Ilana Mercer is a writer, born in South Africa to Rabbi Ben Isaacson and raised in Israel, where the family decided to move after Rabbi Ben Isaacson's anti-apartheid preaching and activism led to their harassment by South African security forces. She is a Canadian citizen currently residing in the United States.
Mercer writes a weekly column, "Return to Reason", for WorldNetDaily. She is an occasional contributor to VDARE, a website which advocates reduced immigration, especially illegal immigration, into the United States. In addition, she has written for Front Page Magazine, Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, The Financial Post, Orange County Register, The American Spectator, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and others. She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an independent, non-profit, economic policy think tank. Mercer's book, Broad Sides: One Woman's Clash With a Corrupt Culture, was published in 2003; a second edition with new material was issued in late 2009. She has excerpted passages dealing with crime and democracy from her forthcoming book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, on her website, stating her intent to provide a repository on the site for facts and analysis about developments in South Africa since the beginning of majority rule.
Mercer adheres to classical liberal philosophy, which recognizes the individual's rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. She argues that governments exist to protect only those rights, without violating the rights of foreigners to their lives, liberty, and property. As a result of this philosophy, Mercer argues for secure U.S. borders and against intervention in foreign nations which do not threaten U.S. national interests. Her first editorial against the proposed U.S. invasion of Iraq appeared in 2002, and she has strongly opposed the war in Iraq since that time.
Contributions to paleolibertarianism
A proponent of ordered liberty in the Burkian sense, Mercer differs from libertarian anarchists who see the state as the root of all evil and theorize that its dissolution will bring about utopia. Rather, she notes that social determinism ("The State made me do it") runs counter to free will and human agency, and therefore, against the principle of individualism upon which libertarian philosophy is based. This viewpoint is reflected particularly in Mercer's commentaries on crime and illegal immigration.
Mercer notes that in the condition of anarchy desired by many libertarians, different and competing notions of justice will arise, some likely contravening common standards of right and wrong based on the natural law. She argues that while anarchists wish to see the current justice system replaced by one in which restitution for a crime is made according to the prerogative of the victim or his agent, some crimes, including murder, must be punished by society. The right to life, she argues, cannot be alienated, not even by an individual or his proxies. and the potential to reduce justice in such crimes to a "negotiated deal" is "moral relativism if not a recipe for nihilism." She concludes that the current, broken state of the justice system does not constitute "a sufficient reason to support a state of affairs, where, as a matter of principle, proportional, moral retribution will not necessarily be the goal of justice."
Criticism of neoconservatism
Mercer has argued that “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin;” traditionalist Lawrence Auster noted that this concept was “first articulated by Ilana Mercer and then turned into a neat slogan by Steve Sailer.” Mercer views neoconservatives as having corrupted the constitutionally-prescribed use of the American military, employing it as a force “to patrol the borders of Kosovo, Korea, and Kurdistan” while “our own borders remain perilously porous.” These “conservative poseurs,” she notes, seek to remake America into “a disparate people, forced together by an abstract, highly manipulable, coercive, state-sanctioned ideology,” in effect, a “propositional nation” that overrides the traditional nation in which Americans shared language, customs, faith, and culture. Mercer states that an aversion to the concept of nationhood arises from “an inability to distinguish the nation from the State,” the common values, culture, and traditions of the former having once been conducive to liberty in the U. S..“[T]he real individualist,” she adds, “ knows who he is and whence he came.”
As a result of her stand against an open U.S. border, Mercer has argued against welfare payments and other assistance for those who cross the border illegally. Libertarian Tibor Machan replied by noting that "Refusing to extend welfare to illegal immigrants will amount to an arbitrary, indeed mean-minded policy based on nothing more than nationalism or even worse, such as preference for members of one's own race or age group or some such nonsense." While noting that Machan was the only libertarian to respond to her argument, Mercer countered by stating that while his reply appeared predicated on "egalitarian treatment (of the world)", her stance as a strict propertarian was to "limit theft, not extend its spoils fairly".
On Israel
Mercer has argued against U.S. foreign aid for all countries, including Israel. She has also noted that Israel's struggle for self-defense and the U.S.-led War on Terror should not be seen as the same phenomenon, particularly by Israelis. During the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, she noted that "Israel's pulverizing of Lebanon...blowing the place to kingdom come, killing hundreds of civilians, and displacing thousands...threatens to sunder its moral superiority." Nevertheless, she has been characterized as reflexively pro-Israel by some libertarians. In response to Mercer's support of Israel's construction of a border fence on the West Bank, Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, responded saying it is not Israel, but its "American amen corner, typified by La Mercer", whom libertarians despise, also characterizing Mercer as "an intellectual street-walker". Despite this characterization Raimondo later on welcomed Mercer as an Antiwar.com contributor, and published 20 of her columns.
Mercer has noted that members of the European right are far more likely to defend Israel against Hamas than are American paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians. Objecting to Mercer's use of the term "Judeo-Christian West", Razib Khan argued that between 500 and 1800 C.E., Jews were not major players in Western civilization. Mercer responded by pointing to the biblical Hebrews' "ethical monotheism, developed centuries before classical Greek philosophy".
On Jews and neoconservatism
Responding to paleoconservative academic and writer Kevin B. MacDonald, who argued that Jewish leaders in movements such as neoconservatism promote exclusively Jewish interests including mass immigration into the U.S. from the Third World, Mercer noted that "Jewish activism, if anything, is self-defeating as a group strategy". She has argued that while many Jewish organizations promote liberal causes such as multiculturalism, a contradiction exists between the "leftist ideology so many Jews embrace, with its indifference to assimilation and its extreme tolerance for alternative lifestyles, and the survival of the Jewish religion and people", also referring to MacDonald's work on Jews as "The MacDonald Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum Science" of Jews.
Mercer responded to Pat Buchanan's argument that the push to invade Iraq in 2003 came from a Jewish neoconservative "cabal" advising George W. Bush and acting in the best interests of Israel, rather than the U.S., by noting that in fingering Jewish neocons specifically, Buchanan was "seeing causal connections where none exist" while failing to note the influence upon Bush by inner-circle gentile neocons such as Condi Rice and William Bennett. In addition, she noted that Bush's own vision for U.S. intervention in the Middle East was in place before the September 11 attacks. She also argued that many Jews strongly opposed the Iraq War from the outset, including George Soros, Robert Reich, and Michigan senator Carl Levin, and she attributed Jewish prominence in both pro- and anti-war circles to the tendency of Jewish individuals to rise to the top in many fields of endeavor.
On Michael Vick
In September, 2007, Mercer was featured on Sean Hannity's radio show discussing her commentary in defense of NFL Quarterback Michael Vick and against "animal rights". Hannity noted that Mercer's arguments arise from "an intellectually honest point of view...you have given the most articulate argument I've heard on the other side of this, one that is consistent with many of the views you have".
In addition, Mercer opposes affirmative action and argues against the therapeutic society that seeks to attribute individuals' negative or criminal actions to disease or social disorders.
