Archive
A collection of 1865 articles.
In the Valles Caldera
If Being Virtuous Feels Easy, It Could Be Junk
Although no one likes to admit to doing it, virtue signaling is a practice that is a natural part of being a human. Yet, in this essay, philosopher Jimmy Alfonso Licon advises caution by comparing the practice to the culinary equivalent of junk food–tempting but counterproductive.
Bubble of Loneliness
Agnosticism Is Not Reasonable
Refusal to make a choice is a choice of its own. Although often presented as the intellectually humble third option between belief and atheism, Stuart Doyle argues that agnosticism presents a false middle path that is neither coherent nor practical.
Ancient Cooperation
Easter Plum
Pistachios
The Conservatism of Russian-Speaking Jews
Simon Maass, a German writer of Soviet Jewish descent, contends that Jews who left the Soviet Union often hold distinctly conservative views—and are steadily shaping politics in their new homes.
Ars Poetica: or, Benzaitan’s Rules for Poems (That She Told Me In A Dream)
The Oldest Hatred, the West’s Latest Test
Following the October 2nd terrorist attack in Manchester, England, Gerfried Ambrosch examines the ideological convergence between the Western left and Islamist movements—and calls for renewed resolve in confronting anti-Semitism in all of its forms.
Why We Need Better College Rankings
As the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. In this interview, Washington Monthly’s editor argues we should stop equating a college’s worth with its U.S. News & World Report ranking and instead use a ranking system that holds schools accountable for real-world outcomes.
Is the Current Era of Free Speech Over?
Considering the rest of the developed world, it is a miracle that the First Amendment continues to reign in the United States. Tracing the precarious history of free speech in the country, legal scholar Eric Heinze writes that shifting bipartisan attitudes are placing it under threat.
Ready to Read: Collection II
Dear Member, Fresh off the digital press, Merion West's second issue has been published and is available by clicking below: ▷ Read COLLECTION II Sincerely, Henri & Erich
COLLECTION II
Published October 3, 2025
Dream Person
The Morning News
Heat of a Bayou
Interview: The Man Who Dared to Imagine If God Were an Investor
At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, a pair of believers envisioned an investing firm whose goal was not limited to maximizing returns, but to make the world better. Founded before ESG came into vogue on Wall Street, the company manages billions today and shows no signs of slowing down.
Caste Remains the True Test of Inclusion in Corporate India
Across boardrooms from Bangalore to Delhi and inside Western corporations staffed by an increasing number of Indian employees, caste continues to influence who advances and who does not. Ignoring this reality, writes Indian scholar Disha, makes all other efforts at fostering inclusivity ring hollow.
The State Sovereignty Question Again Rears Its Head
Tom McDonough argues that Governor JB Pritzker’s recent appeal to “state sovereignty” misreads the Constitution. Revisiting the works of Orestes Brownson, McDonough warns that treating the Constitution as a tool of convenience risks reviving old errors about sovereignty and federal authority.
Dämmerschlaf, or, Twilight Sleep
What You Could Not Spare
Let's Teach Young People Hope—Not Doom
Education expert Bruno Manno argues that when educators present social and ecological problems as intractable, this can foster hopelessness in students. This school year, he urges, we should teach students that problems can be solved, not merely bemoaned.
The Perennial Allure of Political Violence
Writing from across the Atlantic, Gerfried Ambrosch condemns both the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the disturbing celebrations that followed, ending with a forceful defense of free expression.
Why Today’s Atheism Requires a Leap of Faith
Who commands intellectual authority between believers and secularists? Rather than dismissing faith as irrational, Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies invite readers to consider whether atheism itself withstands logical scrutiny.
Alan Dershowitz: On His Magnum Opus, The Preventive State
In this, his 57th book, the legendary law professor presents a framework he's been working on since his 20s that grapples with the trade-off between infringing liberty and preventing harm.
Emergency Room
We Ought Not Tolerate Reckless Driving
Our editor-in-chief argues that reckless driving must be treated as the urgent social ill that it is. Driving is dangerous enough already, and those who wantonly flout traffic safety need to be consistently held accountable.
From Austerity to Arms: Europe’s Recurring Escape from Deflationary Paralysis
Europe’s turn from austerity to rearmament recalls an older pattern: economic stagnation broken by military spending. This essay traces the parallels—and the risks—for the European Union’s future.
Not Quite Touching Sestos
Why We Should Reacquaint Ourselves with William Blake
Mark Vernon, the author of a recent book on William Blake, urges us to rediscover the wisdom contained in the writings and artwork of the great British polymath.
