{"id":1566,"date":"2012-09-14T13:39:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T13:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=1566"},"modified":"2012-09-14T13:39:05","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T13:39:05","slug":"why-i-am-so-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=1566","title":{"rendered":"Why I am so sad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>by Ilana Mercer<\/p>\n

I AM SO SAD \u2013 and it is not because a justifiably angry crowd of Libyans in Benghazi stormed an embassy that represents the brute force that destabilized their lives for decades to come.<\/p>\n

I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in leveling Libya. And by so doing, they invited into that country the very lynch mob that took their lives. The Americans targeted had become an irritant to the long-suffering Libyans, who will use any U.S. provocation, real or imagined, to expel the people who \u201ccame, saw and conquered.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

To those who imagine the death of our diplomats in Libya turns on American free-speech, I say this: You have no right to deliver your disquisition in my living room. You have only the right to request permission to so do from this (armed)<\/a> private-property owner.<\/p>\n

By extension, you have no<\/em> universal right to \u201cfree speech\u201d on another man\u2019s land. More so than to America\u2019s diplomats \u2013 Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran.<\/p>\n

I AM SO SAD \u2013 and it is not because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen a most inopportune time to insert himself into the middle of a rancorous American election season and by so doing make Mitt Romney\u2019s foreign-policy bellicosity<\/a> look good to a war-weary people that can ill-afford it.<\/p>\n

Now is not a good time, Bibi. Israel is a wedge issue in the coming election. If Israelis love Americans as Americans love Israel, they need to understand that, \u201cThe Titan is Tired\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own \u2013 be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don\u2019t need our friends looking to us to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Order lIana Mercer\u2019s brilliant polemical work, \u201cInto the Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I AM SO SAD \u2013 and it is not because another 9\/11 has come and gone. The polls indicate<\/a> that Americans want to move on; have moved on. Perhaps Americans have realized that it behooves our \u201coverlords who art in D.C.\u201d<\/a> to keep them stuck in grief. By stunning us like cattle to the slaughter, the statists have been able to perpetrate in our name crimes way worse than 9\/11.<\/p>\n

I AM SO SAD because my sweet, kind friend, Thomas Szasz<\/a>, has passed away. Tributes<\/a> merely touch on professor Szasz\u2019 unmatched genius and attendant achievements (professor of psychiatry emeritus, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, N.Y., and author of the seminal work, \u201cThe Myth of Mental Illness\u201d).<\/p>\n

I attempted to word what Thomas Szasz did over decades, in the advance praise he requested for one of his many magisterial masterpieces, \u201cCoercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cBit by barbarous and bizarre bit, Thomas Szasz dismantles psychiatry\u2019s rickety scaffolding, exposing over two centuries of physical torture and tortured logic. Professor Szasz takes the necessary analytical and empirical solvents to this state-empowered fraternity of sorceresses. He also supplies the only salve for the psychiatric violence he correctly dubs \u2018psychiatric slavery\u2019: abolition: Now, \u2018Let the sunshine in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be hard to beat,\u201d Tom quipped. (\u201cTom\u201d was how he\u2019d sign off.)<\/p>\n

Allow me, then, to speak but briefly to the tender friendship professor Szasz and I developed over the years. Briefly, for the breezy ease with which my countrymen share their feelings with strangers is alien to me. Abreacting \u00e0 la<\/em> Oprah in public bespeaks a shallowness that was foreign to Tom too. Whenever we communicated, it was in succinct, intense and precise language. We spoke a similar language. Dare I say that it was our shared ancestry as European Jews that accounted for these cultural commonalities?<\/p>\n

For example, we came together \u2013 yet stood apart from libertarian mainstream \u2013 on the all-time moral litmus test: the state-sanctioned, slow execution of Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo.<\/p>\n

Even eerier was the way we both drew on the allegoric power of William Faulkner to capture the late Ms. Schiavo\u2019s plight, before knowing one another. \u201cA Rose for Emily\u201d was Tom\u2019s source of inspiration, in June of 2006; mine was \u201cAs She Lay Dying<\/a>,\u201d in March of 2005.<\/p>\n

\u201cKindred souls\u201d was Tom\u2019s reaction.<\/p>\n

Late in 2009, we decided to meet near Huntington Beach, where, Dr. Szasz, nearing 90, was to address a conference. Alas, he was detained on the East Coast by bad weather, and my husband and I went on to visit in the vicinity. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll mobilize myself and visit you next summer in Seattle,\u201d he promised.<\/p>\n

I last heard from Dr. Szasz on July 27, this year. Characteristically, it was in response to a column I had written, \u201c\u2018You didn\u2019t build that\u2019: Obama\u2019s political epitaph.\u201d<\/a> As he would so often do, the great man excerpted his favorite lines. \u201cBRAVO, AGAIN!,\u201d he added in capitals.<\/p>\n

I replied:<\/p>\n

Thank you, my dear. It seems so futile.
\nBut I like hearing from you.
\nHow have you been?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tom wrote back laconically but poignantly:<\/p>\n

Yes. Disheartening. \u201cVirtue is its own reward.\u201d \u2013 I am OK.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Would that everyone rationed speech thus; the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year \u2013 it was in May \u2013 I made my way to Manhattan, where it was my distinction to address Victor Niederhoffer\u2019s<\/a> New York City Junto gathering<\/a> as featured speaker.<\/a> I inquired whether Tom would be gallivanting around, as was his wont.<\/p>\n

Ever sweet and affectionate, there was a finality to his reply:<\/p>\n

Many thanks, dear Ilana. Sadly no. I am OK but progressively weakening and everything is too much of a schlep. I enjoy and agree with all that you send me.
\nLove (without a first sight), Tom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPromise me,\u201d I wrote back, \u201cthat this will not be unrequited love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is NOT,\u201d Tom replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ilana Mercer I AM SO SAD \u2013 and it is not because a justifiably angry crowd of Libyans in Benghazi stormed an embassy that represents the brute force that destabilized their lives for decades to come. I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in … Continue reading “Why I am so sad”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[1122,190,12254,174,178,1115,1123,745,1121],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-ilana-mercer","tag-benghazi","tag-egypt","tag-ilana-mercer","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-libya","tag-thomas-szasz","tag-usa","tag-yemen"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1568,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions\/1568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}