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LIBERTY, RIGHTS, CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
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"In
the land of the free and home of the brave hundreds of
children can be rounded up and removed from their
families based on a hunch or a hoax. No hue and cry will
ensue—not from professional civil libertarians, nor from
members of the unwatchful dogs in the media, or from
presidential candidates vying to uphold—or is it just to
hold—the Constitution."—ILANA (April
25, 2008)
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If only the
high-minded Framers had written the Constitution with crooks in mind."—ILANA
(February 15, 2008)
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About the futility of central planning:
"Societies are built from the soil up, not from the sky down. And by the
people, not the politicians."—ILANA (January
4, 2008)
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"Policy
by definition addresses the collective, not the individual. Duly,
the reality-based libertarian will seek to minimize political overreach,
not mandate heaven on earth."—ILANA (January
15, 2008)
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“A right that can't be defended is a
right in name only.”—ILANA (August
6, 2003)
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"Natural rights are not for governments to grant
but to uphold.”—ILANA (June
25, 2004)
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In unfree societies... governments
pacify the multitudes by mulcting the few."—ILANA
(March
2, 2007)
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"All men are imbued with natural—but not
necessarily political—rights. The laws of this country ought
to respect the natural rights of all people, legal and illegal. Not
so their demands for political and welfare privileges."—ILANA (December 14, 2007)
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“We have a solemn duty not to violate the rights
of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no
duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because upholding the negative
rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative
liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The
classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens,
first.”—ILANA (September
2, 2005)
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"The sole role of a legitimate government is to
protect ... life, liberty, and property, not provide housing, food,
education, health care, child benefits, emotional well-being,
enriching employment, ad infinitum. Why? Because the former
impose no obligations on other free individuals; the latter enslave
some in the service of others."—ILANA
(June 27, 2007)
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“Liberty is a simple thing. It's the unassailable right
to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician,
unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted,
incarcerated, injured and even killed.”—ILANA (September
28, 2007)
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"Those demanding the Speaker channel 'The Decider' are on the side of
concentration of power, and consequently, a further loss of power by the
people."—ILANA
(April
6, 2007)
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"A
rational suspicion of
power, upon which libertarians pride themselves, must be predicated on
distrusting all
power, not only American power."—ILANA (May
18, 2007)
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"A sizeable majority of the people 'receives in
disbursements more than it pays in taxes.' The minority funding the orgy
'pays in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements.' The latter,
not the former, should have the vote."—ILANA
(April
24, 2007)
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"Taxpayers ought to have the vote,
not so tax consumers. And that goes
for politicians, who pay taxes out of what
they loot from the taxpayer."—ILANA
(April
24, 2007)
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"The
freer a society, the less likely government is to placate
the envious by taking from those they envy."—ILANA
(March
2, 2007)
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"In a truly free society, the kind we once enjoyed, one
honors the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest,
speak and misspeak at will."—ILANA (September 15, 2006)
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“If the Constitution were binding and America still a
republic of limited government, the president and his incontinent
legislators would have to quit marking their territory around the
world.”—ILANA (February
3, 2006)
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“Casting a vote to give
someone power does not make a man free; freedom is the
knowledge that even if one doesn’t perform that ritual,
nobody can exercise
power over one’s life, liberty, and
property.”—ILANA (December
18, 2005)
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“Adding an overarching tier of
tyrants—the EU—to European governments will benefit Europeans as a second
hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”—ILANA (June
8, 2005)
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“In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private
individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people
understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander
the government... the poorer and less free the
people.”—ILANA (January
26, 2005)
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“James Madison was not a democrat. He denounced popular
rule as ‘incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.’
Democracy, he observed, must be confined to a 'small spot' (like
Athens). Indeed, the Bush administration's deafening demagoguery
notwithstanding, democratic majoritarianism is thoroughly
un-American.”—ILANA (September
16, 2004)
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“Restoring the people's 'unalienable rights' may well lie
in Jeffersonian interposition and nullification, whereby states beat
back the federal occupier by voiding unconstitutional federal
laws.”—ILANA (September
24, 2004)
IMMIGRATION
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"McCain might consider modifying his mantra about illegal
aliens being God's children to whom he owes a path to citizenship. This
is not about the Arizonan’s relationship with God and His creatures;
it’s about McCain’s relationship with the Constitution. The Constitution binds a president to uphold the law; it doesn’t
authorize him to legislate compassion.""—ILANA
(April 4, 2008)
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"From their vantage point, cultivated usually from the
serenity of their stately homes, open-border utilitarians often tout the
advantages of high population density. Apparently, Cairo and Calcutta
are models for the specialization that comes with an increased division
of labor."—ILANA (November 2, 2007)
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"While open-border libertines love Bastiat’s elegant
argument about 'What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen,' they seldom apply it
to mass immigration, where these implacable enemies of America choose to
see only benefits. Thus, for every mound of cheap strawberries, there
are crops of criminals, failing schools, and folding hospitals."—ILANA (August
3, 2007)
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"The
future leader of a superpower
should be
emphasizing innovation-oriented, not labor-intense, forms of production.
