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

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

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