Ilana Mercer quotes - page 10
A right that can't be defended is a right in name only. If you cannot by law defend your life, you have no right to life. If you cannot defend your property, you have no right of private property. And if you cannot defend your liberty, you are not a free man. It follows that inherent in the idea of an inalienable right is the right to mount a vigorous defense of the same rights.
Ilana Mercer
Most people would define treason as a betrayal of one's country or sovereign. In my book, the book of natural law, treason is properly defined as a betrayal of one's countrymen-and, in particular, the betrayal of the individual's right to life, liberty and property. (To your question, yes, this renders almost all politicians traitors by definition.)
Ilana Mercer
Distinguish we must between the right of the people the world over to be free and our obligation to free them. We have a solemn [negative] 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 the ostensible upholding of the negative rights of the world's citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans-our lives, our liberties and our livelihoods. A just government's duty is to its own citizens first.
Ilana Mercer
By all means, argue against laws that prohibit victimless 'crimes' on the ground that these disproportionally ensnare blacks. But do not err in accusing all cops of targeting blacks, when the former are entrusted with enforcing the law, and the latter violate the law in disproportion to their numbers in the general population.
Ilana Mercer
Disaffected, disadvantaged, disenfranchised is how progressives prefer to depict the Muslim murderers in their midst. After all, progressives hail from the school of therapeutic "thought” that considers crime to have been caused, not committed. Misbehavior is either medicalized and outsourced to state-approved experts, or reduced to the fault of the amorphous thing called society.
Ilana Mercer
The individual living in America as it was meant to be would be free to run his business as he wishes, associate with those he likes, dissociate from those he dislikes or disapproves; hire, fire, rent to or evict from, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. This hypothetical free man is at liberty to bruise as many feelings as he likes, so long as his mitts stop at the next man's face. So long as he harms nobody's person or property, our mythic man may live as he wishes to live.
Ilana Mercer
Fox News' Megyn Kelly has fast succumbed to the female instinct to show-off, bare skin, flirt and wink. She now also regularly motormouths it over the occasional smart guest she entertains (correction: the one smart guest, Ann Coulter). At the same time, Kelly has dignified the tinnitus named Dana Perino with a daily slot as Delphic-oracle.
Ilana Mercer
According to liberal liturgy, if not for largely exogenous circumstances-all human beings would be capable of similar accomplishments. Many a co-opted scientist will second the political dictum that there is no such thing as general intelligence. Speak, if you must, about the phenotype-even genotype-of all individual traits other than intelligence. As for the possibility of group genotypic intelligence: Don't go there!
Ilana Mercer
Donald Trump's political rivals look at the price exacted by a Muslim like Syed Farouk and his bride in the aggregate. To a politician, 14 lives in 322 million is a small price to pay for 'our freedoms.' Fourteen dead in San Bernardino is not a steep price to pay for unfettered immigration from Islamic countries, peddled politically as 'our values,' 'our tolerance,' 'our greatness.' This callous calculus is second nature to neoconservative politicians like Lindsey Graham or Darth Vader Cheney. Not to Trump.
Ilana Mercer
Said Saint Augustine, 'The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.' The Republican Party under Bush did the devil's work. Bar the sainted Ron Paul, not a dog of a Republican lifted his leg in protest of the unjust war on Iraq. To embark on the good, the GOP must come clean about the bad.
Ilana Mercer
I don't know that Trump favors protective tariffs, import quotas or export subsidies. I do know that we don't have free trade. What goes for 'free trade' is trade managed by powerful bureaucracies-national and transnational international-central planners concerned with regulating, not freeing, trade; whose goal it is to harmonize labor, health, and environmental laws throughout the developed world. The undeveloped and developing worlds do as they please. My understanding is that Trump simply wants to make these agreements and organs work for the American people.
Ilana Mercer
Voluntary exchanges are by definition advantageous to their participants. Within this voluntary, mutually beneficial relationship, I give up an item I value less, for something I value more: a fee for the desired product or service. My trading partners, whose valuations are in complementary opposition to mine, reciprocate in kind. Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), there's nothing wrong with my running a trade deficit with Costco, my hair stylist or my GTI dealer, as I do-just as long as I pay for my purchases. However, the data demonstrate that Americans, in general, are not paying for their purchases.
Ilana Mercer
