Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa

Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa is the second book by paleolibertarian author and columnist Ilana Mercer.

Summary

In the book, Ilana Mercer analyzes post-Apartheid South Africa from a classical liberal perspective, and argues that the haste in which state power was transferred, on the basis of race, to the black majority, has yielded disastrous, often tragic results, not only for the white, now-powerless minority, but also for the black majority. Mercer, no champion of apartheid—once a tireless activist against petty apartheid—continually uses the example of South Africa to forewarn Americans of the effects of a shift in their country's founding political dispensation, a shift she maintains is being achieved through the mass importation of poor, third-world immigrants. Concluding that if the current trends continue, the United States will face a similar fate.

Critical reception

Into The Cannibals Pot received generally positive reviews with author Thomas Szasz calling it “an interesting, important, well-written and well-documented book that informs the reader but is likely to upset, perhaps even anger, some or many of them,” while columnist Jack Kerwick reviewing it for NewAmerican.com wrote that "Cannibal succeeds in weaving into a seamless whole a number of distinct modes of thought", and "the richness of Mercer's intellect is as impressive as the soundness of her character." Novelist, auhtor and columnist John Derbyshire praised the book calling it "compelling and important" and Erik Rush of WorldNetDaily wrote that "Ilana Mercer infuses 'Cannibal's Pot' with her wealth of knowledge and insight into the dynamic of South Africa’s plight," and "as she asserts, condemnation of the new racist South Africa is not advocacy for the racist old."

Quotes

“Why have some people produced Confucian and Anglo-Protestant ethics—with their mutual emphasis on graft and delayed gratification—while others have midwived Islamic and animistic values, emphasizing conformity, consensus, and control? Why have certain patterns of thought and action come to typify certain people in the first place? Such an investigation political correctness prohibits." Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011

"Bad leaders or bad weather patterns are not what shackle backward peoples. ... the values and cultural influences which people (and peoples) bring to the polity cannot be tweaked out of existence like some unsightly nose-hair." Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011

"By staving off crime and communism, the apartheid regime, a vast repressive apparatus though it was, saved black South Africans from an even worse moral and material fate." Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011

“My answer to those who'd fault me for daring to make broad statements about aggregate group characteristics, vis-à-vis crime [or rioting], … would be as follows: Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decisions in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular crime-riddled county or country in no way implies that one considers all residents to be criminals, only that a sensible determination has been made, based on statistically significant data, as to where scarce and precious resources—one's life and property—are best invested.” Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011

"From their plush apartments, over groaning dinner tables, pseudo-intellectuals have the luxury of depicting squalor and sickness as idyllic, primordially peaceful and harmonious." Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011

"Grievance-based explanations have a way of evolving. Before independence, Africa's backwardness was attributed to colonialism. After independence, neocolonialism replaced colonialism as the excuse du jour for the failure of African leaders to ameliorate their people's plight. Neocolonialism encompasses any unhappy condition that can no longer be attributed to colonialism." Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011

"Human action is the ultimate adjudicator of a human being's worth; the aggregate action of many human beings acting in concert makes or breaks a society. Overall, American society is superior to assorted African and Arab societies because America is still inhabited by the kind of individuals who make possible a thriving civil society." Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, August, 2011