More
mechanization and less
Mexicanization."—ILANA
(October 12, 2007)
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"The free flow of people across borders is not to be
confused with the free flow of goods across borders. Free trade is a
positive-sum game. Contrary to illegal immigration, it is always
invited, consensual and hence mutually beneficial to the parties
involved."—ILANA (March
31, 2006)
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"When government
orchestrates an unfettered movement
of people into an interventionist state, in which the rights to
property, free association, and self defense are already heavily
circumscribed by the state—it is guilty of unadulterated
social engineering, central planning, and worse."—ILANA (August
21, 2007)
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On amnesty:
"How better to diminish property rights and accelerate wealth
distribution and, with it, the death of the republic, than to add to the
'union' each year the equivalent of a New Jersey, powered by
identity-politics, and peopled predominantly by tax consumers
seeking to indenture taxpayers?"—ILANA
(June
15, 2007)
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The notion of
dissolving the people and electing another, to paraphrase
Bertold Brecht—that’s very much alive in the minds of the political
caste."—ILANA (May
22, 2007)
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The Republican presidential
candidates "insist the American military’s obligation is to patrol the
borders of Kosovo, Korea and Kurdistan, while our own borders remain
perilously porous; Americans living alongside them forsaken."—ILANA
(May
18, 2007)
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“Whatever
open-border libertarians think about immigration law, once
the immigration scofflaw steals, trespasses, or vandalizes
private property, said alien is guilty of crimes. To
say, moreover, that the state’s laws made masses of men and
women commit such crimes is to voice the philosophy of
determinism, not individualism.”—ILANA (May
3, 2007)
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"Want to see an immigration liberationist rise on his
hind legs, mention a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Hysterical
yelps of 'tear down this wall' will ensue. Irrational minds have
transformed a defensive wall à la the Emperor Hadrian’s, intended to
keep the 'barbarians' out, into the Iron Curtain or the
Berlin Wall, constructed to keep people in."—ILANA (October
20, 2006)
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"It’s now mandatory
to pair an objection to the invasion of the American Southwest with an
embrace of all forms of legal immigration. The
sole emphasis on border security
has, in all likelihood, entrenched
the status quo—Americans will never assert their right to determine the
nature of the country they live in and, by extension, the kind of
immigrants they welcome."—ILANA (April
28, 2006)
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“America’s immigration
policies select for low moral character by rewarding
unacceptable risk-taking and law-breaking—an undesirable
feature that’ll be further refined by the imminent passing
of the
amnesty bill.”—ILANA (April
6, 2006)
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“The purely economic argument about the price at which
American workers will perform menial work is meaningless without a
reference to borders and to the thing they bound—a nation. Render
asunder the idea of a nation, make borders obsolete—and the world is
your labor market.”—ILANA (March
31, 2006)
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“Most illegal aliens do not come to the U.S. to wage war,
but the reality is that, once in the country, almost all wage
welfare.”—ILANA (March
27, 2006)
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American immigration policy: "a statist revolution
directed from above by a treacherous political class that has shared the
ideological cockpit with 'intellectuals,' who hate their country’s
history and inhabitants (aboriginals excluded)."—ILANA (December
16, 2005)
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“Would that the American Welfare State did not exist. But
since it does and is, unfortunately, likely to persist for some time to
come, it must stop at the Rio Grande.”—ILANA (October
31, 2003)
ELECTIONS 2008
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"Why
did Obama not attend a less radical church where Jesus, not Jeremiah,
was king?"—ILANA (May
2, 2008)
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"America’s pathological, election-time
self-absorption makes a mockery of the notion that the
US is suited to lead the world. Shouldn’t a world leader
take an interest in the world?"—ILANA (April
24, 2008)
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On Obama's sliming of small-town America:
"the
incident is significant for what it tells us about who
Obama is and what he disdains: guns and God—not
the God of Rev. Wright, but the God white, rural, gun-toting
America carriers close to its heart."—ILANA (April
11, 2008)
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"McCain
demonstrated his inability to tell Shiite from
Shinola: Al-Qaida international and Al-Qaida Iraq are Sunni. Call
them Wahhabis, Salafis, Takfiris, if you like, but not Shiites!"—ILANA (April
11, 2008)
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"McCain might consider modifying his mantra about
illegal aliens being God's children to whom he owes a path to
citizenship. This is not about the Arizonan’s relationship with God
and His creatures; it’s about McCain’s relationship with the
Constitution. The Constitution binds a president to uphold the law; it doesn’t
authorize him to legislate compassion."—ILANA
(April 4, 2008)
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"Obama is an ass with ears when it comes to the economy. The same
goes for Clinton. So Sen. McCain did not help himself (or us) by being
charmingly self-deprecating about his understanding of the economy. He has
allowed Obama and Clinton, infinitely more asinine than he, to assert their
superiority."—ILANA (March
28, 2008)
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"The genteel Obama is nothing like the Rev. Wright, except that
they both appear to be overcompensating for not looking more like Kunta Kinte.
There’s another small something the two share: a philosophy."—ILANA
(March 21, 2008)
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"McCain,
the global
warmonger, is also a global-warming Wing Nut."—ILANA
(February 15, 2008)
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"McCain has promised a monstrous 'Marshall Plan' for Iraq. What
cuts to welfare he will deliver stateside, McCain will divert to Iraq in the
form of massive government make-work schemes."—ILANA
(February 15, 2008)
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"All the 'giving' Hussein and Hillary plan to do is
extraconstitutional. Obama’s Manna From Heaven Healthcare Plan, and Hillary’s
Cuba Care—these are not inalienable rights."—ILANA
("The
Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil," February 15, 2008)
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"It’s manifestly clear
how close on the unconstitutional continuum Hillary, Hussein and McCain stand."—ILANA
("The
Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil," February 15, 2008)
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"So what do I think of the next president? I didn’t like his
predecessor’s 'New New Deal, so why would I like Barack Hussein Obama’s Great
Great Society."—ILANA
(February 15, 2008)
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"The greater
philosophical significance of McCain lies in his violence-for-values verbiage;
in how he deceptively frames the bloodletting in Iraq and elsewhere around the
world as the heroic upholding of individual rights."—ILANA
(February 8, 2008)
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"I had hoped that, in the dust-up between conservatives and
the neocon-dominated Republican Party, McCain would serve as
the curdling bacteria, separating
the neoconservative whey from the conservative curd. I was wrong."—ILANA
(February 5, 2008).
