Ilana Mercer

"What is more obscene: the idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God? This is hard to tell."

"Certain bedrock principles — arguably a true conservative mindset — dictate a respect for life. A life-conserving sensibility means that guns are meant for self-defense, not for needless killing[…] This gun owner is no gun nut; but a right-to-self-defense fanatic."

"Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language."

"A propagandized population has a hard time choosing worthy heroes. It is high time Americans celebrate the Anti-Federalists, for they were correct in predicting the fate of freedom after Philadelphia."

"To the American media, mining Mandela's legacy has meant repeating the man's fortune-cookie profundities and warmed-over wisdom."

"A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the Right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional – a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure."

"…free market is a market in which groups and individuals are differently represented. Parity in prosperity and performance between differently able individuals and groups can be achieved only by playing socialist leveler."

"Christianity in our country is a lot like what the Ducksters profess. No longer doctrinaire or demanding, the mishmash of pop-religion practiced in churches across America is an extension of the therapeutic culture: festooned with feelings, mostly misdirected. Untempered by intelligent interpretation of scripture… American pop-theology: light on doctrine, heavy on hellfire and damnation."

"In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along—there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, 'independent' regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections."

"The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another."

"Think of lab rats racing through a maze, when you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel 'dialogue' … Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a 'maze-bright' rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth."

"As a Special-Forces commander, Sharon was on the front—and in front of his men — performing daring assaults that saved Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars. Hated though he was abroad, Sharon was, nevertheless, a soldier in the style of 'Stonewall' Jackson, not Dubya the Deserter, to whom he and the Likudniks were often compared."

"If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government—the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be."

"Most matters previously subject to state jurisdiction have been pulled into the orbit of the judiciary. So much for Alexander Hamilton's promise, in Federalist No. 78 (May 28, 1788), that the Judiciary would be the weakest of the three branches of his proposed government."

"… we’re not all the same. A common liberal refrain … is that differences between individuals are statistically more significant than those between cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. I don’t see why the fact of inter-individual differences would nullify inter-group variance. That’s liberal logic for you."

"Obamacare is a marketplace in the same way the Knockout Game is a game."

"Dance, in general, has become more atavistic than artistic."

"B. B. King is no match for Johann Sebastian Bach."

"A silly society is a youth-obsessed society: To the Chinese, who appreciate the value of experience, the greater the ratio in a team of grey ‘hairs and no-hairs’ to ‘black hairs’—the faster and better a task will be completed. The opposite assumption obtains in the youth-obsessed U.S."

"Ludwig von Mises referred to Ayn Rand as 'the most courageous man in America.' If that doesn't say it all about the economist's man-centric frame of reference, I don't know what does."

"The proposition that economist Ludwig von Mises was a feminist is an apodictic impossibility."

"Whether arrived at through reason or revelation… natural law is the highest law known to man. It is anchored in the very existential nature of man and is therefore a priori just."

"Round and round will Americans be compelled to ride on a mindless, manufactured, racial carousel … for without it, the edifice of an industry built upon grievance and excuse-making is destined to collapse."

"By going on the defensive... libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from “polite” company."

"Conservatives question government programs. War is a government program. If they hope to retain a modicum of philosophical integrity, conservatives will have to include a critique of the state's warfare machine in their case against its welfare apparatus."

"Mrs. Clinton’s riches are not capitalism’s reward for hard work. Hillary has accrued wealth by using the predatory political process to wield power over others."

"Iraq hasn't suddenly 'slipped back into' this backward and benighted state. It was bombed there by a mulish military power which didn't know Shiite from Shinola. [translated from German]"

"You'll get your free IUDs and morning-after-pills, if not from your employer or the insurers — then from the increasingly desperate taxpayer (who, by now, might even consider paying for a spaying, too)."

"Ask yourself: "Do I police what people say for political propriety? … do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?"

"Ask any left-liberal American Jew if he supports a 'Right of Return' to Israel proper for every self-styled Palestinian refugee, and he'll likely recoil: 'Are you meshuga? Never! That's a euphemism for Israel's demise.' The very thing he rejects for Israel, the liberal Jew is inclined to champion for America: a global right of return to the US for citizens of the world."

"An American writer's intellectual energy ought to focus on American interests, first. Personal probity demands it! Otherwise, the columnist is a fifth column."

"The sight of the Yazidis driven up the arid, exposed mountain range, chased by the militant Sunni of the Islamic State (ISIS), conjures Masada, A.D. 73, where Jews chose to die on their own terms."

"This White House fetishizes Iraqi national unity. It believes that to succeed, Iraqis should be like Americans, forever imprisoned in an arranged, unhappy political marriage."

"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."

"Leave ISIS to Syria, Tehran and Tel Aviv. Let the locals take out their trash."

"Opposing the policies of the American state is not synonymous with opposing 'America.' It is possible to disavow every single action taken by the U.S. government and still love the 'little platoons' of America, as Edmund Burke described a man's social mainstay—his family, friends, coreligionists, coworkers. By logical extension, it is dishonest to malign those who assign the 'bad' category to the state, on the ground that they hate 'America.'"

"Good immigrants come to America to be part of the 'little platoons' that make up its glorious private economy: the people of Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Amazon, Google, Marriot, Mattel, FedEx, Costco, Coca-Cola, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Fred Meyer, Overstock.com, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and millions of local franchises run by innovative, everyday Americans. Bad immigrants come to America to partake of the state."

"Working for government ought to be one of the most dangerous jobs ever. Occupational hazard might just get us a better class of parasite."

"It's always good to see gender set-asides and affirmative action—in particular, the delusion that women are just as qualified as men to be soldiers, security guards, firefighters and cops—hurt those who inflict it on non-believers."

"If not by design at least by default; reflexively if not intentionally, government operatives work to retain their positions and increase their sphere of influence."

"“From financial aid (for foreign students) to an affirmative-action placement in Harvard Law School, Barry Soetoro is a Frankenstein of America’s creation.”"

"“Obama didn’t build what he has; he got it by grant of government privilege.”"

"The road to freedom lies in beating back the state, so that individuals may regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and generally, associate at will. As a paleolibertarian, however, my idea of liberty is never propositional–it is not a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values."

"The paleolibertarian grasps that liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure."

"Like left-liberals, "lite libertarians"—they're the kind that is afflicted with the same spineless conformity; a deformation of the personality euphemized as political correctness—are incapable of appreciating a script or book; a painting or symphony; a stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violates the received laws of political correctness."

"The night-watchman state of classical liberalism would keep murderers out of the country, not in."

"The media lie so much, that when stuff happens that scares them, they no longer know where to turn for the truth."

"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."

"Western foreign policy is a necessary but insufficient reason for Muslim aggression."

"At the annual White House Sycophants' Dinner, the most pretentious people in the country, in politics, journalism and entertainment - not the country's natural aristocracy, but its authentic Idiocracy - convene and revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us."