothing about
our Islamic fascist adversaries, Iran, or military strategy.
—Chuck W.
Scroll down to “PSYCHED
OUT”—Danny L. Newton’s excellent observations in response to
Coddling Killers: The Liberal Root-Causes
Racket.
In the next letter,
Mark notes that many conservatives (and, I might add, libertarians)
have adopted what I termed, “a liberal [or perhaps “a leftist” is
preferable] mindset.” This is certainly true of O’Reilly and Hannity.
From: Mark Fulwiler
Sent: Wednesday, December 29
Subject:
Coddling Killers: The liberal
Root-Causes Racket
Good article: Crime has reasons, not causes. But may I
nitpick with you a little? The idea that people are somehow
~compelled~ to do evil things because of mental illness is common
among ~both~ conservatives and liberals. Take a poll at National
Review and The American Spectator and I'm sure you'd find
almost everyone agreeing that ~some~ bad behavior occurs because of
mental illness. For example, Ronald Reagan wrongly thought that the
man who tried to murder him was sick, not evil.
—Mark Fulwiler
Lethal Weapons - Neocon Groupies was better received than I had
expected. I’m grateful for a note of appreciation from an estimable
paleoconservative syndicated columnist. And one of my favorite book
editors thought the column was “not only a terrific, lively piece in
its own right,” but that “it also says something about neoconservatism
that hasn't been said before, which is quite a feat.” Thanks to all
for making my day.
Many thanks also to
Mises.org readers for selecting my analysis of Martha Stewart’s
legal travails as one of the best Mises.org articles of 2004—it was
tied for number 15 with Robert Murphy’s “What Does Marginality Mean?”
Convicted for Fearing Conviction was selected from 250 articles.
—ILANA
Here are the selected
Top 15 Daily
Articles:
-
Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies, 1774-2004 by H.A. Scott Trask
-
The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III by B.K. Marcus
-
Economics: Vocation or Profession? by Joseph Salerno
-
To Be an Austrian: A Primer by Sean Corrigan
-
What's Wrong with Monopoly (the game)? by Benjamin Powell
-
Capital Exports and Free Trade by J.G. Hülsmann
-
A Nobel Prize for Not Much by Frank Shostak
-
Do Food Makers Want to Kill You? by Lew Rockwell
-
Economics, Philosophy, and Politics by Hans-Hermann
Hoppe
-
100 Years of Medical Robbery by Dale Steinreich
-
Is Laissez-Faire a Threat to Freedom? An Answer to George Soros
by George Reisman
-
Can Markets Predict Elections? by B.K. Marcus
-
Markets, Not Unions, Gave us Leisure by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
-
Experimental Economics, Indeed by Joseph Stromberg
-
What Does Marginality Mean? by Robert Murphy,
tied with
Convicted for Fearing Conviction
by Ilana Mercer
From
Backtalk: Letters
to
Antiwar.com:
December 23, 2004
Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies
I've
always admired your Web site as a source of alternative perspectives
on the news, perspectives that contrast dramatically with the U.S.
government propaganda machine that controls our right-tilted corporate
press.
That said, I recommend you cut your
ties with Ilana Mercer and let her find another forum for her pompous
prose. Nothing in Mercer's writing indicates a true antiwar viewpoint.
She may have issues with the neo-cons, but nothing I've read of hers
has ever suggested that our illegal invasion of Iraq (1200 dead
Americans; 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians) is a crime against humanity
or that the Bush regime is nothing more than a collection of
world-class war criminals.
Further, Mercer is an ardent supporter
of Israel and its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories,
judging by her recent diatribe against the late Yasser Arafat. The
cause of Palestinian suicide bombings is clear: 35 years of Israeli
state terrorism and land theft by the world's fourth most powerful
military force against the Palestinians who have no army, no air
force, no attack helicopters, no tanks, no laser-guided missiles – and
no nuclear arsenal. Israel has all that in spades, and it uses its
might in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the Geneva
Convention's rules regarding treatment of occupied peoples.
It's unfortunate that Mercer has such
huge blind spots, but apparently she's too enamored of her pretentious
prose style to actually express a clear, unequivocal antiwar stance.
And now her latest piece reveals her as a secret fan of Ann Coulter.
She reveals another blind spot in her unintentionally ironic use of
the word "wannabe," because the glamorous headshot of Mercer that you
feature on your homepage suggests that Mercer herself is a wannabe of
Coulter, the sexy right-wing babe who uses images of herself in long
blond tresses and tight-fitting leather skirts on her book covers to
arouse sales. Coulter and her clones, all admired by Mercer, would be
the last people on earth one might describe as "antiwar."
Let Mercer find another venue for her
overblown claptrap with its showy display of foreign phrases. Nothing
I've ever read of hers has ever aided my understanding of the Iraq war
or of the larger issue of the immorality of war in general. Why?
Because Mercer does not hold that view. This site is called
Antiwar.com and Mercer doesn't come close to being an antiwar writer
or thinker.
~ Ed Harkness
Ilana Mercer replies:
Y et
more rubbish from a reader desperate for conformity on ALL issues.
My antiwar stance? The man either can't
or won't read. Readers who are able to read can access my
War and my
Political Philosophy archives on my Web site. My revulsion
over
the invasion of Iraq goes back to September 2002, I believe, and is
chronicled in detail. Why would I want to repeat arguments I've made
over and over again in columns (and at a considerable cost to myself,
I might add)?
My objections to the war in Iraq (as
articulated in the many columns unread by the reader) are based on
constitutional arguments,
Just War Theory, and natural law ("Unnatural
Lawlessness" is a good example), applied to the best of my
abilities. No war is desirable, although some wars are just and some
are not. Clearly, I am no pacifist.
There is nothing in my column, "Lethal
Weapons," that expresses adulation for Coulter. (See my response to
Sid Smith's letter, below. Sid is enamored of the two women
mentioned.) The thing with a ranter like Ed Harkness is that he wants to see a partisan diatribe on all issues. I
give credit where it's due. Ann Coulter is not without talent or
ability. Most females who claim otherwise are simply jealous of her.
The reader makes another ludicrous
charge: myself and Antiwar.com are supposed to refrain from featuring
my photograph because, according to this individual’s "reasoning," the
display of female attractiveness is an exclusive Ann Coulter
trademark, and signals, not only a wish to be like her, but a pro-war
stance. What can one say of such asininity? Aside his lackluster
logic, the reader's views belong with the feminists and the lookism
socialists. (Clearly my looks have helped NOT an iota in overcoming
the "stigma" of my views.)
My views on Israel? I would suggest the
reader try this little mental exercise, the one
Edmonton Journal's
Lorne Gunter posed: "If Palestinians stopped their attacks today,
tomorrow there would be no Israeli attacks. But if Israel stopped
unilaterally, would you trust the Palestinians to follow?" Who the
initiator of aggression is here ought to be a no-brainer for
libertarians, but the adoption of faulty, leftist, root-causes
thinking (Palestinians intentionally kill civilians because they are
historically upset) has helped obliterate the libertarian distinction
between aggressor and non-aggressor.
D ear
Ms. Mercer:
Courageous essay. I think you have
broached a topic that has been simmering on the edge of consciousness
for a while: the role of what you call "war harpies" in promoting our
present foreign policy. I think you have shown great intellectual
courage in bringing up a topic that some "paleos" may consider
forbidden.
Actually, if someone calls himself a "paleo,"
I am not sure if the subject is "forbidden" or more along the lines of
"I've simply forgotten." I say that in complete jest, of course. It's
just that I have never understood why "paleos" wear that moniker as a
badge of honor. "Paleo," after all, connotes "so long ago I can't tell
you when." Again, just a joke but my point is this: I am not sure a
paleo movement will win in the world of politics or the world of the
libido – but who knows.
If I may say so myself, well before you
jumped on board at this Web site, I noticed that Fox TV had cornered
the market on associating the Iraqi invasion with sexual
attractiveness, although there are some knockouts at CNN and MSNBC as
well.
And to overcome this disadvantage and
to help the paleos, I suggested a very daring strategy months ago in
an e-mail to this Web site. Raimondo, in his role as editorial
director, should ask out for drinks the wife of the imperial mayor of
San Francisco. I recommended the Top of the Mark.
The primary reason for this unheeded
strategy was simple. I thought that Ms. Newsom had the potential to
make a great spokesperson for the conservative antiwar movement as
well as a contributor to the Web site. This was before you became part
of the staff.
You mentioned a Ms. Marsden. I now very
little about her but I read enough in your essay to hear alarm bells.
She seems to have the Lady Macbeth complex. The best response is to
run fast and run far.
You also mentioned Ms. Ann Coulter and
Ms. Laura Ingraham. Both are attractive and high-octane intellectuals,
but, for what it is worth, I see a difference between the two. Ms.
Coulter, I merely speculate, comes across as the type who would do
shots of Jaegermister at a Country Western bar to show that she is one
of the boys. I say that as a compliment – well, sort of. I am sure she
is lots of fun.
Ms. Ingraham – the former law clerk at
the US Supreme Court – appears to represent the best of the
bluestocking corporate law crowd. She seems more at home at some place
like the Jonathan Club in LA. Very classy. And unlike some others from
this intellectual tradition, I don't think she is the type that would
spend an entire dinner date talking about the nuances of a motion for
summary judgment or the thrill of hearing arguments over an antitrust
issue.
Ms. Ingraham has that rare combination
of class along with some real pizzazz, at least in my opinion. Takes
both. My guess is that after an evening with Ms. Ingraham, even
someone like Pat Buchanan would say, "Thank you, Jesus, for the US
Supreme Court; once I was a paleo but now I am one hell of a judicial
activist!"
Now that's saying a lot.
But, alas, if Ms. Ingraham is arguing
that the Iraqi invasion and occupation is constitutional, then even
she is on the wrong side of history. How sad. She represents feminine
wisdom no more.
~ Sid Smith
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear
Sid,
Thanks you for the kind words.
Regarding libido and war: As I put it
in "Tuned-Out,
Turned-On, and Hot for War": "Perverted warpath patriotism gets
people hot, and people who are in a constant state of heightened
emotional arousal tend to want to remain that way – the emotions are
self-reinforcing. The president and his advisers (and the chattering
classes) know that to keep the people tuned-out, they must keep them
turned-on." Sex and violence are ideal vehicles through which to
achieve this un-elevated state of arousal, which then spills over into
ratings and support for military action. (At least that's my theory
about the psychological dynamic behind war as a vehicle for political
popularity.)
I am sorry you came away from my column
praising the beauty of the Fox "Jenna Jameson look-alikes." There is
nothing, in my mind, attractive about their cheap faces and foghorn
voices. But, apparently, the networks know what men prefer:
cheap-looking and loud. I was certainly making an aesthetic statement
in my column. Men may like "pasty
flesh, bleached candyfloss hair, a plump thickset mug and a bulbous
mouth," but these are not aesthetically appealing women. Try
Alex Witt and
Natalie Morales of MSNBC for striking, refined beauty and a more
subdued, professional approach to anchoring.