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"Reaching
across the aisle
to get things done”: McCain’s euphemism for relinquishing principles in favor of
political expediency.”—ILANA
(February 5, 2008)
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"As a man of the classical liberal,
unquestionably American, Old Right, Rep. Paul is perfectly congruous
in his defense of a sovereign America bounded by borders. It is his
libertarian critics who belong to a different tradition—and who
don’t make a lick of sense to sane Americans."—ILANA
(January 11, 2008)
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"From the fact that Rep. Paul celebrates free, unfettered movement
of goods across borders—trade—Paul’s detractors have 'deduced' that
he must also rejoice in the free flow of people across our borders.
This is so because these anarchists confuse desires with rights—they believe that preventing anyone from studying or
settling in the US is an act of savage aggression.”—ILANA
(January 11, 2008)
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“Ron Paul stands alone among the presidential contenders for a
solvent, sovereign America—he has the will to stop the squandering of men
and matériel in Iraq and the intellectual wherewithal to salvage an
ailing currency, fortify forsaken borders, and restore individual liberties.”—ILANA
(December 19, 2007)
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"I can see why
media, women especially, love Big Daddy; whether he’s
sermonizing about diet or the deity, Huckabee is fast becoming the Oprah of the Evangelicals."—ILANA
(December 14, 2007)
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"The
paradox of the peace-loving Ron Paul is this: Given his commitment to
national sovereignty—to defending
this
country, not Israel, Iraq or Afghanistan—Paul will have the will
and the wherewithal to smash any enemy entering our orbit."—ILANA
(October
12, 2007)
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"Like the remarkable Rep. Ron Paul, opponents of the invasion [of Iraq]
were right because we cleaved to the kind of
intellectual and moral principles
that were immutably true before Sept. 11, after it, and
forever after."—ILANA (June, 2007)
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The Republican presidential
candidates "insist the American military’s obligation is to patrol the
borders of Kosovo, Korea and Kurdistan, while our own borders remain
perilously porous; Americans living alongside them forsaken."—ILANA
(May
18, 2007)
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“'Leadership' is a euphemism
for overriding the will of the people. No sooner does the pesky popular
will intrude into the debate than the top Republican contenders begin to
yammer about their obligation to demonstrate “leadership."—ILANA
(May
18, 2007)
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Why immigration ought to be the central issue in the 2008
elections: "The
neoconservative 'idea' of preemptive wars or wars for democracy is as
dead as a doornail. However, the notion of
dissolving the people and electing another, to paraphrase
Bertold Brecht, that’s very much alive in the minds of the political
caste."—ILANA (May
22, 2007)
REPUBLICANS & DEMOCRATS
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“'Leadership' is a euphemism
for overriding the will of the people. No sooner does the pesky popular
will intrude into the debate than the top Republican contenders begin to
yammer about their obligation to demonstrate 'leadership.'"—ILANA
(May
18, 2007)
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"Would that Republicans fussed as much over the many fully formed
human-beings dying daily in Iraq, as they do over fetuses."—ILANA
(November
10, 2006)
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"If
establishment Republicans had the faintest affinity for conservatism,
they’d quit pouring American blood and treasure down the Iraqi drain."—ILANA
(October 6, 2006)
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"Antitrust laws ought to be deployed, not against
business, but to bust this two-party monopoly, which subverts
competition in government and rewards the colluding quislings with
sinecures in perpetuity.”—ILANA (May
26, 2006)
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"What we
have now is a cartel, the traditional ideological differences
between the political parties having been permanently blurred."—ILANA (May
26, 2006)
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"Republicans have framed a demand for accountability
as an attempt to 'politicize' the Katrina cataclysm. Democrats, as always,
refuse to recognize the banality of bureaucratic evil. Their boilerplate battle
cry is "racism." As the factions settle into their familiar foxholes, it becomes
crucial to remind Americans that, irrespective of political fidelity,
politicians – local, state, and federal – must pay for the lives
lost
to Katrina."—ILANA (September
13, 2005)
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"Islamic terrorism is the handiwork of people who’ve
heeded, not hijacked, Islam."—ILANA
(March
17, 2006)
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“Whenever a Muslim commits odious acts in the name of his
faith, these are deemed—post haste and post hoc—a
manifestation of the inauthentic Islam.”—ILANA (September
15, 2006)
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"Unlike Iranian Holocaust humor,
there is no objective reason to label the Danes and their drawings
immoral—they have violated Islamic, not Western, strictures. This slur
is based on the demands of cultural relativism and cowardice."—ILANA
(March
10, 2006)
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"So
long as it's voluntary and doesn't involve The Rack … unleashing an army of
missionaries on the Islamic patrimony would be far more efficacious than the
military offensives currently underway."—ILANA (February
23, 2005)
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"On the Danish Cartoons: The camel in the room… is legal
and unselective immigration…A culturally coherent immigration policy is
the best defense. Unless Bush does his constitutional duty, it'll be
only a matter of time before the first American
Theo van Gogh is stuck like a pig on our streets.”—ILANA (February
10, 2006)
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"While
throwing money and men to Moloch, the commander in chief ignores that
the Arab Street has always been more militant than its leaders…The only way Bush will get the democracy he desires in
the Arab world is by dissolving the people and electing another, to
paraphrase Bertold Brecht."—ILANA (February
3, 2006)
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"Our adventurous foreign policy might be a necessary
condition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient
one."—ILANA (July
19, 2005)
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“…the
catalog of Muslim complaints and contrivances is a little longer than the
excuse-makers allow. Violence against innocent nonbelievers and the infliction
of Shari'a are as integral to Muslim exegetics as are declamations about
occupation."—ILANA (July
19, 2005)
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“Based on
Muslims’ own say-so… it’s both disingenuous and stupid of Islam’s
champions to claim categorically that Muslim aggression is entirely
reactive, a function solely of our misguided foreign policy.”—ILANA (July
19, 2005)
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“…an
estimated 100 to 300 million Muslims are
