A libertarian refugee
from Canada

A typical American columnist she is not; in fact, she is not an American at all. Ilana Mercer, who recently joined WorldNetDaily's world-class cadre of commentators, has an eclectic background of life experience that contributes wonderfully to her insightful writing.

WorldNetDaily talk-show host Geoff Metcalf interviewed Mercer about her recent move to the U.S. after living in three other countries on three continents. Mercer was most recently a columnist for a newspaper in Canada, her latest stop before coming to America.

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The columnist's no-holds-barred style, however, ran up against some resistance north of the border.

Ilana Mercer

"I had two regular slots in Canada," she explained. "I was fortunate enough to have regular columns on editorial pages. Certainly, I was welcomed by my readers, but the editors sought to maintain a monopoly of discourse. The singular monolithic monopoly ousted me."

Having been born in South Africa and raised in Israel, Mercer was asked about the level of freedom of the press in those nations.

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"Certainly [Israel] is a very free society," she said. "The penchant to compare Israel with or even mention the Palestinian Authority or any Arab state in the same breath is absolutely criminal. Israel is a very free society – there is no doubt about that. But I can't comment authoritatively on the media there.

"South Africa was absolutely fascistic, and I think it's maintaining that degree of control, except the control has now moved to the ANC and the ruling party. They control the media now, and there is very little access to the truth there."

Mercer hasn't always been a promoter of freedom from government control. Living in Canada, she saw the results of socialism and found herself gravitating to the libertarian perspective.

"Whenever I examined any situation I would sit down and think, 'What is immutably just in this context?' And I would always come up with a libertarian solution. I knew nothing about the libertarian political philosophy. I was identified by outsiders as a libertarian and a purist, as such. What more proof can you have that this is truth when you come to it through reason?"

Mercer reveals a heavy dose of skepticism about the actions of President Bush: "I think President Bush is doing a marvelous job of capturing American sentimentality with these facile speeches that just appeal to the need for the nanny state and for more entitlements, and he seems to be succeeding."

Find out more about Mercer's philosophy and life by reading Metcalf's entire interview in Sunday's edition of WorldNetDaily.