Archived Comments

 

 

 

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