active adherents of Islamism: small potatoes, right? Yet to listen to the
Bush/Blair pair, you’d think that Jihadists are as alien to Islam as edelweiss
is to the Kalahari.”—ILANA (July
26, 2005)
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"Our Demagogue-in-Chief insists that democracy will both
empower and pacify Muslims. [But] Democratic elections across the Muslim
world would see the pan-Islamists take power everywhere; then elections
would cease."—ILANA (January
26, 2005)
FOREIGN POLICY
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"Maybe Musharraf should have kept Bhutto under house arrest
for her own good—and for the sake of the many bystanders.”—ILANA
(January 4, 2008)
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"About the futility of central
planning: Societies are built from the soil up, not from the sky
down. And by the people, not the pols.”—ILANA
(January 4, 2008)
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"Our adventurous foreign policy might be a necessary
condition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient
one."—ILANA (July
19, 2005)
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"Patriots for a sane American foreign policy ought to encourage all
America’s friends, Israel included, to push back and do what is in
their
national interest, not
ours."—ILANA (April
6, 2007)
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"Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of
others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable,
our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach."—ILANA (April
6, 2007)
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"A real conservative would never graft democratic
institutions onto a society in which adversaries have always
assassinated—not outpolled—one another."—ILANA
(October 6, 2006)
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“‘Philanthropic’ wars are transfer
programs—the quintessential big-government projects. The perpetually
profligate Bush should quit pretending he’s an apostle of smaller
government.”—ILANA (October
6, 2006)
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“A Katrina Question: Hey, what do
Americans have to do to get their army reservists to bat, not for Baghdad, but for the homies
and the homeland? Climb on their rooftops and yelp for help?”—ILANA (August
30, 2005)
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"So
long as it's voluntary and doesn't involve The Rack … unleashing an army of
missionaries on the Islamic patrimony would be far more efficacious than the
military offensives currently underway."—ILANA (February
23, 2005)
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"Healthy patriotism is associated with robust
particularism – petty provincialism, if you like – and certainly not
with the deracinated globalism."—ILANA (March
9, 2005)
IRAQ
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"Petraeus is defending a pie-in-the-sky policy much more
than a viable military mission. The former is beyond his purview. But
then constitutional overreach is the name of the game for politicians
and their pet generals."—ILANA (April
8, 2008)
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"The
idea that we can rehabilitate what we ruined in Iraq is delusional—a
function of a collective mindset that rejects reality and its lessons.
We can’t fix Iraq because of what we wrought—because of
the Original Sin of invasion. The sinner cannot turn savior."—ILANA
(October 12, 2007)
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"The surge’s
claim to success is more serendipity than science."—ILANA
(September 14, 2007)
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"The Bush
Administration has gone from discounting Iraqi civilian
casualties to miscounting them. That must surely be counted as
progress."—ILANA (September
14, 2007)
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"Like the remarkable Rep. Ron Paul, opponents of the invasion [of Iraq]
were right because we cleaved to the kind of
intellectual and moral principles
that were immutably true before Sept. 11, after it, and
forever after."—ILANA (June
, 2007)
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On the Baker et al. Report: "In Iraq, every potential for conflict, however small, is
fully realized. Arabs and Turkmen feud with Kurdish irredentists; the
Badr Brigade battles the Mahdi Army, even though both are Shia. But why
dwell on the negative? All this will be behind us once Israel cedes more
territory to those plucky Palestinians."—ILANA (December
8, 2006)
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"In their depiction of the Middle East as a magically
interconnected ecosystem, Baker et al. have conjured a construct every
bit as mystical as Bush’s democracy-by-osmosis."—ILANA (December
8, 2006)
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"Saddam’s
last major massacre was in 1991, during which
only
3,000 Shiites were murdered. That’s less than the monthly quota under
'democracy.'”—ILANA (December
1, 2006)
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"Under
our ministrations Iraq has gone from a
secular
to a
religious
country; from
rogue
to
failed
state."—ILANA (December
1, 2006)
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"When it comes to Iraq, the pols
fetishize details, hang hopes on minutia and forfeit a deeper
understanding of the place and people. The devil is not in the
details—more troops, or better training for Iraqis—but in the big
picture."—ILANA
(November
16, 2006)
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"The government of Iraq doesn’t stand
apart from the governed; it reflects them.
The
divisions that have riven the region for four millenniums are mirrored
in the current government, and will continue to hobble every successive
government that hunkers down in the Green Zone."—ILANA
(November
16, 2006)
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"Remove one Saddam, who kept a lid on the cauldron of
crime and corruption that is Iraq, and there’ll be another waiting to
take his place—and another and another. Just like a shark’s
teeth."—ILANA (November
6, 2006)
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"Hyping a war as a symbolic war gives it momentum—and facilitates its
expansion beyond regional confines."—ILANA
(July 16,
2006)
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Person of the Year: “The Average Iraqi is a
tragic hero, not a Randian hero. His image should be seared
in the minds of men with a conscience. He is the repository
of state evil; first Saddam, and then a faraway president
and his Revolutionary Assembly sealed his fate without his
consent.”—ILANA (12.18.05
@ 2:01 am)
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“Once a rogue state; Iraq is now a failed
one, where any faction that imagines its wishes are being
frustrated goes out and kills its foes. Freedom is on the
march.”—ILANA (December
6, 2005)
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“Prior to Bush’s invasion, I didn’t give a
tinker’s toss what Iraqis did to Saddam. He was their
baggage. But now that this burlesque of justice [Saddam's
trial] is
branded ‘made-in-America,’ it's a Mark of Cain on all of
us.”—ILANA (December
6, 2005)
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"Bush and his devotees
continually compare the carnage in
Iraq to the constitutional cramps of early America: Yes, the hoots,
hollers, and blasts emanating from members of Iraq’s tribal troika
capture to a tee the tone of the debates in, what’s that document
called?
