Ilana Mercer Quotes
A brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can.
Ilana Mercer, Canadian Essayist, Columnist & Blogger, “Betraying Brave Boys”, WorldNetDaily.com, March 26, 2003.
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
On October 31, 1803, Tripolitan forces captured the ship Philadelphia and imprisoned the whole crew. The Pasha (provincial governor) of Tripoli, Yusef Karamanli demanded that the United States not only pay a ransom for the prisoners but an annual tribute to Tripoli.
The only alternative is war or national dishonor; and between these two, what American can hesitate.
Canadian lumberjacks began operations on the Aroostook River area that was in dispute between Maine and Canada:
Ataturk was a young major at the time commanding troops of a weak and corrupt Ottoman regime. However a combined English and French (the strongest military powers in Europe) invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula threatened to capture the Turkish capital, Constantinople. Ataturk alone rallied the Turkish defenders and fought the invaders to a standoff in long drawn out battle with huge casualties on both sides. Ataturk became a national hero. Although Ataturk thereafter was very reluctant to use military force or endanger troops, the thing he always thought worth the supreme sacrifice (including his own) was the independence and sovereignty of the nation. See {584502} for his continuing belief in this type of sacrifice.
The phrase was picked up by the press, and then became the title to a patriotic song of World War II.
Winston Churchill utilized this quotation in his first radio address as Prime Minister, May 19, 1940
Nearly two years after Tripoli had declared war against the United States, the U.S., after much deliberation, decided to stop negotiating a tribute settlement with Tripoli. The U.S. launched their attack on June 11, 1803 in what would be the first amphibious operation on the Barbary Coast. After witnessing the operation, the Pasha was unmoved. Piracy and war was a way of life for the Barbary states.
Trumbo was morally opposed to war. He also refused to name Hollywood communists to Congressional Committees during the Red Scare. He was then blacklisted from his occupation, screen writing.
Lacedaemonian refers to the ancient Greek city of Sparta,
There was deep hostility and suspicion between Germany and England for several years before WWI. See {642066}.
This would be like an American President firing the congressional chaplains. However this is only one small, but telling, example of Atatuk’s secularization of the nation which had a great deal to do with Turkey becoming a modern great power—by far the strongest and most developed of the Islamic world.
Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, author of The Trump Revolution: The Donald's Creative Destruction Deconstructed, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011) and a columnist for The Unz Review. She was born in South Africa and raised in Israel, where the family decided to move after her father's anti-apartheid activism led to harassment by South African security forces. She lived in Canada before becoming a permanent resident of the United States.
