These People All Know Each Other
“Charles Krauthammer used to pride himself on not going to cocktail parties, instead preferring to be at home with his wife quietly reading, writing, doing whatever. And he was probably better for it.”
Erich J. Prince
Blues Run the Game
Erich J. Prince reflects on the famous Jackson C. Frank song, the life of the songwriter, and the age-old question: What value is there in a change of scenery?
You Can (and Perhaps Should) Repeat Yourself
“And, relatedly, one also begins to wonder if there are certain ways of phrasing the key points that have already been formulated, capture them perfectly, and, thus, cannot really be improved upon.”
Bruce Springsteen Turns 75
“It is just Springsteen and his sparse vocals seeming to sing out into the empty expanse of the American West and its sprawling landscapes where hope—at least until the final track—is nowhere to be found. One can feel it was recorded in winter.”
Christopher Ruddy: Newsmax Is Eyeing an IPO
“We never relied only on advertising. I think one of the keys to our success is we had a very good and robust mixed revenue model. And that has [helped] us over a long period of time.”
Reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” in Modern New York
“The change with After Virtue, however, is that in an important sense [MacIntyre] turns against modernity as a whole. He argues that the move to modernity involves the destruction of morality—that in modernity we no longer know what we’re talking about when we deploy moral language.”
When Glen Campbell Sang “Galveston”
“But with that said, what has always bothered me about the story told in ‘Galveston’ is that there seems to be so much of life left unruminated over, a fact remediated only slightly by the mention of the seascape at the end of the song (and ‘the sea waves crashing’ in the Campbell version).”
On the Music of John Prine
“For me, though, there is one Prine song I find the most philosophical, though many of his songs do indeed have that bent…The song is ‘Fish and Whistle,’ the first track on his 1978 album Bruised Orange…”
On Not Responding to Email
“Henry David Thoreau, writing in 1854, remarked: ‘I never received more than one or two letters in my life…that were worth the postage.’ What would he make of the modern email inbox?”
Former Congressman Jody Hice: “Sacred Trust”
“Obviously elections are political in terms of who wins and loses, but the process should not be political.”
Slavoj Žižek: “Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist”
“In all other religions, you have people who become atheists. Only in Christianity, God himself goes through this experience.”
Lord Conrad Black: Insights from the Ancient World
“There is such a thing as progress. I am no Pollyanna, and human nature doesn’t change much, but there’s undoubtedly progress.”
The Politicians Who Almost Never Were
“Although these no doubt play a role, even a cursory glance at recent election results (not to mention those of the past) makes clear that variables beyond the control of the candidate are often determinative, as well as that the best man does not necessarily win.”
Daniel A. Cox: Taking the Pulse of Gen Z
“One of the really significant differences in terms of how young people are being raised today and their formative and teens years and previous generations is how slowly they’re reaching major milestones, such as getting married [and] owning a home, the sort of signs of adulthood…”
Taking a Second Look at Nikki Haley
“It is true that one of the most important rules in politics is that ‘You can’t lose your base,’ but it is also true that in order to win competitive elections, broadening one’s base is essential, and Ambassador Haley might be able to accomplish that.”
Young Voters Do Not Belong Inevitably to the Left
“However, outside of the contemporary United States and United Kingdom, a look at the composition of certain right-of-center political movements casts doubt on the reflexive association many hold between young people and voting for the Left.”
Slavoj Žižek: “Freedom: A Disease Without Cure”
“So you see why people are not satisfied: I don’t propose simple solutions. In my old age, I’m returning from Marx to Hegel.”
Wessie du Toit: When a Society Decenters Leisure
“Meaningful work is as important to life as leisure, I think. I just think that we’ve lost the balance.”
The Press Mustn’t Ignore America’s Gang Problem
“There is a formula—unfortunately, I have noticed—when it comes to many in the reality-denying national press: Make a few accurate micro-points but use them to arrive at a conclusion that no reasonable person should believe.”