The Fedayeen Papers?"—ILANA (October
12, 2005)
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Again, "on the
continual comparisons between the
carnage in Iraq and the constitutional cramps of early America: Why
didn’t it occur to me? Only a fool would fail to trace the philosophical
link between the warring Mohammedans and the followers of John Locke and
Baron de Montesquieu."—ILANA (October
12, 2005)
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“Let’s ignore Bush’s reverse
Midas touch, and assume for the sake of argument that his ‘project’ has not
whittled Iraqi liberties. If indeed we’ve subsidized ‘freedom’ for Iraqis and
fought their battles—then we’ve also increased their impotence and diminished
their initiative.”—ILANA (September
2, 2005)
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“We have a solemn duty not to violate the rights
of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no
duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because upholding the negative
rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative
liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The
classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens,
first.”—ILANA (September
2, 2005)
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“Let's leave aside the question of whether the invasion
of Iraq was unjust and unattainable or merely mistaken and misguided.
Why must we continue to feed this false idol with more lives? What does
this make us? Worshippers of Moloch or mere fools?”—ILANA (December
1, 2004)
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“To say that Saddam may have had WMD is quite different
from advocating war based on those assumptions. It’s one thing to assume in error; it’s quite another to
launch a war in which
thousands would die based on mere assumptions, however widely
shared.”—ILANA (June
25, 2003)
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“… a brave nation fights only because it must; a
cowardly nation fights because it can.”—ILANA (March
26, 2003)
CHINA
-
"It’s time we came clean about our economic system. The
Chinese are honest about theirs; they call it 'socialism with Chinese
characteristic.' We call ours free-market capitalism, when in fact it is
a Third
Way system too: 'Socialism with American
characteristics.'”—ILANA
(February 29,
2008)
-
"Since American society is increasingly
silhouetted by the State, we’re in
the unproductive business of graduating lawyers. Because the Chinese
State is receding, they’re in the productive business of graduating
engineers."—ILANA
(February 29,
2008)
-
"The picture of China to emerge from
behind those pretty Chinese screens is complex. The embodiment of
feng shui it is not. The trend, however, is unmistakable: China is
becoming freer, America less free. The devil is in this detail."—ILANA
(February 29,
2008)
-
"China is changing. It is 'out of the
red' in more ways than one. The US is changing too: It’s in the red and
getting redder."—ILANA
(February 29,
2008)
-
"The Chinese are ditching Mao for Milton,
as Americans trust Oprah to pick their literature and leaders."—ILANA
(February 29,
2008)
-
"While America is becoming more
militaristic; China is growing increasingly capitalistic. As
America’s middle-class dwindles due to government’s wastrel ways,
China’s middle class is 200-million strong and growing. The Chinese
have money
on their minds; murder,
not so much."—ILANA
(May
11, 2007)
NEOCONSERVATISM
-
On the neoconservative's "propositional nation": "No
longer will communities comprise individuals bound by a shared language,
literature, culture, faith, history, habits and heroes. Rather, what
we’re being fashioned into is a disparate people, forced together by an
abstract, highly manipulable, coercive, state-sanctioned
ideology."—ILANA (December
28, 2007)
-
"For
exhorting that 'we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and
convert them to Christianity,' Ann Coulter was even banished from
National Review. This was a puzzling purge, considering neoconservatives
promptly adopted her recommendations (save
the peaceful one),
invaded Muslim countries and killed their leaders.—ILANA
(October
26, 2007)
-
“Neocon nirvana is a U.S.-supervised world, where Afghani
and Israeli alike are fashioned into global democrats, citizens of the
world.”—ILANA (April
24, 2002)
-
“In the process of pursuing some sort of neoconservative
‘Manifest Destiny,’ President Bush has junked the American
Constitution—it gave him no authority to ‘promote’ global freedom,
democracy or nation-building with blood and treasure not his own.”—ILANA
(September
11, 2003)
-
"Inviting an invasion by
foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same
neoconservative coin."—ILANA (January
16, 2004 Also mentioned
here by Larry Auster)
-
“Neoconservatives are committed cultural and religious
relativists who firmly believe a good democratic heart throbs in every
thorax.”—ILANA (February
23, 2005)
-
“Loving Islam and leveling an
Islamic country—these are two sides of the same
neoconservative coin.”—ILANA (November
4, 2005)
ECONOMICS
-
"Obama is an ass with ears when it comes to
the economy. The same goes for Clinton. So Sen. McCain did not help
himself (or us) by being charmingly self-deprecating about his
understanding of the economy. He has allowed Obama and Clinton,
infinitely more asinine than he, to assert their superiority."—ILANA (March
28, 2008)
-
"Where Kemp-McCain economics meet Obama-Clinton “freakonomics” is
in the unnatural and un-American idea that the government is entitled to a
portion of your income; that it has a lien on your life and on what you acquire
in the course of sustaining that life.
Be it Hillary,
Hussein or McCain—they all agree that it is up to the all-knowing central
planner to determine how much of your life ought to be theirs.—ILANA
(March
28, 2008)
-
"Forced to choose between various forms of
enslavement, as we indeed are, then the flat tax is the
second best option,
revolution being the first."—ILANA (March
3, 2008)
-
"CNN's Lou Dobbs would do a great service
to American innovators and middle class, if he waged his wordy war
against their government, which has buried American business under a
burdensome bureaucracy."—ILANA
(February 29,
2008)
-
"The market does no more than offer an aggregate
snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences enacted by
consumers. Aguilera (Christina) probably sells more than Ashkenazy
(Vladimir) ever did. Britney outdoes Borodin. For some, this will be
faith-inspiring, for others deeply distressing."—ILANA (February
7, 2003)
-
"Politics is a form of sheltered
employment."—ILANA (February 8, 2008)
-
"Profits are the street signs of the free market—without profits there’d be no
products."—ILANA (February 8, 2008)
-
"It’s high time
Americans, who never tire of cramming their values down gagging
gullets, remember that solvency is a virtue; bankruptcy a vice."—ILANA (January
25, 2008)
-
"The
freer a society, the less likely government is to placate
the envious by taking from those they envy.
