Multiculturalism as practiced in the West amounts to top-down, centrally enforced and managed integration. Show me a historical precedent where forced integration has worked. As it works across the Anglo-American and European spheres, one group (the founding, historical majority) is forced by self-anointed and elected elites, on pain of public and professional ostracism, to submerge its history, heroes, customs, culture, language, and pander to militant minorities, who’ve been acculturated by the same elites in identity-politics warfare.
Ilana Mercer is a rarity.
Originality is rare in punditry these days. Every time a new narrative-of-the-day arrives, we take refuge in groupthink rather than thinking for ourselves. Not Mercer.
Originally from South Africa, she moved to Israel after authorities pressured her anti-apartheid father. Today, Mercer is one of America’s leading paleolibertarian voices. She not only has a prominent column for World Net Daily, but is the author of Into The Cannibal’s Pot, a book about what has happened to her home country over the years.
Mercer shares her views about topics ranging from political polarization to race relations.
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Joseph F. Cotto: This seems like one of the most polarized eras in American politics. Why do you think that our country’s political atmosphere has become so divisive?
Ilana Mercer: I think you are correct in your assessment regarding the unparalleled polarization of American society. Have you noticed how commentators on both sides of received political wisdom attempt to diminish the fact you articulate by referring to America’s fractious history? Nevertheless, this is a complex issue that is hard to answer briefly. I’ll try. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” economist Milton Friedman underscores this important point: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”
Underway today in the USA is a monumental clash between individualism and collectivism; between the forces of reason and reality, against force and coercion. The “philosophical” differences between the Republikeynesians, on the one hand, and the Democrats, on the other, are insignificant. The first believe individual rights should be carefully calibrated by central planners; the latter believe these natural rights can be overridden.
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