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.”

In addition to drawing attention to a handful of articles from the past year that were, in my view, particularly excellent or thought-provoking, this is an annual exercise I have always found worthwhile for the opportunity it provides for revisiting the year before and all of the events and pieces of news referenced or contained within the selections. As in years past, this list will soon also be complemented by a piece to be released that will highlight a few excellent interviews from 2021.

6. “How the ‘New Atheists’ Deradicalized Me” by Gerfried Ambrosch

“New Atheism had taught me always to demand evidence; and the evidence revealed that, historically, political radicalism had been a major source of violence and inhumanity…” So writes Gerfried Ambrosch in his brief but powerful autobiographical piece on how Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens steered him away from the far-left ideologies to which he once subscribed. Arguing that such ideologies and the religions that the New Atheists critiqued shared many similarities, Ambrosch extols the virtues of skepticism and always demanding evidence for a particular claim.

5. “From Revolting Masses to Revolting Elites” by Chris Augusta

In this July essay, Chris Augusta—invoking José Ortega y Gasset’s 1930 work Revolt of the Masses—dissects the currently ascendant revolutionary fervor throughout the West. In doing so, he notes the seeming peculiarity of the fact that said fervor is driven and fomented by “a new ruling elite” rather than by the proverbial masses usually assumed—in the popular imagination—to be driving radical social change. During his treatment of the subject, Augusta puts forward a few theories about how these elites so reliably tend to behave, drawing on the work of historian Michael Vlahos. Augusta concludes: “But regardless of what political form populism takes, the very emergence of populist resistance always signifies one thing: Ruling elites are not doing their job.”