Urgently Reconsidering the Doctrine of Multiculturalism
“As is sadly often the case, it is only when an issue becomes overwhelmingly acute or when it is too late to correct course, that those once derided as alarmists are dutifully acknowledged to have been correct all along.”
Samuel G. Freedman: What a Young Hubert Humphrey Can Teach Us
“Humphrey’s insurgency at the convention basically lashed Truman to the mast of [Humphrey’s] own civil rights agenda. And desegregating the armed forces was arguably the single most important civil rights cause of that moment in time.”
Matt Johnson: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left”
“There really hasn’t been anybody like him since he passed…This is why there are these long compilations of ‘Hitchslaps’ on YouTube. It’s why most of the tributes to him focus on his rhetorical prowess—and just his brilliance on the debate stage.”
Clay Routledge: Breaking Ground in Psychology, Outside of the Academy
“Regulating your own emotions is something most people are capable of doing…It doesn’t require you constantly expressing [a problem], thinking about it, [and] sharing it with everyone…There’s something about not fixating too much on your own problems and really dwelling on them but, instead, doing s
Shawne Merriman: From the NFL to “Xtreme Fighting”
“One thing I’ve learned [from] being in combat sports is that it’s internationally watched everywhere, in every country.”
Should You Read the Same Book Twice?
“Amid this exchange about the importance of recentering the essential literature of our history, I posed to Mac Donald a question that has been on my mind since my days as a student at The Haverford School: Should one make a habit of reading the same book twice?”
Waller Newell: The Characteristics of Tyranny
“We will be nothing like the way we are now. It will be like a night and day transformation. And it always does require violence because, as you said, that class or race enemy that stands in the way of future bliss simply has to be gotten rid of.”
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar: Iraq, 20 Years After the Fall of Baghdad
“There is a lot of hope. Every time I go there and meet with the new generation, I think that they definitely want for their country to be a successful one. And that’s the conversation in Iraq. Most people have now forgotten about the war.”
How Do They Still Have Jobs?
“By any normal definition of the role of a Cabinet member, Secretary Mayorkas would have either resigned voluntarily or have had his resignation requested by the President.”
Democrats’ Endless Anti-Institutionalism
“However, it has now become clear that once in power, Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, have largely sought to remove any impediment to realizing their agenda regardless of how time-honored or important a given tradition might be.”
Tabia Lee: What Happened at De Anza College
“There [are] ways to teach about the past that are humanistic; that are agency-focused; and that are focused on generative things rather than destructive things—rather than dismantling things and tearing things down with no plan forward of what happens after the destruction.”
A Once Unnecessary Reminder: Criticism Produces Good Works
“My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending…”
A Government Is More Than Capable of Addressing Multiple Crises At Once
“So, to be clear, I largely favor reducing the power of the very federal government being discussed in this piece, but that is quite different from arguing that, at its current scope and scale, it is somehow incapable of addressing multiple priorities at once.”
John Cribb: What We Can Learn from Abraham Lincoln
“All of the sudden, I was on the phone with Mike Pence… ‘I just finished Old Abe last night, and I had to track you down and tell you how much I loved it, and it’s the best book about Lincoln I’ve ever read.’ And, for ten minutes, he just wanted to talk about Lincoln.”
Lance Morrow: “The Noise of Typewriters”
“You could read my book…as a kind of homage to the magazine.”
William Jacobson: What Happened to Campus?
“I’m not optimistic at all that campuses can be reformed. They certainly cannot be reformed from within…Academia is gone. It is a monoculture. It is a hermetically sealed bubble.”
Fetterman v. Oz (And a Love Letter to a Conflicted Pennsylvania)
“Not everything stays the same, and, in many cases, it probably should not.”
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb: The Activist Class Takes Aim at Medicine
“It’s career ending, really…Anybody who tries to [speak out] will be shunned.”
Dimorphism
“And that we might as well stop killing one another,/because everyone who lived during the French Revolution is dead anyways.”
Heather Mac Donald: Medicine Under Fire
“Scientific conferences are being determined based on sex and race. It’s going to slow down medical progress, and it is also going to put physicians in the ER and the operating room who are not the top qualified.”