In
unfree societies, that’s precisely what governments do:
pacify the multitudes by mulcting the few."—ILANA
(March
2, 2007)
-
"The concept of an income gap is meaningless in
its circularity. Some people are richer than others. Some don’t like it.
It’s called envy."—ILANA
(February 5,
2007)
-
"Antitrust laws ought to be deployed, not against
business, but to bust this two-party monopoly, which subverts
competition in government and rewards the colluding quislings with
sinecures in perpetuity.”—ILANA (May
26, 2006)
-
“The Securities and Exchange Commission
operates on an unconstitutional ex post facto
basis—its victims have no way of
foreseeing or controlling how vague law will be bent and
charges changed in the course of seeking the desired
prosecutorial outcome.”—ILANA (December
2, 2005)
-
Socialists: Their zero-sum economics dictate that one
person’s plenty is another’s poverty.”—ILANA (August
19, 2005)
-
“Statists say that if not for the state, man would be unable to
produce. That's like saying that the tick created the dog! Production predates
government predation. Government doesn't produce wealth—it only consumes
it.”—ILANA (Sixteen, the Number of the Beast, in
Broad Sides, 2004)
LEFT-LIBERALISM
-
"Liberals
are always exalting man’s basest instincts and debasing his most exalted
achievements.”—ILANA
(2007)
-
Liberals retain a totemic
attachment to the Freudian idea that traumatic toilet training is
destiny.”—ILANA
(December
29, 2004)
-
"Liberals can always be trusted to see God in
Mumia Abu-Jamal and the devil in the Pope."—ILANA (April
29, 2005)
-
"The only kind
of marriage liberals had ever glorified is the gay kind. But thanks to Michael
Schiavo, the sanctity of marriage is fast becoming a liberal sacrament, with the
proviso it has to involve 'mercy killing.' It took Michael Schiavo's devoted
efforts to starve and dehydrate his wife to restore liberal faith in the
institution."—ILANA (March
26, 2005)
-
What distinguishes civilized beings from animals,
primitive societies, and liberals is that they don’t see nature as an
exemplar of all that is fine and good. To the contrary: the civilized
don’t abandon the burdensome or the enfeebled to nature. When some of us
do, others will always strive to rescue them.”—ILANA (March
26, 2005)
-
"Evidence
that primitive societies abandoned their enfeebled members to
'nature' only intensified the liberal’s Rousseauist reverence for this
practice, as the case of Terry Schiavo showed."—ILANA
(March
26, 2005)
-
“Left-liberals ... believe a judicial activist is
someone who reverses precedent. George Bush thinks a
judicial activist is someone who disobeys the President.”—ILANA (October
3, 2005)
THE WELFARE-WARFARE STATE
-
"The-state-as-parent is a leftist legal doctrine that has
been eagerly embraced by the rigor-mortis riddled Right."—ILANA (April
25, 2008)
-
"Whether they are 'plural' or single,
Wicca or just weird, bohemian or bourgeoisie—parents should take the
kids and skedaddle when they hear that phrase 'in the best interests of
the child.'"—ILANA (April
25, 2008)
-
The nation’s foster parents: "Fagin
on welfare."—ILANA (April
25, 2008)
-
"The danger exists that by subsidizing 'freedom' for
others, we’ll disempower them and encourage dependency."—ILANA (February
3, 2006)
-
“‘Philanthropic’ wars are transfer
programs—the quintessential big-government projects. The perpetually
profligate Bush should quit pretending he’s an apostle of smaller
government.”—ILANA (January
6, 2006)
-
“Most of what the Federal Frankenstein does is either
unconstitutional, immoral, illegal, or all of the above.”—ILANA (October
15, 2005)
-
“A Katrina Question: Hey, what do
Americans have to do to get their army reservists to bat, not for Baghdad, but for the homies
and the homeland? Climb on their rooftops and yelp for help?”—ILANA (August
30, 2005)
-
"The
Key to Katrina: “The inverted and perverse incentive structure that
characterizes [government] endeavors guarantees failure. ... Wrongdoing and
incompetence in government are seldom punished, but are, rather, rewarded with
budgetary increases. A government department accretes through inefficiency.
Failure translates into ever-growing budgets and powers and a further
collectivization of accountability.”—ILANA (September
2,
2005)
-
“Statists say that if not for the state, man would be unable to
produce. That's like saying that the tick created the dog! Production predates
government predation. Government doesn't produce wealth—it only consumes
it.”—ILANA (Sixteen, the Number of the Beast, in
Broad Sides, 2004)
-
“… a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly
nation fights because it can.”—ILANA (March
26, 2003)
THE THERAPEUTIC STATE
-
"To listen to the nation’s psychiatric gurus is to come
to believe that crimes are caused, not committed.