Published: First Merion West Collection
A Silencing
The Machiavellian Keir Starmer
British writer Seamus Flaherty, channeling Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund's new book, dissects the Machiavellian approach British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has brought to his political career and now premiership.
Crepe Myrtles
Revisiting "The Classical Liberal Case for Israel"
Walter E. Block and Alan G. Futerman's book, which was published in 2021, has taken on ever greater import since the October 7th attacks. In this essay, historian Paul Gottfried questions some of the book's assumptions and its use of history.
Deny Your Surface Self
Who Pays for "Free" Speech?
Law professor Eric Heinze reminds us that for all the rhetoric about free speech, demonstrations and protests often impose on the public costs of millions of dollars.
Văcărești
I Wake Up Daily Which Cannot Continue Forever.
Engineering Morality in the Age of Driverless Cars
Once the realm of ivory tower thought experiments, the trolley problem is increasingly relevant in the real world as algorithms replace the human behind the wheel, argues philosopher Jimmy Alfonso Licon.
A Prison Love Story
An unconventional love story, but a love story just the same.
How to Write a Poem
While We Were in Motion
Year of the Plague: Jake Gardner and the Ghosts of 2020
Returning to a night in Omaha that rattled the nation, Matthew Chabin presents another side of an old friend in the middle of the tragedy. An intimate meditation on the fragility of friendship in a black-and-white age, Chabin calls for understanding over condemning one's enemies, including his own.
Exit Terra
Porschegasbord
Visions of Hell: What One Man Sees in October 7th
How does a French filmmaker best ivory-tower experts and global intelligence agencies? In this interview spanning both geopolitics and moral reckoning, Pierre Rehov shares the insights—and warnings—that led him to anticipate Israel’s surprise strikes on Iran in June.
In Search of Dreams
At the Cardiologist’s
Mystifying Answers to Magic 8 Ball Questions Regarding Recent Political Events
The Clash and the Quest
In this essay, Alexander Zubatov traces how the stories that fill the boundless canvas of Western canon are, in essence, reflections of two contrasting Homeric archetypes. Venturing beyond the literary, the motifs offer the frames through which one can interpret existence itself.
Bad Angel's Home
Solaria
An Alternate Ending
Gilgandra, 1963
Words Unheard
Senator Lankford's Timely Reminder of the American Ethos
In an interview with our editor-in-chief, the senator advocates for the uniquely American ideal of individual agency amid increasingly many citizens looking to Washington, D.C. for answers. Additionally, he shares lessons from the Capitol and thoughts on the President's first 100 days.
When Therapy Fails Artists
As a challenge to conventional advice about rest and recovery, poet Nada Faris explains the importance of working amid suffering for those who derive meaning and inspiration from their craft. Shakespeare, Woolf, and Orwell did some of their best work in times of despair, after all.
Summer in the Mountains
The Enduring Question at the Heart of Gone with the Wind
Sadhika Pant revisits the 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a book recently targeted for cancellation by certain activists. Pant suggests that Scarlett O’Hara and Ashley Wilkes represent two dueling approaches to living, and this dichotomy invites nothing short of civilizational questions.
Haberdasher
What an Exiled 19th-Century Economist's Letters Tell Us about the Tariff Debate
Perhaps there truly is nothing new under the sun. Robert Rich revisits the writings of Friedrich List, whose pragmatic views on economics were eclipsed by classical orthodoxy but, amid today’s debate over free trade and American exceptionalism, prove surprisingly resonant.
Four Questions to Ask Before Using Artificial Intelligence
Professor Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, an expert on artificial intelligence, provides a four-point framework for thinking about whether or not to employ new AI technologies in day-to-day life.
Mother-in-Law
The Supreme Court Takes a Welcome Stand against Reverse Discrimination
Jonathan Church, a long-standing critic of the excesses of the critical social justice movement, examines how a recent ruling dismantles the legal double standard that required some Americans to meet a higher burden of proof in discrimination cases.
Stealing Baby Jesus
The headline in today’s Inquirer shocked me to my very soul: “Baby Jesus Stolen from the Shrine of St. John Neumann,” Northern Liberties neighborhood, Fifth Street & Girard. In broad daylight, too. Okay, it was only a plaster figurine, not expensive, though very much beloved— according to the shrine’
The Movement James Burnham Began
David Byrne, the author of a recent biography of the mid-century conservative intellectual James Burnham, traces the thinker's influence on Goldwater, on Reagan, on Musk.