Marsden – she's a case study –
demonstrates the moral tenor of the neoconservative establishment.
These are anything but cultural conservatives with family values and
an immutable notion of right and wrong. (And I thought we had banned
the importation of mad cows from Canada!)
I am also sorry you came away from my
column hailing Coulter and Ingraham as Philosopher Queens. That was
not my intention. I gave them limited and fair credit, no more. To
dismiss Coulter, as some libertarians do, to my mind, is ridiculous.
Coulter has a facility with words, and is, yes, funny. That’s a rarity
in writing. But to call them "high-octane intellectuals"! Dear me, if
I've led the reader to think these women are deep thinkers (I don’t
think I did), I apologize profoundly.
Finally, poor Mr. Raimondo: I would
think it cruel and unusual punishment to make him court the toothy,
leftist wife of noisome Mayor Newsom of San Francisco.
From: mark chapman
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Subject:
Lethal Weapons - Neocon Groupies
Good Day, Ms. Mercer;
I enjoyed the subject article, being just about the biggest un-fan of
Mr. Bush and what Australian prime-ministerial hopeful Mark Latham
once referred to as his "conga-line of suckholes". However, I was
stunned to follow a few links and read about Rachel Marsden of Simon
Fraser University victim fame.
I remember the case from local news. I don't know if you were aware,
but Ms. Henderson was paid a substantial sum of money in compensation
her for the "trauma" she underwent in that case. Astonishingly, when
it became evident that the accuser was in fact the stalker, she was
not asked to return the money.
In any event, she does indeed sound like Rush (an appropriate name
given his drug appetites) Limbaugh in her mockery of the Abu Ghraib
abuses, totally ignoring the cultural component that makes such
"frat-house pranks" as simulated homosexual acts and wearing women's
undergarments so much more humiliating to Muslim men than would be the
case with their North American counterparts.
We here in Canada have become accustomed to seeing the discomfort of
Americans in the shameful acts of their countrymen (and women). Many
acknowledge that it makes them ashamed to be American themselves.
"Rachel Marsden" provides a very uncomfortable opportunity to walk a
mile in their shoes.
Best regards,
—R. Mark Chapman
Victoria, British Columbia
Canada
From
Backtalk:
Letters
to Antiwar.com:
December 10, 2004
Feeding the Iraq Moloch
T here is no excuse for government's paying for innocent hostages.
Killing innocents will isolate the terrorists to the support of
immoral people. The exchange of hostages is only reasonable if all are
combatants. As long as we release their innocents and they behead ours
my support for this war will grow.
I was very vocal in my opposition to this war before it started. I
also think Bush is the best man to get us out. He has a very strong
incentive to prove the opposition wrong about him. You can see this in
his insistence that the elections go forward in January.
I hope I can follow your logic next time.
~
David Knight
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear David,
If I understand your argument, it is that governments should refrain
from negotiating for the lives of innocent hostages so that when they
are invariably killed by terrorists, even immoral people will be
sufficiently repulsed and defect to our side.
Let's leave aside the question of whether this will work (or whether
our side is just). One point in "Feeding the Iraq Moloch" was that it
is ethically wrong for government to use innocent people as pawns to
advance policy. Utilitarianism (such as your letter advocates) and
ethics, I believe, are mutually exclusive.
Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute commented that I was partly
mistaken: "Utilitarianism is an ethical theory. It may be wrong, but
it's a theory of justice and a guide to right and wrong. To say that
we should try to generate the greatest happiness for the greatest
number, for example, may be ethically misguided, but it is an ethical
claim."
As a matter of classification, this may be so. But my question is
this: Who decides how to go about generating the greatest happiness
for the greatest number of individuals? Donald H. Rumsfeld? If an
approach presupposes a central planner who may overrule individual
rights for the "greater good," then does it not conflict with a
libertarian, rights-based approach? Yes, it does.
Government ought to confine its activities to the negative functions
of protecting the life and property of its citizens. Utilitarian
considerations give grand scope to interventions based on ambitious
schemes and ideologies. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, also
sanctions the abnegation by government of its only true duties in the
name of a putative greater good.
Thanks for disagreeing so politely.
—ILANA
From: Morley Evans
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004
Subject:
Feeding the Iraq Moloch
Dear Ilana,
Perhaps we must face the very real possibility that the stories we
ordinary people are told by our rulers have nothing more to do with
reality than the stories created at WWF to sell tickets to wrestling
matches. The "story lines" at WWF are as real as daytime "soap operas"
or the "shocking exposés" on the Jerry Springer Show. Do you know
anyone like those people? You probably don't. It is all bunk.
When it comes to politicians, tell your children, "Do not get sucked
in. Do not believe one word they say. It is all lies."
What's going on in Iraq is just part of the show being put on today by
the War Industry. And there is nothing we can do about it. We are
forced to buy a ticket whether we want to buy a ticket or not. We are
forced to support this idiocy whether we believe the story or not. But
unlike wrestling and other soap operas, real homes, real shops, real
factories
are being blown up and real people are being killed in Iraq.
For what? Oh yeah, the cock and bull story we have been told. You
would think they could have done better. Maybe they don't think they
need to make the effort anymore. Maybe they are testing to see how
stupid we the people really have become …
The imperial storm troopers sincerely believe they are just trying to
help. Someone must tell them that peace is not what grows out of the
barrel of a gun. Somehow they and the people who support them think it
does. Where did they get this idea? The people who sent them to
destroy Iraq don't care. They sell the guns. We pay their way, whether
we want to or not.
The only good idea Mr. Bush and his friends have is that taxes must be
cut. That's right; they should have 99% less to spend. "But then we
would be defenseless!" That's right, and we would not need a defense.
The biggest threat to us and to everyone else would be gone.
Blessing and peace be upon you,
—Morley Evans
From: Joan Kahn
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Subject:
Ariel Sharon Rolls the Dice
Dear Ilana,
I enjoy reading your columns and find you very interesting. However,
your take on the disengagement (yes - a reward for terror and TERRIBLE
for future negotiations! and probably against the will of most Jews
here despite media propaganda and terribly IMMORAL!) does not make
sense to me. I just don't get how you can be pro
"Disengagement”—transfer or girush or ethnic cleansing would be the
proper words—and have the other opinions you have.
I also want to thank you for generally defending our little hated
country that most of the world is so hypocritical about. You are a
true friend. Despite our disagreement on this one issue, I wish you
much luck and success and I occasionally forward your site to friends
of mine abroad who may not see it by themselves.
Kol tuv lach (all the best to you in Hebrew),
—Joan Zia Kahn
Metar, Israel (in the Negev, near Beersheva, if you are not familiar
with Metar)
November 2004
The response to
Muslim Immigration Time Bomb Ignored by
American Jews was voluminous and surprising. The mail
received was mostly from 1) Rank anti-Semites.
Stop Writing Me About the Jews by Fred Reed is a good antidote,
although it doesn’t tackle the illogical contaminant: conspiracy
thinking. 2) Well-educated and patriotic Jews who agreed with the
column. Syndicated columnist and talk-show host Martin Nemko was one.
Another was Richard A. Sandell, Ph.D., J.D., LL.M, a “child of the
Holocaust,” and a Vietnam veteran, who served two full tours of duty,
and was seriously wounded twice.
—ILANA
From: David Clum
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Subject:
Feeding the Iraq Moloch
Ilana,
I do so enjoy your writing and think you have good handle on most
things but on this one I have to disagree… somewhat.
I say somewhat because I do agree that allowing hostages to die
without some sort of attempt to recover them is unconscionable.
However, there are no accidents. Those civilian hostages made a choice
to enter an area of the planet known to be hostile to them.
When someone chooses to travel to such a place as a war zone,
regardless of their motives, I have very little, if any, sympathy for
them when they end up in harm’s way.
I also have no doubt that the majority of Muslims worldwide couldn’t
care less if someone slit your throat just to watch you bleed. You
know this hatred toward the “infidels” has been going on since Jacob
and Esau.
The problem is not that we do not negotiate with the criminals it’s
that we tolerate their existence at all.
When I returned from Vietnam in 1972 I vowed never to take up arms
against anyone again unless they were threatening mine or my loved
ones’ life at home. I also vowed never to spend a minute in a hostile
territory unless that territory was my own backyard.
I’d suggest to anyone who asks that they stay as far away as possible
from Iraq and any other place that is known to be hostile to their
person.
Find something else to do, somewhere else to go.
I’m sure the loss of the hostages’ lives did not become watershed
moments in the course of this conflict. (It was so to them, of course)
But if they wanted to stay alive on this planet they should have
stayed home and watched the action on TV like everyone else.
Keep up the good work!
—David Clum
-----Original Message-----
From: Rorri Wiesinger
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004
Subject: Conservatives vs. Neoconservatives in the Evangelical
Community
Dear Ilana-
I know that you're Jewish, and not an evangelical Christian. You may
not even be a theist; but regardless of whatever theological views you
may hold, I thoroughly enjoy and agree with your political
philosophical views. You consistently and unwaveringly endorse
freedom, while also endorsing the principles of limited government.
My pastor is an evangelical Christian pastor. His stance against Bush
and the gelded GOP has not earned him any friends; in fact, he has
been ostracized by his own Evangelical community. He earned his
postgraduate degrees from—get this—Falwell's Liberty University. There
is some hope.
Your Evangelical and libertarian friend,
—Rorri Wiesinger
From: Marty Nemko
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Subject:
Muslim Immigration Time Bomb Ignored by
American Jews
Yes, we Jews are the most self-destructive people ever. We fight for
the rights of groups who want to decimate us, not just Muslims but
Blacks.
—Marty Nemko, Ph.D. Career and Education Consultant
Syndicated careers columnist, San Francisco Chronicle
Producer, Host,
Work With Marty Nemko, 91.7 FM
From: Michael
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004
Subject:
The Big Dog's Lapdogs
Hi there Ilana,
I referred to your web site from
Anti-war.com, and I just read the article by your fathers (Do
Not Attend Racist Conference in Durban). I'm from South Africa
too, and I'm a Christian who is a strong supporter of Israel. I’ve
been in many circles, from neo-Nazi skinheads to Lebanese to
Palestinians to western liberals, and I've often wondered to myself
WHY this irrational hate for the Jews beyond any reason? I've heard
everything from world wars to stabbing a toe being blamed on the Jews.
This "maniacal" hate for the Jews is insane...and it’s been around
throughout the ages....very strange. It often seems that European and
Nazi "support" for the Arabs is due to the fact that they will support
anyone who hates the Jews, not that they actually support anything to
do with the Arabs’ "plight," it’s just a vehicle for hate towards the
Jews.
Anyway, that’s my two cents worth.
Zechariah 8: 13:
“As you have been an object of cursing among the nations, O Judah and
Israel, so will I save you, and you will be a blessing. Do not be
afraid, but let your hands be strong."