Perpetrators don’t do the crime, but are driven to their
dirty deeds by a confluence of uncontrollable factors, victims of
societal forces or organic brain disease."—ILANA (April
20, 2007)
-
"Police and campus authorities responded to Cho’s
stalking, pyromania, and voyeurism by medicalizing his misbehavior. As the nation’s
pseudo-experts generally advise, Cho was referred to a mental health
facility."—ILANA (April
20, 2007)
-
"The Drew Pinskys of the world
conjure so-called mental diseases either to control contrarians or to
exculpate criminals"—ILANA (April
20, 2007)
-
"If the consensus in society is that
doing the bare minimum is an act of supreme courage; then failing to
perform basic obligations must be considered the norm."—ILANA
(February 2, 2007)
-
"It is an error to use the disease paradigm to describe
or explain errant behavior."—ILANA (January 2007)
-
"Liberals first, and conservatives in short succession,
have taken to the idiom of disease like ducks to water. Left and right
now insist, based on wispy pseudoscience, that just about every human
excess is an illness as organic as cancer or diabetes."—ILANA (August
4, 2006)
-
“According to the disease theory of delinquency, the
arsonist has 'pyromania,' the thief 'kleptomania,’ and
Bill Clinton is not promiscuous, but a ‘sex-addict.’''—ILANA (August
4, 2006)
-
“At the
root of the diseasing of behavior is the eradication of good and bad.
Placing bad behavior beyond the strictures of traditional morality,
moreover, makes it amenable to external, ‘therapeutic’ or state
interventions.”—ILANA (August
4, 2006)
-
“In the ‘progressive's’ universe, evil
actions don't incriminate, they mitigate. Rather than
signify a lack of moral fiber, the criminality of the
darling buds of France—her raging Muslim youths— is said to
be a symptom of inadequate freebies and fraternité.”—ILANA
(November
11, 2005)
-
“Someone is considered creative and
strong in the Zeitgeist not when she builds an empire and employs
hundreds of people, but once she has conformed by gaining therapeutic
‘self-knowledge’ and whimpering on Oprah. In fact, the
therapeutic creed is often used to coerce people into conformity.”—ILANA
(Everyman: A Men’s Journal, April-June 2005)
BUSH
-
"Bush babble, I believe, is less a consequence of congenital
stupidity than it is of the confusion caused by incessant, habitual lying."—ILANA
(February 8, 2008)
-
"The
Bush Doctrine: Aggress against non-aggressors (Iraq); surrender to
aggressors (gangs, goons and grafter crossing our Southwestern border)."—ILANA
(March 7, 2008)
-
“Left-liberals ... believe a judicial activist is
someone who reverses precedent. George Bush thinks a
judicial activist is someone who disobeys the President.”—ILANA (October
3, 2005)
-
"Bush's 'bring 'em on' grin one can also observe on
the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis."—ILANA (July
16, 2003)
-
"Bush is a
stupid man, but he’s not a yes man. He’s not even a
'let’s-hear-what-you-have-to-say' man. He’s a 'do-as-I-say' 'Decider,' a
nickname he gave himself."—ILANA (July 13,
2007)
-
"Bush has
betrayed US borders and identity because, he doesn’t believe in them.
Afghani and Israeli: if Bush had his way, they’d all be molded into
global democrats, citizens of the world."—ILANA
(July 13, 2007)
-
"I liked Bush when he started out. Libertarians were
generally hopeful about a president who promised a humble foreign policy
and less taxation. I still liked Bush when he chased bin Laden in
Afghanistan. But soon after, the real Bush revealed himself to anyone
willing to see: A man with a megalomaniacal glint in the eyes and an
unstoppable will to wage war on a backward, secular, harmless Arab
state, hobbled by sanctions." (July
13, 2007)
-
"Bush ... should be slithering on his belly to Bashar to thank him for serving
as the US’s pressure relief valve vis-à-vis Iraq.
Together, Jordan and Syria have taken in 1.6 million fleeing Iraqi
refugees."—ILANA
(April 2,
2007)
-
"If
Bush is so concerned about how the Arab world views us, he should not
have invaded a sovereign Arab country, killed tens of thousands of
innocent civilians, and propelled the place into a bloody civil war."—ILANA
(March 11,
2006)
-
“Why would George Bush care whether Harriet E. Miers can tell
Blackstone from Bentham when he can’t?”—ILANA (October
3, 2005)
-
"Our Demagogue-in-Chief insists that democracy will both
empower and pacify Muslims. [But] Democratic elections across the Muslim
world would see the pan-Islamists take power everywhere; then elections
would cease."—ILANA (January
26, 2005)
-
“In the process of pursuing some sort of neoconservative
‘Manifest Destiny,’ President Bush has junked the American
Constitution—it gave him no authority to ‘promote’ global freedom,
democracy or nation-building with blood and treasure not his own.”—ILANA
(September
11, 2003)
-
"George W. Bush is oblivious to a basic
principle of his own conservative ideology: Top-down central
planning—economic or political—is doomed to fail."—ILANA (September
11, 2003)
-
“Under the Bush Iraq Doctrine, evidence against a theory constitutes evidence for a theory: No smoking gun meant
that
there was a hidden gun somewhere or a plan to acquire a gun, or a hidden
plan to acquire a gun and hide it.”—ILANA (December
18, 2002)
ENVIRONMENTALISM & ANIMAL
RIGHTS
-
"Like environmentalists, politicians generally privilege flora and fauna
over folks. (NIMBYs excepted. Senator Edward Kennedy is a
not-in-my-backyard environmentalist: he opposes wind farms in Nantucket
Sound, offshore from his Hyannis Port compound.)—ILANA (April
4, 2008)
-
"Environmental lobbies abhor all by-products
of human existence, unless generated by illegal aliens. In that case,
the vast latrine and land fill created along the border with Mexico, as
millions of illegals defecate and despoil their way to their
destinations in the US, are just dandy. To interfere with the natural
formation of this outsized outhouse is to “jeopardize the quality of
life and beauty of South Texas.”—ILANA (April
4, 2008)
-
"A heart-warming thought about global-warming
wombats:
These
mutant Marxists are worried sick about the planet.