Woodmont
The light coming out of the street lamps, how it reaches out over the narrow little bit of beach, toward the water. The beach that’s made more of pebbles than sand, the pebbles that hurt your feet when you walked on them when the weather was warm enough to
Holmesburg: Calling for an Apology from the City of Philadelphia
“My father’s skin is in those pharmaceutical companies.”
Peter Buxtun, the Hero of Tuskegee, 50 Years On
“In later interviews, Buxtun would shrug off the accolades he later received for his whistleblowing. ‘I don’t want to be embarrassed by an oversupply of compliments. I am who I am,’ he would tell bioethicist Carl Elliott in 2017.”
Stephen Hicks: Challenges in Contemporary Education
“The ten out of a thousand entrepreneurial ideas that are amazing—we’ll find out what those are. And they will be the ones that dominate [in] the next generation.”
Will Marshall: Where Are the Moderates?
“I don’t see a full, vigorous pivot by this President (and this White House) back toward the themes and approaches that Joe Biden articulated in his 2020 presidential race.”
Harris Poll’s Will Johnson: Why Polling Still Matters
“At the end of the day, it’s a pretty simple business that we’re in: We want to understand culture, we want to understand consumers’ thinking, and we’re just trying to answer why’s.”
Stephen Hicks: Lessons from the Canadian Trucker Protest
“Every generation, we need to learn and relearn how thin the line can be between having a basically liberal society and a basically authoritarian society.”
Dwight Evans: The VICTIM Act and Combating Crime
“No one is exempt from being a victim of some sort of crime. And it’s very appropriate that I use that title [of victim] in terms of the VICTIM Act.”
Pat McCrory: How to Get a Handle on the Crime Surge
“My wife and I used to go vacation in San Francisco. We don’t anymore…This is what’s headed toward the rest of the nation.”
James Lindsay: “Counter Wokecraft” and Responses to Institutional Takeover
“You have to have a steel spine in your liberalism. ‘What kind of government did you create, sir?’ ‘We created a republic, if [you] can keep it.’ The ‘if you can keep it’ part requires a steel spine.”
Editor’s Choice: The Best Interviews of 2021
Here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.
Editor’s Choice: The Best Articles of 2021
“As is tradition at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite Merion West articles of this past year.”
Sean Spicer: The Steele Dossier and “Radical Nation”
“I got the call on January 10th [2017] from CNN and then BuzzFeed about them running with this hoax. I pointed out at the time that it was wrong. I could demonstrably prove it was wrong. And yet, they stuck by it…”
Warding off Scurvy
“Because there’s little more to friendship than warding off scurvy or having a catch.”
Anne Kim: The AP Exam and the Standardized Testing Debate
“I think the downside of going test-optional, the downside of ignoring what assessments tell you, means that you might end up ignoring the underlying structural problems and never fixing the inequities.”
“Is Nothing Sacred?”
“And this is exacerbated by a situatedness in a contemporary culture that has removed the sort of guardrails that would tell a would-be troublemaker that to defile something like a grave or a tribute to those lost in a mass casualty terrorist attack is unacceptable…”
she asked me to get her a green card
“Although I would have liked to have taken a photograph, my camera was full, and they’d already walked away toward a shop with a sign advertising Calzones.”
Politics: Not an End in Itself
“As such, politics has eclipsed its primary purpose—namely, to provide the means by which people can seek out and, in turn, live good lives, lives that have nothing to do with politics.”
How Things End
“As Joshua Foa Dienstag reminds us, the essential tragedy of being human (or being anything, for that matter) stems from the passage of time.”
Kay Hymowitz: The Devaluation of Higher Education
“This brings in the status issue again, doesn’t it? Because there are so many careers that people just wouldn’t consider because how would they tell their friends?”
The Press and Violence against Asian-Americans
“It seems as though they will do anything to avoid actually backing approaches that would begin to remedy these problems, all of which start with taking a harder-line on those who routinely commit violent crimes.”