Shalom
—Mike
From: Nicki Fellenzer
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 6:54 AM
Subject:
The Big Dog's Lapdogs
Ilana, you are SO dead on with this one! I've been saying this for
years—even when I wasn't reclassifying into Military Intelligence. How
the hell can we carry out a military operation when we have to worry
about the media broadcasting our every move to any "freedom" fighter
who cares to tune in to CNN on any given day? Worse yet—as if we
didn't have enough to worry about—we also have to worry about the
unarmed, untrained civilian in our midst, dragging along his
microphone, his cell phone and God only knows what other equipment
that could hamper his safety during a possible attack. Further (and I
admit this may be my paranoia due to too much time spent majoring in
National Security Studies), what is stopping an enterprising terrorist
from picking up a journalist's broadcast signal via satellite,
inferring troop location from said signal and killing the lot?
—Nicki Fellenzer
National Spokesperson
Armed Females of America
- ----Original Message-----
From: Robert Clark
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Subject:
The Big Dog's Lapdogs
The Military is always looking for ways to sell their game no matter
who gets hurt. The media doesn't care because, "If it bleeds, it
leads." And they are there to insure there is plenty of blood spilt to
cover their pages of badness.
As always, your humble servant,
—Robert
From: Linda Miller
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004
Subject:
The Talmud on How to Treat a Woman—some beautiful words sent by a
beautiful lady (& a friend of freedom).
To all of the special women on my email list: If you find that you are
connected to a man that does not appreciate what the Talmud says, then
you need to enlighten him by becoming strong, and speaking up to
protect yourself. That doesn't mean that you become disrespectful
since this would only put us in the wrong. I have seen too many women
take this too far, and become disrespectful of their men. We all need
to be mindful of how we treat each other, men and women. That means
equal expectations of one another, respect, and compassion.
This is written in the Hebrew Talmud. Pass the Talmud’s words on to
all the exceptional women and men that you know—so they know the value
of a woman:
Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her
tears.
The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked
on.
Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal.
Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.
Love,
—Linda Miller
From Backtalk:
Letter to Antiwar.com, November 2, 2004
Kerry's Cowardly Convergence
M adam, at this late
hour, one must do more than just ridiculing Kerry, I am afraid. As
Suskind pointed out so terrifyingly well, the problem is a monstrous
one, very much concerning MANKIND as such. Can you imagine what would
happen during four MORE years of (the creation of) new reality?!
Writing to you, esteemed madam, from the boonies of western Canada, I
strongly suggest that anyone of any significance who still has a few
moments to spare before Nov. 2, uses them to press the more or most
influential media people, the editors-in-chief, possibly even the
advertisers, to make them point out the Bushian lies and all that. The
American people, contrary to popular belief in Europe, are not too
stupid to understand what's going on; they are merely not being told!
The media are as cowardly (or ignorant) as Kerry is.
Your articles in some entre nous corner of the
alternative-media is "nice," but we have a major, serious, genuine
catastrophe on our hands. I wish I could talk to Koppel, King, Lehrer,
and/or their bosses.
It is a monstrosity!
Do something, please!
But thanks for your piece.
~ HGvPH (Henning)
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear Sir,
Thank you for your letter; but I wonder what you imagine the writers
on Antiwar.com and myself have been doing since, what I called in
my book, "the ramp up to the war in Iraq"?
We saw it coming well before mainstream media did – and well before
Suskind did, I might add, although Jonnies-come-lately are always
welcome. (I called the invasion of Iraq a "faith-based" initiative on
February 12, 2003 –
here. In the same column I referred to neocon Lincoln-lovers as
"Jacobin jackals," also one of the first of such references.)
Your national newspaper, The Globe And Mail, published my "Save
America from the War Party" (they gave it a different title) on
Sept. 19, 2002. In short succession, I followed up with essays
exposing the media's role in the drive to war. "Tuned-Out,
Turned-On, And Hot For War," "On
Pimps And 'Presstitutes'" are some of them (all in the book).
After writing "In
Bed With the Military," a play on "embedded," the local PBS TV
station invited me to participate in one of the first discussions
about the (supportive) role the media played in the invasion. (Links
to the debate can be followed from my site –
here.) My hopes were raised when Lew Rockwell was interviewed on
Now with Bill Moyers.
Alas.
We have been shouting from the metaphorical rooftops nonstop,
although, as you must have noticed by now, we are not being included
in mainstream discourse. (Bimbos like Wonkette are, so I disagree with
your positive assessment of the American public. I've grown a little
cynical, you see.)
I gave expression to my disgust at this state of affairs in "Pundits
Heal Thyself."
So, give us a break. And please support – don't admonish or patronize
– the troops on sites like this one.
K erry and his record
stands for itself, and the past 20-plus years cannot be be denied.
Think about it! If I did not believe in this DEMOCRACY I would have
lined Kerry up against the laws of treason and tried him in the courts
of this NATION. His record speaks for itself: a traitor, by any other
name. God bless Bush for making the uncomfortable choices to keep us
free from terror. This is a conflict of religions and cultures
designed to overcome our Western influence in the Middle East. Have
you lost your mind about the real problem that exists? Bush is a
PATRIOT who believes in the MANIFEST DESTINY of the United States of
America. Do you want to ride a bike to work, or give away the
technology to someone else in a foreign land? Better rethink your
goals, ASAP!
~ John E. Brammer
Y es, Kerry's echoing of
many of Bush's Iraq policies is disheartening, to say the least.
Unfortunately, anyone in this country who would advocate the only
reasonable course of action, namely, withdrawal from Iraq, would have
no chance to win election to the presidency. Kerry has no choice but
to support the war effort, at least until he defeats Bush in the
upcoming election.
In these critical moments before Nov. 2, the necessity of our country
to disgorge its worst president ever needs to take priority over
Kerry-bashing. Who can doubt that a more "reality-centered"
administration under Kerry is going to be more open to reason than the
fundamentalists currently running the country? Should Kerry defeat
Bush, we have far greater hope of holding his feet to the fire on the
war issue (not to mention benefiting from his far more progressive
stances on social, economic and environmental issues) than we ever
will with Bush, et al.
~ Stephen Foust
Ilana Mercer replies:
Y ou would agree then
with the position expressed so well by Scott McConnell in "Kerry's
the One."
It's a tough one, but I think I would go with Alan W. Bock's "Libertarian
Resistance."
October 2004
This reader, whose tamer letter I have published hereunder, would
benefit from Jon The Jew Stewart’s new brilliant book.
America (The Book) is a secondary school, typically American
tuition book with lots of pictures and pop-up learning aids. The
Foreword by Thomas Jefferson is the icing on the cake. The brilliant
and bold Jon provides a nice diagram of The Shadow Government. The
starting point is “The Sandy Koufax Center for Jewish Influence Over
World Affairs.” It branches into three: “The Darryl F. Zanuck
Institute For Media Domination and Talmudic Study,” the “Dr. Isidor
and Rose Glassman World Banking Control-Agogue.” And, naturally, the
“B’nai B’rith 9/11 Planning Center.” Oh, I almost did injustice to
Jon’s comprehensive pictorial. Set apart in a class of their own are …
The “Illuminati Jews From The Center of the Earth.”
—ILANA
From: Falange
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004
Subject: In response to, what else? my
Kerry's Cowardly Convergence, your Standard anti-Semitic rant, shrieks and all.
Listen, I know that I, and others, are losing their Constitutional
rights [e.g. the Patriot Act, and the coming Patriot Act II and
Patriot Act III] because of America's way-too-powerful Zionist lobby
and the trouble that that causes with the Arabs. And then, when I
point out that powerful Zionist lobby, I am a "hater." Ha! It's too
funny..... the Iraq War is the turning point. Too many people now know
that a handful of Jews manipulated America into the war. Too bad that
most people don't know about WWI [the Balfour Dec.] and WWII [FDR's
Jewish cabinet full of Marxists who hated Germany and Japan and
isolated them into a conflict way before WWII. The irony: Jewish
leftists writing/editing the Balfour Dec. and also the Morgenthau
Plan! Both! Hah. And they say that Jews have no influence...] :-)
Tom G. Palmer of the
Cato Institute writes this on his
blog (I’ll ponder his comments before I reply):
October 23, 2004
An Alternative View of the Proper Response to Hostage Taking
I received a very cordial note from Ms. Ilana Mercer in response to my
posting just below, on how to respond to the demands of hostage
takers. She wrote:
——
Someone sent me your entry.
I offered a different perspective in
“After Their Heads Roll, America’s Dead Remain Faceless”.
——
I responded to her thoughtful essay with the following letter. (Note,
were my comment system functioning, I would have put the exchange in
the comment section. Before reading my response, of course, I’d
recommend reading Ms. Mercer’s essay.)
Dear Ms. Mercer,
Thank you for the link to your essay, which I found eloquently argued
but not convincing.
In particular, I do not agree with the claim that “The argument that
by negotiating with terrorists we may embolden them doesn’t bear a
moment’s examination.” Surely it bears at least a moment’s
examination. The terrorists could certainly become bolder and could
grab yet more hostages and subject them to the same treatment as Mrs.
Hassan, Mr. Bigley, Mr. Berg, and the others . There is good reason to
believe that at least some of the kidnappings are undertaken by “Ali
Babas,” many of them hardened criminals who had been released from
prison on Saddam Hussein’s orders just before the war as a “poison
pill” for the post war government. They grab the victims and then sell
them to the ideological terrorists for money. With each capitulation,
the value of having a victim goes up. That certainly has an effect on
both the ideological terrorists and the criminal gangs who sell them
victims. A moment’s examination is merited. In fact, much more than a
moment.
I also wonder how far you would take the principles that you
articulated in your essay. You wrote, “the hostages can be saved. The
question, however, remains: should we negotiate with terrorists? The
answer is: it depends. There are manifold complexities. Certainly
matters are not as simple as Bush has led sacrificial lambs like the
Hensley family to believe.” Since capitulations to terrorists will
increase the value of hostages, we could expect to see more
hostage-taking. That seems pretty simple. The French government, faced
with the same threat to French citizens, refused to rescind what seems
to me a rather clearly unjust law governing what school pupils put on
their own heads. Should the French government have rescinded the law?
Let’s set aside the injustice of the law in question and posit that it
was not an unjust law, but a case of holding known murderers in
prison. That happened in the 1980s when I was in Paris. Lebanese
terrorists were in French prison and their comrades were blowing up
bombs on Paris streets. (I walked past two of those bombs, which went
off not long after I had passed by, so they made an impression on me.)
Those bombs resulted in the deaths of innocent Parisians. The French
did not back down. Should they have let murderers out of prison in
order to stop the bombings? They refused, on the grounds that that
would have emboldened other potential bombers to make similar demands
for their friends or family members. That seems pretty simple to me.