The Worry Factor may just
increase the rate at which this particular invasive species falls
off the earth."—ILANA
(January
30, 2008)
-
"If one is looking to criminalize 'excessive'
emissions of carbon, as Al Gore is, then buying carbon credits is
like getting a hit-and-run allowance. Exceed your allowable
hit-and-runs, and you get to pay a lesser offender for the right to
pick-off more pedestrians."—ILANA
(November
2, 2007)
-
"To PETA, man and beast exist along the same continuum,
their faculties and feelings differing in degree, not in kind."—ILANA (September
2, 2007)
-
"Rights give rise to legal claims. Ultimately, the more
rights animals are granted, the greater the legal lien exercised on
their behalf against the liberty and property of people."—ILANA (September
2, 2007)
-
"Whether one kills animals for food or for fun,
the naturally licit basis for large-scale pig farming or game hunting is
the same: ownership of the resource."—ILANA (August
24, 2007)
-
"Members of the canine community have yet to deliver
disquisitions against dog fighting. However, when the day arrives and
Fido fights tooth and nail for more than Kibbles 'n Bits, he will indeed
have earned his rights."—ILANA (August
24, 2007)
-
"The only thing that might lift the
malodorous aura that has clung to Sheryl Crow since she came out of the
toilet with these schemes is the knowledge that her well-appointed
bathroom sports a bidet."—ILANA
(April 27, 2007)
-
"[G]lobal warming, that manufactured
monomania."—ILANA
(April 27, 2007)
-
On the unfalsifiable theory of global
warming:"Evidence
that contradicts the global warming theory, climate kooks enlist as
evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in
weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that
warming or proof of it."—ILANA
(December 29, 2006)
-
"Katrina Culpability: 'Please don’t neglect the environmentalists.
... A Holy Grail for these humanity-haters is to
launch litigation to hinder the construction of hurricane-prevention
floodgates and other barrier projects. They’ve succeeded. I happened on
a car sporting one of their bumper stickers: 'save the planet; commit
suicide.' 'Save the planet; commit murder' better encapsulates their
'philosophy.'”—ILANA (September
13, 2005)
-
“It used to be that men killed and hunted encroaching creatures.
Thanks to decades of cultural queering and legal emasculation, men no longer
have the urge to protect home and hearth. Instead, they now robotically spew the
Sierra Club’s line: animal are the true homesteaders of the planet; humans come
second.”—ILANA (June
11, 2005)
ISRAEL & THE PALESTINIANS
-
"Certain nihilists appear to believe that it’s preferable
for their Palestinian protégés to be masters in a failed state than a
minority in a functioning one."—ILANA
(March 14, 2008)
-
“The notion that
Hezbollah is a Jihadist organization that would like to see Israel
destroyed
does nothing to address whether there
is utility
or justification
in destroying
Lebanon."—ILANA (August 10, 2006)
-
"The blame for civilian casualties lies
indirectly with Hezbollah … which targets civilians and hides among
them. Although necessary, this fact, however, is not sufficient to
exempt Israel from responsibility for its direct actions … Israel can’t
claim it didn’t intend to take out civilians when Israeli generals can
both see and foresee the devastating results of their
bombardments."—ILANA
(July 21, 2006)
-
“It's hard to imagine Angelina Jolie...visiting an
Israeli child who has survived a suicide bombing. I know she has hung
out with the M.O.P.E (Most Oppressed People Ever aka the Palestinians).
I guess some people just don't die as well as others.”—ILANA (June
23, 2006)
-
“No amount
of wanking with words is going to change that Palestinians, unlike their
Israeli neighbors, don't live under the rule of enlightened Western law,
don't have a free and ferociously critical media or liberal courts, and
are more likely to approve when their coreligionists strap on belts of
nails and dynamite and blow up innocents.”—ILANA (January
13, 2006)
-
“Apologists for
lackluster Palestinian productivity blame Israel—the few thousand [Gazan]
'settlers,' especially. Socialists will do that. Their zero-sum economics
dictate that one person’s plenty is another’s poverty.”—ILANA (August
19, 2005)
-
"In Israel, the
West has reclaimed a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where
enlightened Western law prevails, and where Christians, Jews, and their
sacred places are safe. Yet what is the West feverishly fighting for?
The utter emasculation of Israel."—ILANA
(August, 23,
2005)
-
“By returning land
to the aggressors—the Sinai first—Israel violated Nullum crimen sine poena,
the imperative in international law [and natural law] to punish the aggressor.”—ILANA
(August
23, 2005)
-
“It is becoming
apparent that to some, bringing about the end of Israel is well worth the deadly
price of reviving and consolidating a caliphate. There’s a word for that
(besides insanity).”—ILANA
(August
23, 2005)
-
"Gaza is being 'cleansed' of Jews to the
sounds of a jeering media. The punditocracy has cheered the evacuation of the
descendants of the Hasmoneans and heralded a takeover by the spiritual scions of
Hamas."—ILANA (August
19, 2005)
-
“When it comes to Israel, the logical power pyramid is
mysteriously inverted so that a small nation is seen as wielding paranormal
powers over a superpower.”—ILANA (May
29, 2005)
-
“Sharon
was a soldier in the style of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, not Dubya the
Deserter. As a Special Forces commander, he personally led his troops
into battle, performing daring assaults that saved Israel in the 1967
and 1973 wars.”—ILANA (November 14, 2003)
-
“The world mistakes the Palestinian’s military weakness
for moral innocence.”—ILANA (April
17, 2002)
REASON & REALITY
-
"Policy
by definition addresses the collective, not the individual. Duly.
The reality-based libertarian will seek to minimize political overreach,
not mandate heaven on earth."—ILANA (January
15, 2008)
-
"Reality: the rational man’s anchor."—ILANA
(June
15, 2007)
-
"Unvarnished objective reality is morality’s best
measure; and human action the ultimate adjudicator of moral
worth."—ILANA (January
13, 2006)
INDIVIDUALISM VS.
COLLECTIVISM
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