Gov. Brian Kemp: How to Stand up to Corporate Pressure
“We lost the All-Star Game, but I think we won the battle because that fight has moved to other states now because we are on the right side of this issue, and we push back so hard.”
Mary Harrington: Family Formation in the 2020s
“The long-term problem there is that if your feminism becomes associated with anti-natalism, sooner or later it’s going to trigger a backlash, and that backlash is not going to look very nice for women.”
Independent Wealth: a Prerequisite for Speaking Up?
“This point deserves all the more consideration today, at a time in recent history that has become uniquely critical of concentrated wealth, both of the inherited and earned variety.”
Elena Thérèse-Rose: Making Catholicism Shareable (Especially on the Web)
“Secondly, I’d say good advice is to gain familiarity with the saints and to perhaps gain some friends among the saints because often they are the best examples.”
When They Say Abortion and Capital Punishment Are One and the Same
“One cannot help but wonder if this is little more than a tactic adopted by supporters of abortion to seek to discredit pro-life activists by implying that their entire worldview rests on a contradiction.”
Jonathan Church: Getting to the Bottom of the Robin DiAngelo Craze
“I go through a whole analysis of that and why—statistically speaking—you’re basically making a very broad statement about white people in general based on one observation in one Jeopardy! episode.”
Editor’s Choice: the Best Interviews of 2020
As has become something of a tradition each year at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.
Editor’s Choice: the Best Articles of 2020
“As is tradition at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite Merion West articles of this past year.”
Rep. Denver Riggleman: Reflecting on His Two Years in D.C.
“And I’ll have to say this: This was the worst job I ever had, but it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
“The American People”—a Phrase Worth Discarding
“…there are perhaps a few other aspects of the phrase that ought to make it first on the chopping block when considering which expressions really ought to be expunged immediately from our national discourse.”
Rep. Susan Wild’s Bipartisan Initiative for Pandemic-related Child Care
“For Rep. Wild, this bill might also provide a foundation for downstream economic normalization; if child care is more accessible, the argument goes, then it becomes less burdensome for parents to return to work, seek out new potential employment, or continue their own education.”
“Holding the Powerful Accountable”—Empty Words?
“The holding the powerful accountable phrase resonates as it does—and, presumably, is chosen by the news media’s back-patters—because it is, indeed, precisely what a news media should be doing.”
Interview: Rep. Susan Wild on How Congress Can Respond to the Pandemic
“The problem is, though, we can’t rely on volunteerism, donations, and gifts for much longer because—quite frankly—most of these places are getting pretty tapped out.”
Interview: Rep. Jody Hice on “Defund the Police” and Big Tech Censorship
“But there is no question that we’ve got some major issues, and free speech is so dependent these days on these big tech companies, so they have to be very careful that free speech is protected. And, of course, there’s a pattern now that shows otherwise…”
And They’ve Come for the Founders
“However, as one watches the Founders find their way into the crosshairs of so many, perhaps the obvious needs to be restated.”
Columbus Belongs Not Only to History
“And one example of this—among others—is how prominently he features in a particular tradition of philosophy: that of philosophical pessimism.”
Going Deeper Than a Famous Quotation or Two
“By inviting further exploration of a quotation’s origin, we might re-discover great and complicated thinkers, who, it turns out, have far more to offer than a single phrase.”
Merion West: Why We Do What We Do
“Just as some married couples renew their vows, we, as a publication, will take a moment to do the same and explain why we’re still doing what we’re doing.”
Editor’s Choice: The Best Interviews of 2019
As is tradition at Merion West, here are the editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West interviews of 2019.
Editor’s Choice: The Best Articles of 2019
As is tradition at Merion West, here are the editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West articles of 2019.
Why Yasmine Mohammed Is Speaking out Against Islam (Part II)
“Actually, the two things that ex-Muslims let go of—the very last two things that they let go of—are eating pork and anti-Semitism. It’s because both of these things are so ingrained in us from such a young age.”