You indicate no reason or principle that would tell us when not to
capitulate. Since you seem to favor unilateral and immediate
withdrawal of all U.S. and British forces (and presumably, South
Korean, Polish, Australian, Estonian, Bulgarian, Albanian, etc., etc.
forces), it seems that you’ve found a reason to further that cause,
viz., to save the lives of hostages. But I don’t think that you do
that cause any favors by tying it to a case that would, if followed
consistently, lead to the most brutal winning every battle that they
chose to wage. If a government were to adopt your reasoning, what
would stop them from, say, rescinding gay marriage in Massachusetts or
restoring the ban on interracial marriage in Virginia, if an American
charity worker were kidnapped by terrorists who made such demands?
Surely, that can’t be right. Yet I see nothing in your essay that
would argue against it.
Being moved to tears by the pleas of a victim should not lead us to
abandon our reason, which is what I think your essay suggests. I don’t
know what I would do in such a situation, because I have never been
tested and hope that I never am tested in that way. But I also hope
that the U.S. or British governments would not change their policies
merely in order to save my life. I disagree that Tony Blair or George
Bush are simply indifferent to the victims, as you suggest. I think
that they are thinking like I do. An actual case of indifference is
the indifference shown by almost all of the opponents of going to war
with Iraq, by which I mean those who favored the Clinton
administration’s policies of embargo and random bombing (well, mostly
random, if we set aside the dropping of bombs every time Monica
Lewinski appeared on TV and on the day of the impeachment vote, when
Clinton’s defenders accused his impeachers of “treason” for voting for
impeachment “when troops were in the field”). Those bombings killed
thousands of Iraqis, most of them clearly noncombatants. I remember no
marches, no protests, no weepy speeches by Susan Sarandon or Tim
Robbins. That’s indifference. When thousands of Serbs were killed by
the Clinton administration, the only people who protested were a few
libertarians (I was among them) and various ethnic Serbs. The rest
didn’t care. That’s indifference. Refusing to capitulate to terrorist
extortion? That’s not indifference. That’s concern for the
consequences for others of such an act.
Thank you again for sending me your cordial note with a link to your
essay, which I enjoyed reading and about which I did some thinking
before sending this response.
Cordially,
Tom G. Palmer
Posted by
Tom Palmer at October 23, 2004 10:09 PM
I lana
Mercer, a former legal resident of Israel, is little more than a
lobbyist for Israel who has accused libertarians who dare to criticize
Israel – including Justin Raimondo – of being anti-Semites. Why would
Antiwar.com publish her?
~ Carol Moore, Washington, DC
Justin Raimondo replies:
I
don't recall Ilana actually calling me an "anti-Semite," and I believe
she explicitly said I was not an anti-Semite, although she disagrees
with me about the nature of the Israeli state and the present Israeli
government. But, so what? The criteria for appearing on Antiwar.com
are only that a given article must be 1) making a point against U.S.
intervention, 2) well-written, and, hopefully, 3) doing these things
in an interesting way that teaches readers something new. Ilana's
piece satisfied all or most of these criteria.
T he
article by Ilana Mercer tells more about our government's hypocrisy
than any official pronouncement. Most conservatives are for capital
punishment, against abortion, and pro-war – but why? Are our soldiers
no more than pawns on the chess board? Are their lives so cheap that
we can ignore them and their families? Why should anybody enlist to
serve when he/she knows that their government will not lift a finger
to save them in case of their capture? The government which does not
care about its subjects is not the government for the people, it is
for all intents and purposes an illegitimate government, and should be
changed!
~ Bozidar Kornic
Ilana Mercer replies:
D ear
Bozidar: You got the point of the essay exactly right.
I hope that once youngsters realize
this simple reality, they will not enlist. This is not an unlikely
scenario; it's one for which we can at least realistically hope.
M s.
Mercer: I just read your article entitled "After Their Heads Roll,
America's Dead Remain Faceless." I would like to remind you that since
you are so disgusted with President Bush and the "American way," you
are free to go back to Israel at any time – I promise we Americans
won't miss you and will not attempt to stop you in any way! Perhaps
you are of the opinion that you have somehow done the world, or at
least America, a favor by coming here. Let me assure you, that is not
the case.
It's interesting that since you have so
much angst with the attitudes, beliefs and "the way things are done"
in America you would want to be here – maybe you should ponder that
for a while. Perhaps the reasons you came here exist because America
doesn't negotiate with terrorists – ever consider that?
Again, I invite you to leave! If Israel
– or Korea or any other country you praised – is so much more "on
track," I would think you would be racing to get there – if not, stop
condemning President Bush and the American government and be thankful
to be here!
Here's something else to consider: all
of the American men and women who have died thus far in the war
voluntarily joined the military. They were not drafted or forced by
the government to go to Iraq – nor were the American civilians who
went. Every single person in the US military made a conscientious
choice to place their life in harm's way – as did every American
civilian.
~ Natalie McGraw
Ilana Mercer replies:
I
love America (especially the original idea of America) and am
dedicated to fighting for liberty here, not elsewhere. If I see good
things in other nations and think we should learn from them, it
doesn't mean I don't love America most and want to fight for justice
here.
The reason I wrote the column was
because I thought Americans were being abandoned by their leaders.
Just because you put your life on the
line for what you think is the good of your country doesn't mean you
should be treated as the dispensable property of the state. It is the
obligation of the military to do everything it can to retrieve its
captured soldiers. If this is not its code, then it should be.
On the other hand, maybe once young
people realize the military thinks of them as expendable, they will
not enlist.
The rest are letters sent directly to me—some about this last
column, others about
Democratic Despotism, still others about WND. —ILANA
From: Loren Cummins
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004
Subject:
After Their Heads Roll, America's Dead Remain Faceless
Ilana,
I have read your articles for the last couple of years and found most
of them to be worthwhile. I TOTALLY disagree with most of your last
article. The two girls from Italy were freed due to the ransom being
paid. The result is that there were ten abductions today! If you give
in to these people they don't stop doing bad things. They have no
credibility and their morals are extremely skewed. What has talking
and bargaining gained Israel? All it's neighbor's still want to blot
it from the map.
—Loren
From: Kyle J. Sparks
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004
Subject:
After Their Heads Roll, America's Dead Remain Faceless
I read your article; as always, well articulated oration.
The only pangs I have as I read it were regarding setting precedents
for terrorists to continue kidnapping and executing to get their way.
And, I think that anyone who would go to Iraq to work in rebuilding
the country had better be ready to meet their Maker.
If I were in command, and this may sound cold, but I would not move an
inch toward any demands of any terrorists holding a captive for any
reason and with any threatened outcome. I would assume that anyone
foreigner who was taken in Iraq would have gone there knowing that the
odds of them being captured or killed are probably higher than the
odds of them coming out of there alive. If I was captured, I would
expect NO one to make any concessions to terrorists on my behalf.
That would set the whole world back and advance terrorism every time
it occurred.
Thanks,
—Kyle
From: Ben Knobel
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004
Subject: I’ve published one or two notes sent by my wonderful WND
readers. The gist was generally, to quote one of them, “Why are you
not at WND anymore? You are the best thing they had going for them.”
The intention is not to boast, only to express my appreciation to
these faithful readers for supporting the column over the years.—ILANA
Ilana,
Your commentary has been a source of inspiration for me just knowing
someone still has what it takes to fight the good fight and be bold
enough to not care what the reaction is going to be about a certain
stance but only care if it is the truth or not. Your class as a writer
is rare these days. You remind me of the way our forefathers wrote,
choosing your words carefully to declare what needs to be said with
grace and boldness as if your life depended on it.
I have also been reading the LewRockwell.com page for several years
now. You, along with Lew Rockwell and Walter Williams, are the hope of
this nation. I have this dream that we have people of your caliber in
high office one day leading by example and inspiring the masses to
govern their own lives. I think this dream is the same dream that
caused people of Europe to get on those deathtraps of ships and sail
away to a new land. I am looking for a new land and I am not finding
any on my map. You are my Thomas Jefferson. You are my Nathan Hale.
You are the person of high caliber that this country needs.
Your absence from the list of writers at the WND site was shocking to
me. You should have been promoted to a daily post but instead was put
aside like a troublemaker.
Take hope Ilana, God Almighty is not the only one that appreciates
you.
—Ben
From: Skip
Sent: Friday, October 08, 2004 7:01 PM
Subject: WND
Dear Ilana,
Where did you go? I can't find you on WND.
Before the Bush regime, I used to go to WND everyday and read almost
every article by everybody. Since the bush infestation, I have
completely quit going there, except on Friday for your insightful
articles. I appreciate a commentator that isn't a sock puppet.
Sincerely,
—Skip j
September 2004
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004
Subject:
Democratic Despotism
I quit reading WorldNetDaily because of its seemingly blind obedience
to, and support of, King George by Farah and most of its commentators.
As to both parties, it won't matter who is in control at the federal
level, both parties agree on taking away more of our money and
freedoms. The more I read the libertarians, the more I think they have
a better idea—indeed, the Founding Fathers’ ideas seem to be theirs.
We were meant to have a Republic, but not to "pledge any allegiance"
to it.
Thanks for the article.
—Alan Shelby
Texas
From: Virostko, Steven
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 7:06 AM
Subject:
The End of Democracy (The same article was written for Mises.org
and featured a week later on WND.)
Ms. Mercer,
I'm sure you get inundated by email, and so may not read this, but I
wanted to say this:
If you, your words, your mind, ever become influential enough to
effect real change in this dying Republic, I want to be on your side.
Although I have a cogent thought processes, I would love to have the
time to educate myself in such a manner that enables me to examine
today's issues as well as you do. I don't believe in fawning, but I am
expressing admiration for your ability to think so thoroughly and
write so well.
I would place you right up there with Bill Buckley. Not having heard
you speak,
I don't know if you have similar erudition, but I wouldn't bet against
it.
Thanks for being a consistent bright spot at WND
[no longer].
Sincerely,
—Steve Virostko
From: Phineas Worthington
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 7:27 AM
Subject:
The End of Democracy
Dear Ilana,
I think your latest article is fantastic. This last Bastille Day, I
was thinking about the French Revolution as it compares to the
American Revolution. The two revolutions were inspired by the same
sets of ideas of natural, individual rights, but had entirely
different outcomes. France
descended into murder and mob rule while America stayed stable enough
to get past some initial difficulties, then survived and prospered.
Many individuals think that France did not succeed in her revolution
because of secularism or their rejection of religion. This fits well
into the rubric of mystical metaphysics, but your article has honed a
more rational explanation of the dichotomy of the two revolutions.
I think, based on a borrowed premise from your article, that unlimited
democracy is more to blame for France's failure in 1789 than
secularism or their rejection of religion. America's success was not
due to the religiousness of her citizens. America's success is due to
strictly limiting democracy and the power of majority rule while
subordinating most laws to the principles of individual rights.
Granted, the Constitution had some glaring contradictions but it
served America far better than France by severely limiting mob rule, I
mean majority rule.