Ice Skating on Lake Estancia
Shahuhude (Foolish)
Rousseau, the Letter Writer
A new book by Christopher Kelly and Eve Grace explores the letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including many previously left unpublished. These letters provide insight into the mind of the French thinker, a man whose ideas influenced revolutions and political thinking the world over.
The Teacher Retires
A Manifesto Against Manifestos
Johnny Payne questions the idea of manifestos in poetry, preferring his own mantra: “Write poetry first with the ear, second with the eye, third with the mind.”
The Sound of Silence
Like a Rock
Cheers
"God could be shaking a cocktail for me and I’d still/have a complaint."
The Unfair Safety Net for Success
Rinzen Widjaja, a writer in Australia, wonders if for the children of the wealthiest Americans, it is almost too hard to fail.
The Endless Vitality of "Ode to the West Wind"
Merion West arts editor Johnny Payne reflects on why Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” endures over the centuries as one of the finest works written in English.
Coming Soon: A Race to the Bottom
Most know that drug costs are high, but can they also be too low? Paradoxically, increasingly many observers of the generic drugs complex are saying "yes." Tracing the origins of the system that exists today, the authors examine the forces behind the status quo and show what reform may look like.
At Woodlawn
As I Think about Pope Francis
Joe Weil, a poet, professor, and Catholic, reflects on the death of Pope Francis, what he loved about the man, and what he hopes the late Pope sees differently on the other side of this world.
Why America?
Originally published in late 2020—a year when many called for a national "moral reckoning"—this personal essay by Alexander Zubatov draws on his family's journey from the Soviet Union to New York in the 1970s to illuminate why America, to him, remains exceptional.
Three Haiku
The curved universe reflected in this puddle Let us break our stride
The Discarded
Sponsored · An Apology from Trump’s America
Discover Tony D. Senatore’s provocative new dialogue on free speech and moral courage.
Villanelle for Stronghold Table and Daydream
“Prairie dogs call through the murmuring grass,/mimicking history—its rhythmic drum beats—/and resurrecting Wodziwob’s sacred chants.”
Why I’m Running for Governor of California
I want to save California and America from the dangers of artificial intelligence.
Indigo Goodbyes
“in a vale of blue orchid gowns/sewn with bachelor buttons/in lavender blue fields”
Undoing Civilization: The Degeneracy of America’s Political Elites
“With Vice President Vance as President Trump’s heir apparent, it is difficult to envision a restoration of principled conservatism any time soon. Meanwhile, the country’s political class is plagued by general senescence and by kakistocracy among the younger politicians (think Congresswoman Alexandr
Fieldnotes: Annie Christain’s “The Vanguards of Holography” and Caroline Harper New’s “A History of Half-Birds”
“There is a sense of preparation through formal and informal erudition, meant to complicate what it means to write adequately about natural and human worlds, with fewer donnéees and more of a sense of a non-human cosmos, one of manatees and marsupials, in which each creature’s essence is not given t
The Non-Binary Runner Phenomenon
“However, for me, as a lifelong runner who has logged 10,000 miles on American roads in the past 10 years and who has competed in dozens of races from the 5K to the marathon since 2004, I disagree with Fedorowski. Adding a non-binary category to road racing is misguided and counterproductive.”
Has the “Journal of Controversial Ideas” Become Irrelevant?
“It has published on a range of topics that perhaps seemed controversial to someone at some time (specifically, academics in the early 2020s) but certainly not to the broader culture in 2025.”
The Ficus Frost
“to the garage bound welders masked/in metal, tampering the eternal flame”
Melodic Dream of Attic
“Little dragonfly,/Gliding, flew.”
A Chapel
“Yet these walls sound with echoes of the past,/With whispered prayers which linger in the air/And animate this space – still holding fast:/A shelter from the passing world’s despair.”
Strawberry Fields Forever: Amie Whittemore’s “Nest of Matches”
“Lilies/finch/flinches/nest/basil/hair/hat. I would swear before a jury that those are all legitimate off-rhymes, even if I were convicted of perjury for it. I wish that Shelley or Keats or Lorca or Miguel Hernández were alive so that I could pass this poem along to them.”
The Incorporated Town and Cold War Clocks
“The train cars are trying to sleep/in the postal town. Purple tracks/forsake concrete footer and loading/dock pad. The pale moon/asks homes to hold the bones.”
Public Education
“No one assigns homework./No one expects anyone to do anything./Disappoint, like ill-fitting pants,/can chafe you to death.”
Making Sense of the Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Scandal
“British cultural and political life is governed, accordingly, largely by emotion and instinct.”