Why Yasmine Mohammed Is Speaking out Against Islam
“What I was not prepared for was the tsunami of just hate and pushback and disdain that would come from people I thought were my people: people that believed in enlightenment values, Western values, and liberal values.”
Rep. Denver Riggleman: Bringing Internet to Rural Areas
“If you have to take your kids and you have to go into a parking lot of a library in order to do homework, that is not something that they want to have to deal with.”
Rep. Madeleine Dean: Making Community College a Priority
“[Some of my students] couldn’t do all three: commute, work, and schoolwork. So, I saw the affordability problem growing and growing in that setting, but I hear it also from my constituents in every higher education setting.”
Interview: Rep. Jeff Van Drew on Getting the Two Parties to Work Together
“America is an experiment in democracy like none other. I do believe in American exceptionalism. They spoke about many things, but one of the things that they spoke about was the fact that we should never be overly reliant on political parties.”
Georgia’s AG: Fighting Gangs and Human Trafficking
“Like [how] the Southern District of New York became the hub for financial crimes, the Northern District of Georgia has become a hub for online financial crimes and cybersecurity because it all runs through our network.”
Gov. Brian Kemp: His Approach for Georgia
“And things like rural broadband, having quality health care, just a good quality of life, good ability to get a great education—whether it’s going into a technical field college or university setting. We had a lot of different options for folks, and we’re slowly moving the needle.”
What Happens to Those Who Investigate Government Corruption
“I knew the consequences of looking into public corruption. You’re not going to make many friends, and you’re certainly going to make many enemies.”
Sen. David Perdue: Making Washington More Results-Oriented
“We need to go back to what the Founding Fathers and Mothers had in mind: a citizen-legislator—somebody that comes here, tries to get results, and then goes home and lets the next person try.”
One-on-One with Rep. Dwight Evans (Part II)
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, because you don’t understand, I’m not your typical Democrat.”
Interview: Rep. Madeleine Dean at Border Detention Facilities
“They slid a note, children with a note under the door and said, ‘How can we help you?’”
One-on-One with Rep. Dwight Evans
“I have no differences when people produce outcomes.”
Wayne Messam, The Florida Mayor Running for President
“And some talk is floating around right now about merit-based immigration. Individuals like my parents would have been at the bottom, the end of the line, and would perhaps never have had an opportunity, and yet they helped build the agriculture sector.”
One-on-One with Howard Dean
“So I’m going to answer your question, but I want to preface it by saying most people do not vote on policies. They think they do, but they don’t. Even smart, educated people who think they do even more so don’t.”
Interview: Nicholas Christakis on His Latest Book
“When I’m speaking of a good society, I’m not necessarily speaking of a good society in the 21st century. I’m speaking of a kind of good society that we have a blueprint to make, that is, in turn, written in our genes.”
Interview with Senator Isakson: Putting Veterans First
“One thing is for sure in Washington is, no matter how tight or tough times are, veterans are a class to themselves; they are an issue to themselves. Partisanship rarely ever creeps into the VA.”
Interview with Mike Gravel: His Priorities in Running for President
“So Buttegieg, in what that reveals of him, is that he’s a classic puppet of the military industrial complex.”
Interview: A Pulitzer Prize Winner’s Advice to Young Journalists
“Photojournalism—and photography in general—is based on a trusting relationship: the relationship between the photographer and the subject. And, in order to really get several layers deep, the photographer needs to reveal their sensitive side.”
Interview with Former Rep. Tom Davis: Can Earmarks Fix Congress?
“In my district, I wasn’t just Tom Davis—I was ‘Mr. Woodrow Wilson Bridge.’ I was the guy who closed Morton and got 3,000 acres donated to the county. Those were the kinds of tangible efforts where people may not like my party, but they saw some redeeming qualities in me to keep me around.”
Lincoln Chafee Joins Erich Prince: Lessons from Running for President
“In my opening statement I said, ‘In thirty years of public service, I never had a scandal.’ The murmur of boos in the audience—I guess they saw that as a dig at the other candidates.”