I missed you last week, but you made up for it this week.
—Phineas Worthington
From: Ray McClendon
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject:
Democratic Despotism
Rousseau... DARN HIM TO HECK!!
This proves my theory... I just KNEW the French were behind this in
some way.
FABULOUS piece of work—thank-you!
—Ray
From: Toucalit Benton
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 8:43 AM
Subject:
Democratic Despotism
Greetings Ilana Mercer,
I have been a long time subscriber to the Mises Institute's daily
email distribution. Your most recent article has compelled me to
write, for the first time, without reservation. I completely agree
with all that you have indicated in your article. It was the best
summation of the state of affairs in the US. After completing your
article I feel as though I had finally exhaled.
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
—Toucalit Benton
From: Maloney, Christopher
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004
Subject:
Democratic Despotism
Ma'am:
As for the egalitarianism/socialism, I have always quipped to friends
that they are the type of people who would organize a race, then react
with appalled anger that EVERYBODY didn't cross the finish line at the
exact same time.
Regards,
—Christopher J. Maloney
From: James White
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004
Subject:
On Malkin and Imelda
Dear Ilana
You are not the first to point out the hypocrisy of Ms. Malkin but
your article really hit home. I had e-mailed her last month and asked
why she never talks about “legal immigration”. Does she somehow think
that legal immigrants don’t crowd trains, use resources and put
downward pressure on wages?
I imagine that if she had the opportunity she would have loved nothing
more than to personally spit-shine Imelda’s shoe collection as she
does worship authority. Perhaps the strangest irony is that she
totally forgets how brutal the American Marine was when they invaded
the Philippines.
—Take
Care,
James
From: Edd Forke
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004
Subject:
Needed: A Leave the Children Behind Act!
I don’t always agree with you, Mrs. Mercer, but you nailed this issue
to the wall ... at least once per paragraph.
Most excellent. Unfortunately, those who’ve graduated since 1979
probably wouldn’t understand your article.
—Edd Forké
Naples, Maine
From: JOAN605@aol.com
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 7:03 AM
Subject:
Needed: A Leave the Children Behind Act!
I just read your article on abolishing the Federal Dept. of Education
and agree wholeheartedly. We could give all those wasted billions back
to the parents to spend on the education of their choice. You may want
to let your readers know about the Alliance for the Separation of
School and State which can be found at honested.com. My husband and I
are contributors to the New York Archdiocese Inner-City Scholarship
Fund. The parochial schools do a much better job with less money than
the public schools.
Thank you for your consideration.
Mrs. Joan Carmody
New York, NY
August 2004
What Van says applies, I would argue, not only to the intellectual
worth of
Malkin and other neoconservative female commentators, but,
and with few exceptions, to most female commentators. Those in
positions of power in their respective kingdoms (however insignificant
the kingdom), be they liberal, neoconservative, conservative, paleo-conservative,
or libertarian, prefer the not-very bright female who repeats
partly-line and doesn’t make the tribe uncomfortable. Witness Maureen
Dowd. She is widely praised—even hailed as a genius recently by
Charlie not-a-genius Rose. About this woman’s simpering, cutesy
prose the potent Camille Paglia had this to say: “Maureen Dowd—that
catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queen. She's such an empty vessel.
One pleasure of reading the New York Times online is that I
never have to see anything written by Maureen Dowd! I ignore her
hypertext like spam for penis extenders.” Ditto. But, while Dowd is an
icon, it took Paglia over a decade to get her tome published! I wonder
why.
—ILANA
From: Van Bailey
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 7:24 AM
Subject:
Internment chic & Michelle Malkin
Hi Ilana,
Great piece on Malkin. Back in the mid-'90s, when I was a flack for a
public-interest law firm that defended people victimized by unions, I
had a phone conversation with her. (I believe she was then a columnist
for a Seattle paper.) I had to explain the Wagner Act to her—she had
never heard of it before—and how people in non-right-to-work states
really are required to pay union dues as a condition of employment.
She didn't seem very bright to me.
In the years since, I've watched her star rise in the neocon echo
chamber. (Aided, no doubt, by the fact that she's a woman and easy on
the eyes.) I think two things explain her horrible new book. The first
is her hatred of "undesirables." Although the product of immigrants,
and not exactly a WASP from Cos Cob, she seems to take particular
delight in denouncing "those people" for defiling the American Realm.
It came as no surprise to me that she wrote a book defending
concentration camps for "Japs."
The other reason is that Ann Coulter has raised the bar for
"outrageous" right-wing chick pundits [Although, to be fair,
Coulter, in Treason, at least had a defendable thesis—ILANA].
You've got to get even more extreme than Coulter if you want to stay
on the cutting edge. Soon we should expect:
Laura Ingraham: Lynching: What Was the Big Deal, Really?
Mona Charen: Anyone Horrified By the Military's Cold-War Era
Plutonium
Experiments on Unsuspecting Hospital Patients is a Commie-Lover
Monica Crowley: The Real Coverup: The Plumbers Didn't Break Into
the
Watergate, and I Can Prove It
Peggy Noonan: How Ronald Reagan's Brilliant Iran-Contra Plan
Brought Down the Soviet Union and Saved Humanity
Debbie Schlussel: Absolute Necessity: The Attack on the U.S.S.
Liberty
Anyway, congrats on the Malkin-bashing piece. She's utterly loathsome.
—Van Bailey
Every column
generates what I call a central stupidity. The following reader’s
letter was one such example for
Internment Chic. It's
not relevant who was in those camps: Japanese, Caucasians, albinos, or
Hottentots. Rounding them up was plain wrong.—ILANA
From: Eberhard F.
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004
Subject:
Internment chic & Michelle Malkin
In reviewing her book, which includes references to the internment of
over 15,000 Europeans, you choose to only discuss the racist
internment of Japanese. Let me assure you that Europeans were indeed
interned. I was one of them interned on a warrant signed by none other
than Attorney General Francis Biddle. I was 17 when arrested in my
Woodward High (Cincinnati) classroom in March 1943. I was released in
September 1947, well after the war was long over. Then I was 22.
I WAS INTERNED TOGETHER WITH JAPANESE IN THE CRYSTAL CITY INTERNMENT
CAMP IN TEXAS. Incidentally, the US brought Germans and Italians from
Latin America there for internment with us. We all celebrated the joys
and benefits of that multicultural diversity in Crystal City Texas.
[I hope the reader is being cynical. If so, good line.]
There must be an embargo to discussing the verity of European
internment, while openly, loudly, and quite voluminously depicting
Japanese internment. Why the secrecy, and/or the obfuscation? [None
intended. See my comment above.—ILANA]
My only quarrel with internment is that it continued for two and one
half years after the war ended, and that noted writers such as you
cannot even discuss it when reviewing a book that does. [This is a
red herring.—ILANA]
—Eberhard F.
From: Justin M. Stoddard
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004
Subject:
Internment Chic
Ilana,
Finally! I've been following the reactions to this book in the
blogosphere ever since its release. As far as I can tell, you are the
first libertarian to address it [I don’t know about that; all I
know is that as a libertarian, I had to address it. Malkin advances a
thesis that causes a visceral reaction of nausea]. All the other
sites I've visited have degenerated into positions of racism (if you
are on the left) and national security (those on the right). You are
the first person I've read who has put the whole argument into not
only moral, but Constitutional terms [now that is probably more
accurate].
One other thing: Michelle Malkin is a gun lover (she has stated so in
several of her articles, and good for her). I wonder what her position
would be if said Japanese-American citizens had practiced their second
amendment rights to protect both their property and livelihood.
I can guess [see Cliff Beittel’s letter below for a hint].
That's why, in the end, Michelle is both a shill and a poltroon.
Please, keep up the good work.
Best regards,
-Justin M. Stoddard
From: Cliff Beittel
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 2:28 PM
Subject:
Internment chic & Michelle Malkin
Ilana,
Great column on Michelle Malkin (which I found at
Antiwar.com). Isn't Michelle Malkin the daughter of Filipino
parents? Haven't Islamic terrorists been active in the Philippines?
Didn't Terry Nichols visit there repeatedly before the Oklahoma City
bombing? Shouldn't, then, all Americans of Philippine descent be
interned for the duration of the war on terror? As Ms. Malkin said on
Hardball (not an exact quote, but close), "Individual
rights can't be allowed to interfere with national security."
Actually, I once considered myself a semi-fan of Malkin's (didn't
follow her work closely, but enjoyed her occasional TV appearances);
the Bush administration has revealed as the worst kind of statists
many who talked a good game in opposition to the Clintons.
Best,
—Cliff Beittel
York, PA
From: Ed
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004
Subject: Article on MM - 8 27 04
Dear Ilana,
Thank you very much for the great article on Michelle Malkin. She
clearly was engaging in a propaganda attack against the Japanese
American using similar tactics employed by Michael Moore. She had not
done her homework. She is a disgrace to the Conservative movement (I
am a Goldwater/Reagan/Founding Fathers Conservative).
Again, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
—Ed
I’ve
published this many approving letters because it is gratifying to
discover that many conservatives are repulsed by the Malkin book and
by the subversion of what they perceive as conservatism.—ILANA
From: David Colton
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 6:13 AM
Subject:
Internment Chic
Ilana:
As a lifelong conservative and activist during the Reagan Revolution,
I write on behalf of my family to thank you for your column regarding
Malkin's "book."
My mother's family was sent from Oregon to Minidoka for internment. My
grandfather was a local civic leader and counseled cooperation both
out of loyalty to the U.S. and in the hopes that cooperation would
lead to reconsideration of the decision further down the road. (My
mother, born in the U.S., never harbored any bad feelings about the
internment and later proudly served as Assistant Dean of the Foreign
Service Institute of the U.S. State Department for 20 years).
The flaws in Malkin's "book" you note so well aside, I am grateful
that many conservatives [and most libertarians, I am sure] who
stand on solid principles articulate why Malkin's vision does not
speak for conservative values, articulate sound security policy, and
actually undercuts the very rationale for why we are defending our
freedom today.
Your views make a difference and your voice has an impact.
On behalf of all of my extended family, again, thank you. [This
means a lot to me.—ILANA]
—David Colton
From: Kathryn, a Your Page regular contributor
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004
Subject:
Malkin's Mad Mad Mad World
Hi Ilana,
Well, what's up with Malkin? Her book is a post hoc
justification for one of the bigger public policy blunders (read:
"abomination") of the U.S. government in modern times. Sometimes I
wonder whose side she's really on…it cannot be "the People" or
"unalienable rights," or as you mentioned, that pesky unalienable
right that is currently being viewed as more of a concept—"due
process."
The dangers inherent in her diatribe are really countless—there's so
much dissent to ferret out. Did I say dissent? I meant
danger...dangerous killers. My neighbor has sorta brownish skin, and
listens to Blink 182 while he's out there weed-whacking his lawn. He
has suspicious looking friends with stickers on their cars that
literally insult our wonderful president! Good thing the nice folks at
Homeland Security were more than happy to talk to me on the phone for
45 minutes and take a report on him!!
