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Added a section called "Political Philosophy," and a subheading called "Democracy."
==Books==
==Books==
Mercer is the author of three books. Her first, ''Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture'' (2003), is a collection of essays which cover culture and art, economics, crime, immigration, foreign policy and more through a [[paleolibertarian]] lens.<ref>https://www.amazon.com/dp/097410390X/ref=asc_df_097410390X1580209200000?tag=shopz0d-20&ascsubtag=shopzilla_mp_1299-20;15829537122847336231010070301008005&creative=395261&creativeASIN=097410390X&linkCode=asn#reader_B004AYCU1O</ref> In his review of ''Broad Sides'', Nelson Hultberg, executive director of Americans for a Free Republic, commented on Mercer’s “libertarian politics and traditional values.”<ref>https://www.wnd.com/2004/05/24631/</ref> “Mercer brings us back to Jefferson,” Hultberg said, in that “She passes judgment,” rejects “the madness of relativism,” and champions “a natural aristocracy among men composed of virtues and talents.”<ref>https://www.wnd.com/2004/05/24631/</ref> Peter Brimelow of VDARE.com said, "This volume appears at a moment of peculiar crisis for libertarians in general," implying that libertarian orthodoxy tends to avoid issues of immigration.<ref>https://vdare.com/articles/a-passion-for-justice-ilana-mercer</ref>
Mercer is the author of three books. Her first, ''Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture'' (2003), is a collection of essays which cover culture and art, economics, crime, immigration, foreign policy and more through a [[paleolibertarian]] lens.<ref>https://www.amazon.com/dp/097410390X/ref=asc_df_097410390X1580209200000?tag=shopz0d-20&ascsubtag=shopzilla_mp_1299-20;15829537122847336231010070301008005&creative=395261&creativeASIN=097410390X&linkCode=asn#reader_B004AYCU1O</ref> In his review of ''Broad Sides'', Nelson Hultberg, executive director of Americans for a Free Republic, commented on Mercer’s “libertarian politics and traditional values.”<ref>https://www.wnd.com/2004/05/24631/</ref> “Mercer brings us back to Jefferson,” Hultberg said, in that “She passes judgment,” rejects “the madness of relativism,” and champions “a natural aristocracy among men composed of virtues and talents.”<ref>https://www.wnd.com/2004/05/24631/</ref> Peter Brimelow of VDARE.com said, "This volume appears at a moment of peculiar crisis for libertarians in general," implying that libertarian orthodoxy tends to avoid issues of immigration.<ref>https://vdare.com/articles/a-passion-for-justice-ilana-mercer</ref>
==Political Philosophy==
Mercer is a paleolibertarian. She defines that as someone who “grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression principle will crumble and won’t endure.” She says that “the libertarian non-aggression principle, by which all decent people should live, is peculiar to the West and won’t survive once western civilization is no more.” <ref>https://bigleaguepolitics.com/interview-writer-ilana-mercer-takes-on-the-cato-institutes-left-libertarianism/</ref>
==== Democracy ====
A long critic of democracy, Mercer gave a talk at the Mises Institute’s Circle in Seattle titled, “How Democracy Made Us Dumb.”<ref>https://mises.org/events/mises-institute-seattle-why-american-democracy-fails</ref> In the talk she argued that a “dumbing down” was “inherent in democracy,”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref> and drew on a wide range of observations from “The Founding Fathers and the ancients,” to support her thesis.<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref>
Noting that “A tenet of the American democracy is to deify youth and diminish adults,”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref> Mercer began by discussing the Athenian philosophers and their disdain for democracy, arguing that among the “ancients who mattered there was a keen contempt” for democracy. Observing that although subversive, anti-democratic thinking was the aristocratic gospel in Athens.”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/)</ref>
She added that “Socrates was the intellectual leader against democracy and for the even-then hated aristocratic philosophy,” and concluded: “The proof of the foolish, violent and cruel nature of the crowds is that the crowds, not the judges, insisted on making Socrates the first martyr of philosophy. He drank the poison at the behest of the people.” <ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref>
Moving onto Plato, whom she refers to as “Socrates’ most gifted student,”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref>, she points out that he harbored such scorn for democracy and hatred for the mob—so extreme that it led this controversial genius to resolve that democracy must be destroyed, to be replaced by his planned society.”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref>
In comparison with the philosophy of libertarianism, Mercer states that of the ancients, Aristotle was “the most agreeable to libertarian thinking,” saying that he “ventured that democracy is based on a false assumption of equality.” For this, Mercer draws on William Durant’s ''The Story of Philosophy:'' “those who are equal in one respect (under the law) are equal in all respects. Because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref>
On the subject of the United States, Mercer shifts her focus to Alexis de Tocqueville and Friedrich Nietzsche, stating that the former was “not sold on the idea of American democracy,” and the latter “saw nothing good in democracy,”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref> but reiterating that “For their part, America’s founders had attempted to forestall raw democracy by devising a republic.”<ref>https://misesuk.org/2019/10/22/how-democracy-made-us-dumb/</ref>