You know, the all-seeing, all-knowing prophet of truth and justice,
John Ashcroft, says there are a lot of dangerous folks out there
waiting to terrorize and kill us. They question the whole income tax
system (and have the audacity to put it all over the Internet); they
are fed up with the courts too. Let's put these people in a cage
before they do something really bad and stir up the rest of the
sheeple.
Well Ilana, I gotta go clean off my binocular lenses. The people
across the canyon from me are from Canada, and they just don't look
quite right, you know what I mean? I heard they liked that Fahrenheit
911 movie so I'm doing my part as a good American and keeping my eye
on 'em.
Take care,
—Kathryn
San Diego
From: Evan W. Steeg
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 8:08 AM
To: jfarah@worldnetdaily.com
Cc: imercer@worldnetdaily.com; vday@worldnetdaily.com
Subject:
Kudos for Ilana Mercer
Dear Joseph:
Some positive feedback this time … Good on ya for bringing Ilana
Mercer into the WND fold. I don’t always agree with her slant on
things – indeed sometimes, I confess, I can’t even identify it – but
her style and content are usually fresh and thought-provoking. Most
columnists today are so in thrall to a particular ideology – or even
to a particular candidate or party – that I could write a software
program to take news stories as input and spit out the pundit’s next
column. Ilana is the rare exception that proves the rule.
I’d say the same for Vox Day, though I’ve only read two of his
columns so far.
One of the ironies with which you will have to contend as head of WND
is this: The “independent” (rightist) internet mediocracy that
started out as a plucky, free-thinking David against the mainstream
Goliath has been a victim of its own success. A cranky, monolithic
inflexibility is setting in, perhaps out of a perceived desperate need
to get behind the struggling Rove-Bush juggernaut and push.
I urge you to keep diversity alive, support the Mercers and Days, and
let us continue to hear the voices of libertarianism, of principled
non-interventionism, and Buchanan’s paleo-conservative challenges to
the neo-con party line. (And – what the heck – perhaps you’ll feel
secure enough at some point to allow a “liberal” opinion now and then
as well).
PS. Ms. Mercer, I look forward to reading your book.
Regards,
—Evan
Evan W. Steeg, Ph.D.
From: Sean Cunningham
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 6:29 AM
Subject:
Compete, Don’t Kill
[On
socialist Canada, the reader makes some interesting points. I thought
I did know Canada, but,
clearly, the U.S. is changing so rapidly in its accelerated statism,
that Canada must be reevaluated in relation to the U.S.—ILANA]
Hi,
You don't know Canada. We have a confederation; our provincial
parties cover a spectrum more left AND right than yours; our federal
parties include the Marijuana Party,The Rhinos, Social Credit, Greens, New Conservatives (who recently won
a nine fold increase in seats), Yogic Flyers, Marxist-Leninists and
Bloc Quebecois. Our governing Liberal Party is fiscally conservative;
our deficit is gone and our debt is being paid down.
We chafe at America's unwillingness to compete. From our standpoint,
America views Canadian success in your markets as proof of unfair
practice, as in softwood lumber or
steel. No indoctrination against competition is practiced here
[Well, there was certainly a negative attitude toward competition in
my daughter’s school.—ILANA]
We have freedoms you don't. I can grow peanuts anywhere they'll take;
no countries are forbidden me, nor any websites or radio stations. An
objective observer might conclude that America is the more socialist.
[Canada still out-taxes the U.S. And as for environmental
regulation; look at a resource-rich province like British Columbia. It
is now virtually dead largely because of environmental prohibition on
mining, logging, and other exploration. Canada has huge potential; it
can awaken from its socialist slumber. That it doesn’t conduct wars is
also very beneficial to the economy.—ILANA]
Sincerely,
—Sean Cunningham
Mimicking
O’Reilly, readers often
refused to get beyond their limitations and their dislike of France
and Germany and kept on about the motivation behind these nations’
decision not to aid in invading Iraq. Inferring motivation is
O’Reilly’s domain and isn't relevant to the argument. The most
important thing to look at is that the leaders of “Old Europe,” on the
facts and the logic, did the right thing in terms of preserving the
lives and property of their people. If someone does the right
thing, even if it is for the wrong reasons, the rest is ad hominem.
On a positive note, letters about the “Kill Bill” column were
overall quite good. There was very little of the old neocon cussing. I
think the ideological descendants of Trotsky are running out of
steam.—ILANA
From: Reichel, James J
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004
Subject:
He Contorts, I Decide
France and Russia opposed the Iraq invasion for two reasons: the money
owed to them, and that little detail of the modern, i.e. post-ban
weapons that they provided to Saddam. NOT because they were
“smarter.”
—James J Reichel
EMC(SS) USN, ret.
From: A. Morrison
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 10:03 AM
Subject:
He Contorts, I Decide
During the Cold War, The Soviet Union installed puppet governments in
countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, and Poland.
Whenever the citizens of those countries rose up in rebellion against
the Soviet occupation, the puppet installed government would "invite"
Soviet tanks and troops to crush these rebellions. Russian troops
would march in and restore “order” through mass bloodshed, preserving
their power over that country and its population
Now we see the United States doing the exact same thing in Iraq
Iraq has become our "satellite" possession, done in the name of
extending our control and influence. Rightwing neo-cons are nothing
but warmed-over Bolsheviks and their brain-locked hypocrite followers
think this is a form of payback for 9/11. The Soviets also believed
that since the Germans killed millions of their people, they had a
right to seal off the East Bloc in the name of "security".
—A Morrison
Los Angeles CA
From: Gilbert B.
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 8:10 AM
Subject: O’Reilly vs. Krugman
Madam:
I enjoy reading your editorials. You are direct and have the
‘audacity’ to cite facts, some of which I learn first from your
writing. I am more of a Constitutionalist than a Libertarian so I
suspect we disagree on quite a bit.
I agree with your criticism of Keynesian economics and Krugman. I
agree with your point that Republicans are profligate spenders and
Bush has done nothing to stop it. I disagree with you on Iraq, but
much of that debate is impossible to have in the correct context since
Bush did not heed my advice —yes I wrote him on this point—and ask
Congress for a declaration of war.
I disagree with your assessment of France and Russia that their
leaders kept them out of Iraq out of wisdom. I believe it had more to
do with greed and the desire to continue their highly lucrative role
in the oil for food fiasco.
Best wishes,
—Gilbert B.
Texas
From: Dale A.
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 8:33 AM
Subject:
He Contorts, I Decide
Ilana,
I just read your article on WND regarding Bill O'Reilly's "debate"
with Paul Krugman. It was right on! I sat in amazement as O'Reilly
turned red with anger and Tim Russert did nothing to control the
tirade!
How he (O'Reilly or FOX News for that matter) can claim to be "Fair
and Balanced" is beyond me!
Another one to keep your eye on is Sean Hannity. His temper follows
along the same lines as O'Reilly’s. Neither knows what else to do when
confronted with facts that differ from their opinions.
Keep up the great work.
—Dale A.
From: sj
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 6:46 PM
Subject:
O'Rowdy
Dear Ilana,
You nailed him, but I won't even comment on the idiot O'Reilly,
other than to say, if he grew up somewhere other than on one of the
coasts where the closest guys get to being real men is watching a John
Wayne movie while drinking a wine cooler, he'd be a lot different a
man.
Out here in the small town flyby country where I grew up, if a guy was
as big a blowhard as O'Reilly, he'd get hit up side the head a few
times, until he learned to talk polite and in turn.
As to your mention of Fox hyping false readings on Geiger counters to
relay the idea that here was evidence of WMDs, yes and no. No, of
course there weren't WMDs, but yes, there could have been positive
Geiger counter readings. In the first war and in this one, we have
been using depleted uranium tipped ammo and bombs. Heavily attacked
areas are literally glowing with happy juice.
As per returning caskets, the fact that thousands of soldiers from
both Iraq wars have developed horrible immune system and respiratory
damage from the radiation and anthrax shots forced upon them, has been
covered up by our honorable government. Many soldiers have died from
this, not to mention the hundreds of Iraqi babies stillborn or with
extreme deformities.
But none of these things matter to a buffoon like O'Reilly, and
all the other sycophants who are so in love with being on the side of
those in power, they become blind to reality and humanity.
I'm outta here,
—skip j
From: James R. Jarrett
Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2004 6:52 AM
Subject:
Vote and Die
Ms. Mercer:
It has been some time since I last contacted you. In the interim I
have enjoyed the stimulation of reading your articles on
WND. I am often in partial disagreement with your positions, but I
am seldom in disagreement with the logic and sequence of the support
you offer for your positions. It simply reaffirms that rational,
intelligent people can arrive at disparate conclusions when presented
with the same information.
I have always been, since a young man, an ardent opponent of democracy
and a rabid supporter of a Constitutional Republic. We have nothing
resembling a Constitutional Republic in this once great nation, but we
are experiencing the chaos of noisy, emotively based democracy that
Jefferson and others warned us against so long ago.
As a 10 year combat decorated Special Forces (Green Beret) veteran, I
am filled with grief that in 1945 I was born into a still-great
county, but will depart at some not terribly distant point from a
country that is merely powerful.
Do keep up your work, though you are a voice crying in the wilderness.
Strength and Honor,
—James R. Jarrett (ABD-ph.d. MS, DABFE, DABLEE
United States Army Special Forces Association
Special Operations Association
July 2004
Randy Barnett, a friend, and one of the truly
brilliant libertarian intellectuals, comments on the
Volokh Conspiracy in response to
Libertarianism & Foreign Policy: A Reply
to Randy Barnett
—ILANA
The Volokh Conspiracy
Friday, July 30, 2004
[Randy Barnett,
July 30, 2004 at 3:07am]
Possible Trackbacks
Ilana Responds (and more):
Always thoughtful and provocative, Ilana
Mercer takes up the challenge of how Libertarianism does have foreign
policy implications in her column,
Return to Reason, on WorldNetDaily. (In the process she both
ridicules antiwar Libertarians and the war in Iraq at the same
time.)
Along the way, I learn that she had previously made the argument I
advanced in my article,
Constitutional Legitimacy in the Columbia Law Review and in
Restoring the Lost Constitution;
''From the fact that many libertarians believe
... that the state has no legitimacy, [they] arrive at the position
that anything the state does is illegitimate ... Consider the murderer
who, while fleeing the law, happens on a scene of a rape, [and] saves
the woman ... Is this good deed illegitimate because a murderer has
performed it?"
The logical error in Lawrence’s good letter was repeated many times
in long (much less courteous), convoluted, and pompous missives from
libertarians. (I chose to publish the nice note.) Of course
libertarianism is the quintessential moral political philosophy. But
libertarians reject the initiation of violence against a person based
on a moral transgression other than a violation of property
rights (this includes a property right in one’s person). These two
statements are not mutually exclusive. You would not initiate force
against anyone, however immoral, unless they were violating your
person or property. This, again, is a highly moral position,
but it rejects the initiation of force on the basis of
morality. —ILANA
From: Lawernce S.
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004
Subject: Libertarianism
Dear Ilana,
You wrote:
“Nonetheless, since it is a political philosophy concerned with the
justified use of force (based on property rights and not
morality), libertarianism offers an organizing first principle from
which clear – if broad – policy prescriptions can be derived.”
I have to disagree with your statement that libertarianism deals
only [emphasis added; this is nowhere in the column] with
property rights and not morality. Because libertarianism incorporates
the ideals of an aggression-free society, self-ownership and free
choice, morality plays a big part. Libertarians are basically saying
that people should not physically hurt or aggress against another
human or group of humans [unless they have been aggressed against.
Libertarianism is not pacifism, which is deplorable. —ILANA]—fairly
Christian in concept.
As for the war in Iraq, it is wrong on many fronts. We were neither
attacked nor threatened by the government of Iraq. But North Korea,
for instance, has threatened the U.S. continuously and we had done
nothing. Why?
The ethical point: governments should neither interfere with the
peaceful lives of citizens in foreign nations nor with its own
citizens. Our nation has been relatively free for over 200 years, and
during that time, almost every nation had had a dictator, king or
tyrant. Why did we fail to attack most of the world to set their
citizens free? Napoleon attempted to do this in Europe. It appears we
are destined to follow Napoleon’s steps.
—L.K. Samuels
From: Wright, Chuck
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 10:07 AM
Subject: Your Page comment
Ilana, I hope you don’t think this a gratuitous comment but reviewing
your bio reminds me of what my son (active duty Army) and myself
(retired Air Force) were fighting for! Keep up the good work
and I’ll be sure to read your book.
—Chuck Wright
Telemetry Products
Nova Engineering
Cincinnati
From: joe silverman
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004
To:
Libertarianism & Foreign Policy: A Reply to Randy Barnett
Ilana,
Your discussion (and Randy’s) seems a bit arid given the current
situation.
If a despotic state invades its neighbors, slaughters some of its own
population, supports international terrorism in various ways, and
vocally
threatens the Great Satan (i.e., USA), must we wait for the bomb to be
dropped by the despot (or their irresponsible associates)? if not,
then
under what conditions can one attack before being attacked?
—Joe
For more about this bogus war, go to my
War & Terrorism archive. I’m tired of repeating myself. —ILANA
From: Johnson, Michael W
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004
Subject:
U.N. on the Wrong Side of the Fence
Dear Ms. Mercer,
It's not surprising that the ICJ ruled for barbarism and against
civilization. That's the sort of ruling one expects from the ICJ. Why
get your shorts all in a knot over it? After all, the ICJ's rulings
have considerably less force behind them than the threats of a
seven-year-old schoolyard bully. I expect that you're sufficiently
bright to ignore orders from a court that can't send marshals to
arrest you, and I'm certain that Ariel Sharon is. Would that all
attempts at world government were as contemptible as the ICJ.
Regards,
—Michael W. Johnson
From: Charles T.
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004
Subject:
Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party
Ms. Mercer,
Great article on WND. I will vote Libertarian but I think their
position on immigration will turn away most voters.
For more liberty, vote Libertarian.
—Charles T.
Foster City, CA
From: James Korman
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004
Subject:
Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party [Thanks James for
reminding me of Mises’ perspective.]
Ilana,
Good article.
Mises wrote that immigration and the welfare state are mutually
exclusive, and that unlimited immigration can only be permitted in
relatively unsettled/uninhabited environs.
Voegelin opined that society is not a suicide compact. Each of these
thoughts seems to reign supreme in our utterly depraved civilization.
From Plato: "Those who seek power should not be allowed to attain it.”
Regards,
—Jim Korman
From: Robert D.
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004
Subject: The Libertarian Party
I am a proud member of the LP and have been for many years, but I have
always been against this one issue of open borders. The LP allows one
to disagree—i.e., pro-life vs. pro-choice—on issues, but it is the
only party I can support.
—Robert G. D.
From: Jim S.
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004
Subject:
Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party
Ilana,
You say that the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate refuses to
see the perils of free, unfettered immigration. The reality is that as
long as the USA is relative to other countries a desirable destination
people will come here. [So what?] If people think they will
improve their opportunities by coming to America they will. Nothing
short of a North Korean policy of shooting people attempting to cross
our border will stop people from coming here.
Perhaps you refuse to see the realities of the immigration situation.
Yes, millions of immigrants enter the USA each year. Most do not come
to wage war. [Perhaps, but “the reality” is
that most DO come to wage welfare.] Most get jobs and contribute
to the vitality of American society. [How so?
Immigration policy costs American workers $2,600 a year .]
What a libertarian government would offer is an end to big government:
no government safety net, no government welfare, and no government
schools. Would such policies encourage or discourage immigration?
—Jim S.
So why doesn't the LP oppose free immigration until it can
dismantle the free-loader system? The outrageous fact is that the LP
supports free immigration NOW; it supports wealth transfer, among
other injustices wreaked by current immigration policy. —ILANA
From: Dr. Robert Payton
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 3:13 AM
Subject:
Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party
Dear Mrs. Mercer:
I find it surprising when Americans are "surprised" by the opinions of
the Founding Fathers. When one uses the term American it evokes two
mental responses: a person that speaks American English, and a person
of European descent.
It doesn't evoke images of Hispanics, "African Americans," or American
Natives. The latter, for instance, are part of a separate nation: the
Indian Nation. Hispanics are associated with Mexico, Latin America,
and the Conquistadors, not AMERICA.
To be more specific, the noun American is evokes several specific
peoples: Anglo Saxons, Scottish, Irish Celts, and Dutch. Every
cultural root of "American" culture is planted firmly and squarely in
the ancient oak groves of the British Isles.
Our culture always derives back to the Pilgrims in every historical
analysis. The Pilgrims are the prime example, and the cultural ideal,
of what the settling of America was about. Unlike the money hungry,
lazy, quarrelsome rabble of Jamestown, the Pilgrims had good relations
with Native Americans, paid off all their debts to their sponsors to
the penny, and set the model for the country’s origins. Furthermore,
the Pilgrims came here for absolutely pure religious reasons: to avoid
severe persecution, and to evangelize the natives of America. The
Pilgrims saw themselves as the Spiritual Children of Israel coming to
the New Jerusalem ... the Promised Land. Every other group that
settled the New World, particularly Hispanics, raped and pillaged the
countryside, and came here more out of greed than anything else. (An
exception is Christopher Columbus, who, according to his writings,
wanted to evangelize West India.)
Anyone who strays from this cultural fact, history, and influence,
does not understand America at all. Those who deliberately deny the
truth are trying to rewrite history like all good communists rewrite
history.
—Dr. Robert M. Payton
From: Purcell, Jaime
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004
Subject:
Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party
Howdy! Ms. Mercer:
Regarding your Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party essay: amen.
I have a friend that is a Libertarian party member. I repeatedly tell
him that, until all the roads and parks become private property and
the Welfare State is dismantled, open immigration is nothing but a
transfer of my resources to the State.
If the LP would come out and state that on principle, it stands for
open immigration, but due to the current political situation, and
until the Federal government is reined in, the LP will close the
borders (northern and southern), the LP would siphon many Republican
votes away from the GOP. The LP would also probably take votes away
from the Constitution Party.
The other issue is the “War on Drugs.” The LP needs to simply stick to
the 9th and 10th amendments and the abuses of the Interstate Commerce
Clause. The LP needs to stick to these general principles, and not go
sticking the finger into the eye of drug legalization.
I will vote for the Constitution Party, even though I have no clue as
to why they are so fixated on the Panama Canal.
Deo Vindice
—Mr. Jaime Purcell
From: Dan L.
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 3:05 AM
To: letters@worldnetdaily.com
Subject:
Thomas Jefferson vs. the Libertarian Party
Dear WND letters editor,
It's fantastic to see such a positive and helpful article by Ilana
Mercer regarding the Libertarian Party (LP). It's strange, though,
that she picked the following quote from Jefferson to highlight a
supposed flaw in the LP's immigration policy:
"If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of
citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by
extraordinary encouragements ... “
That seems to exactly mirror the LP's position: when people come here
for the welfare state ("extraordinary encouragements"), we are against
it. So we favor ending the welfare state. But if they come to work
hard ("of themselves"), society benefits and Jefferson was
acknowledging this ("they are entitled to all the rights of
citizenship").
I don't understand the voter who is tired of big government, likes 98%
of the Libertarian platform, and then throws away their opportunity to
express that agreement. No party agrees with you 100%. Vote
Libertarian and send a clear and convincing message to Washington that
you want LESS GOVERNMENT. No other party is consistently for smaller
government. No other vote makes this statement.
We can work out the immigration issue later, when actually getting a
Libertarian elected is more realistic.
—Dan L.
San Diego, CA
[Immigration is THE dilemma facing Americans. Because of propaganda,
in which the Libertarian Party is complicit, Americans, the reader
included, remain oblivious to the enormity of the problem.—ILANA]
From: Johnson, W. Michael
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 7:48 AM
Subject:
'Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation' [The reader is
mistaken: most reasonable libertarians don’t have a problem with the
prohibition of lewd acts in public. Whatever property is in government
hands should be managed like private property. One would not condone
the acts described by the reader on one’s front lawn, so why allow
them in public spaces?—ILANA]
Dear Ms. Mercer,
Your column today illustrates my principal complaint against
libertarians: they never seem to let reality interfere with their
philosophy. I admit that I've never read Rand and probably won't
bother. I did catch a few minutes of the movie "The Fountainhead" one
night when I was suffering from insomnia. I'd always been a fan of
Gary Cooper, so I thought it would be OK. Wrong! The dialog was
stilted and downright ridiculous. Even the nearly illiterate Ernest
Hemingway wrote better dialog.
For all your vaunted intellectual prowess, neither you nor Rand has
figured out that, if privacy is the hallmark of civilization, then
laws prohibiting certain sexual acts between consenting adults are
necessary. Laws against sodomy are necessary so that nice ladies like
you can take their kids to the park without having to explain what
those two naked guys are doing in the bushes. Laws against
prostitution are necessary to prevent hookers from parading on your
street, doing car tricks in front of your house, and making
disparaging remarks about you in the presence of your children while
soliciting your husband. Laws against pornography are necessary to
prevent pornographers from thrusting their smut into your face at
every turn. Privacy must be forced upon some people.
No one ever expected that the laws against sodomy, prostitution, and
pornography would end the practices. They merely kept the
practitioners from doing it in the road and frightening the horses. In
other words, the laws enforced that hallmark of civilization, privacy.
The libertarian (or perhaps I should say libertine) tendency in laws
regulating sexual conduct has made the majority of us less free, and
our society less civilized.
Regards,
—Mike Johnson
From: Dave
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004
Subject:
'Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation'
Firstly, I wanted to thank you for your weekly columns. I greatly
enjoy reading your writing style.
Second, I had a bit of a problem with the notion that you were
presenting a falsified piece of information, namely the alleged fact
that homosexuality is genetic, or pre-disposed. I wanted to show you
some information that proves otherwise (especially since there is
still no proof that homosexuality is genetic). The contending
information can be found at - http://www.narth.com. They have many
articles that deal with homosexuality, especially about the politics
thereof.
The reason why I bring this up is because I am 24 years of age, and I
deal with SSA (same-sex attraction). It's something that I deal with
everyday, and I'd rather not have the world and certain organizations
telling me how to live my life. One thing that I love about the
libertarian philosophy is that it allows an individual to pursue his
or her own dreams. Right now, my dream is to be able to be healed from
my homosexuality and not be told I can't because of fallacious
information.
You may also want to check out Vox Day's blog. He had a good pin-up
from the Evangelical Outpost that showed good ties between the
homosexual agenda and fascism.
—David
[My answer to David: I did not say anything about a gene. I said
homosexuality was innate. Having known many homosexuals, including my
own sister, as well as having studied some about sexual identity at
university, I think that the evidence supports this contention.
Innate, as far as I know, doesn’t mean genetic. Why am I not surprised
to hear popular writers promoting conspiracy theories about
homosexuals. Conspiracy thinking is the refuge of the feeble minded.
In any case, I respect David’s struggle; he must do what he thinks is
best for him.]
GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE. Or so it seems.
(Cynicism alert: An
editor at a national newspaper informs me I’ve been way too subtle and
lady-like here.)
1) My July 2, 2004 column,
Israel: Island of Justice in the Middle
East, followed the decision of the Israeli High Court to
force the Israeli government to re-draw sections of the wall because
these violated, to quote the column, “a standard designed to ‘strike a
balance between security and human rights.’ The column starts by
pointing out that such a decision—the specter of a “supreme court
rul[ing] against the state”—could not have happened in the neighboring
countries, including the Palestinian Authority. I upheld Israel as an
“Island of Justice in the Middle East” in that, to quote, “despite a
ceaseless terror campaign against its very existence, Israel remains a
country under the rule of enlightened Western law.” To fortify my
point, I galvanized another of the court’s “exceedingly progressive
ruling on the vexing topic of torture.” I was, as always, careful to
quote my source on that decision: Alan Dershowitz.
In his
July 4, 2004 column (I am on his distribution
list and he on mine), Lorne Gunter, Columnist and Editorial Bd.
Member, National Post, Columnist, Edmonton Journal, writes: “Court
ruling proof of Israeli democracy: This couldn't happen in
neighbouring states, where courts are not free.” Gunter goes on to
point out that, “This is a remarkable sign of how civilized, humane
and just a society Israel is,” in that it “permits ‘the enemy’ to
bring petitions to its courts alleging human rights violations, its
courts heed those complaints and order the government to change its
ways and the government complies.” Gunter also mentions that “the same
Israeli court … outlawed the use of torture by Shin Bet, Israel's
security service, when interrogating terrorist suspects.”
2) In my January 16, 2004 column,
“Border Invasion At Home, Border Betrayal Abroad,” I wrote:
“Inviting an invasion by foreigners and
instigating one against them are two sides of the same
neoconservative coin.”
In his January 25, 2004 column, Steve Sailer, columnist
for VDARE (and on my distribution list)
wrote:
“…neoconservatives of a generation ago have been jostled aside by
lesser figures whose outlook can be summed up as:
Domestic Policy: Invite the World!
Foreign Policy: Invade the World!”
So if anyone needs proof of the existence of "mental telepathy," there
it is.
—ILANA (July 4)
From: Michael Strikmiller
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 8:55 AM
Subject:
Self Defense: A Universal Right (On thugs in government and on the
streets)
South Africa and Crime:
Thanks to Jimmy Cater and other American Presidents with the blessing
of the UN, the boycott of South Africa turned a beautiful and
prosperous nation into a third word dictatorship. Too bad. It is a
sin the whole world is responsible for. As a youngster I wanted to
visit to countries, especially South Africa and Australia. With the
socialist and Marxist in control of these two countries I now want to
visit neither.
The United States is quickly becoming the next Socialist/Fascist
nation on the planet. It just depends which party is in power. If the
United States doesn't wake up soon we will have the same problems as
in South Africa and Australia. The thugs will not only rule the
government but the streets as well.
By the by, a .45 cal model 1911A1 is by far your best bet as a home
defense and personal carry tool. Springfield Armory has a good product
as well as Para Ordnance. So do many others.
Respectfully,
—Michael G. Strikmiller, REM
June 2004
Read the latest news on the topic, reported by the (gleeful)
BBC, only a week after “Self Defense: A Universal Right” was
written. —ILANA
From: The in-laws: They and so many other South Africans are the
heroes of,
Self-defense: A universal right
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 3:36 AM
Subject: Crime Stats in South Africa
Dear Ilana,
I cannot get any information on any crime stats for you – there is a
complete moratorium in place. Locally and internationally.
We contacted the DA this morning (Tony Leon’s Party) and they phoned
us back – they are not allowed to have any crime stats although they
have attended various Law Enforcement meetings but have been informed
that no stats are available to them or anyone else.
(I did introduce myself to Tony Leon one day at the Waterfront
[that used to be my favorite shopping centre; what chic and style it
had before “freedom” came … in droves … and with a couple of bombs
too]—he
was just passing by, but I felt I had to speak to him. I told him to
“give them hell,” to which he replied he was doing his level best to
do just that. It’s a one-party dictatorship here and will remain so –
any opposition is fighting shadows unfortunately.)
A complete blackout is in place, as our “esteemed leader”
(!!!!!!!!!!!) does not want the international community or locals to
know that they have literally no control over crime in SA – we are
being fed a diet of “all is well and under control.” We get no
coverage at all on TV or radio or in newspapers, however, we know that
things are bad. But as long as the African is being told by Mbeki that
all is well, he believes it because it’s being fed to him by an
African. We however know otherwise.
It’s a bit like living on an island or in a bubble – no news of the
outside world at all – it’s as if it did not exist – the media
coverage is of rugby, cricket, and how we are all working together.
Much love
—Mum & Dad
P.S. It would appear that the UK also favors the criminal. [There
is an essay in
my book about the prohibition of self-defense in the UK.]
We do get the gist from UK newspapers: they have workshops for
muggers, informing them how violent they are “allowed” to be when
mugging – it’s all out of control.
Dave Kopel, the prolific 2nd-Amendment
scholar, mentioned he’d give
this column a plug on NRO's, "The Corner." Thanks.
From: D. B. Ajupe
Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004
Subject:
Self-defense: A Universal Right [The UK and the US are not far
behind South Africa. The difference lies not so much in the degree of
rights violation by government, but, rather, in crime statistics: the
UK and the US have much less crime than SA does.]
I agree that the ANC is wrong denying the right to self-defense. But
how is this different from, say, England, or Washington D.C. or New
York??? Seems I just read of a New Yorker jailed for shooting an
intruder, not because he did something wrong, but because he used an
unlicensed weapon.
—DB
From: Larry & Sue
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004
Subject: Have you considered a .45?
Dear Ilana,
I would humbly suggest that you try out a Colt (which are not as good
as)/Kimber /Springfield Armory etc. .45 pistol. With a pair of Laser
Grips laser sights from Crimson Trace, you would have more rounds,
faster firing rate, and better ballistics. The .357 has a tendency to
pass through creeps and endanger others. The good old .45 (flying
ashtray) hollow point has tremendous stopping power and is famous for
one-shot drops [nice expression.] The .45 is more fun to
shoot when practicing, because the mechanism that facilitates the
auto-reloading absorbs some of the recoil.
Glad to see that you are armed and dangerous. I feel sorry for your
family and wish they could follow you here. Seriously, we will be in
trouble here in the U.S. soon also, so another suggestion is that it
would also be good to live in a smaller town, have a garden, have some
like-minded close friends, and a good shotgun and rifle. Don’t forget:
practice-practice-practice! We are not “black helicopter paranoids” to
see the writing on the wall. It only takes a little study of history
to see what happens when Humanists and socialists take over a country.
Take care,
—Larry and Sue
Readers had a great deal of information for me about fire arms.
Thanks to Neil for telling me that “the .357 is also available in
six-shot and seven-shot models;” and to m. r. o’donnell who reminded
me of the benefits of the wonderful sound, in the dead of night, made
by a shotgun being cocked … music to an intruder’s ears. —ILANA
From: m. r. o'donnell
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004
Subject: Self-defense: A universal right
Ms. Mercer,
What an excellent – if
horrifying – piece you have written regarding the pathetic
situation in South Africa. The silence of all the liberals who
“facilitated” the Marxist take-over of that beautiful country is
deafening.
I pity anyone living in South Africa.
Mbeki is a monster.
You also exhibit excellent taste in your choice of bedside hardware.
[LOL] May I suggest you give serious consideration to
supplementing your handgun with a loaded shotgun – the best close-in
home-defense weapon known to man (or woman)?
Regards,
—m. r. o’donnell
From: K., David
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004
Subject:
On being a sheep or a wolf
Ilana,
The choice is clear: your in laws need to go underground in order to
be able to purchase guns. In this country, before the right to carry
became law in many states, there were many people like myself that
carried regardless of the law. If caught I would be a criminal but
then again the odds of that were worth taking the risk. My life is
worth it, same as anyone’s on this planet.
I’ve also learned this the hard way: If I had to kill an intruder, I
would not report it but take the body and bury it in the remote woods
of the… [Omitted for the reader's safety <g>] The reason is I do
not believe anybody has the right in a grand jury to judge my actions
in defending my family, let alone make me face wrongful death lawsuits
by the family of the perp. If you ever have to use your weapon,
your life will become a nightmare even if justified because of our
laws especially civil court. [My emphasis]
Point is, your in-laws have to make the same decision I did years ago
to ignore the government. Besides, it’s every person’s God-given right
to self defend and I worship god not my government. Who do the
politicians think they are? They all have body guards and protection.
Our lives are worth as much as theirs [I beg to differ: much more] although their behavior tells me otherwise. I’m
usually a law-abiding citizen, but there comes a time one must
question the government’s laws or motives and decide to be a sheep of
a wolf. Long ago I decided to be a wolf. Your in-laws must do the same
or flee their homeland for safety [so many of my readers were not
hip to the fact that people can’t just immigrate; our immigration laws
don’t exactly favor white, non-welfare dependent folk, who would never
dream of relying on taxpayer’s largess].
I’ve been to South Africa several times before and after Mandela got
out, and I can say that if I lived there, I would not sleep well at
night without the means to defend myself. On one motorcycle tour we
even had a guide armed to the teeth to protect us because of our skin
| |