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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’
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.
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book by Christopher Kelly and Eve Grace explores the letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including many previously left unpublished.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.
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.”
"God could be shaking a cocktail for me and I’d still/have a complaint."
Rinzen Widjaja, a writer in Australia, wonders if for the children of the wealthiest Americans, it is almost too hard to fail.
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.
Everyone knows 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 that sustain the status quo what reform may look like.
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.
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.
The curved universe reflected in this puddle Let us break our stride
Discover Tony D. Senatore’s provocative new dialogue on free speech and moral courage.
“Prairie dogs call through the murmuring grass,/mimicking history—its rhythmic drum beats—/and resurrecting Wodziwob’s sacred chants.”
I want to save California and America from the dangers of artificial intelligence.
“in a vale of blue orchid gowns/sewn with bachelor buttons/in lavender blue fields”
“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
“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
“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.”
“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.”
“to the garage bound welders masked/in metal, tampering the eternal flame”
“Little dragonfly,/Gliding, flew.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“No one assigns homework./No one expects anyone to do anything./Disappoint, like ill-fitting pants,/can chafe you to death.”
“British cultural and political life is governed, accordingly, largely by emotion and instinct.”
“Astrology is not a science because women conceived it/and it’s not a religion because the stars, even/with the pictures they pattern,/could never take the place of a god”
“The grand Guignol exaggeration provides an excellent comic read, as we fail to take completely seriously his worrywart grandstanding. Chances are, we have known someone exactly like him, who upon greeting us, got straight to describing their various medical conditions, real and imagined in excrucia
“This insufficient code of the soil—/aphasia’s shorthand where/language lathers in mud, masquerades its atoms”
“Nevertheless, I am often struck by how many great thinkers have also been great walkers.”
“The tower tall strikes bells. The day slinks out/Leaving behind skies watercolor clear/And gives the evening air the taste of song”
“What our country needs is a long-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution and a commitment to live by it. The thought of Orestes Brownson can help us in this rediscovery.”
“the idiosyncrasies, stamps of my proprietorship”
“And so things continue as before, because in a post-historical era, sprinkled with German-Hegelian state worship and a view of oneself as the summit of civilizational development, there is no need to move from the spot one has occupied.”
“we struck/each other so often, too often,/like astronauts/scraping for the last flight/back to earth”
“No, not everyone on the Left supported these tyrannies, yet what progressives cannot escape is that much of the Left lent political legitimacy to regimes that destroyed and damaged tens of millions of lives, leaving festering wounds that still bleed today.”
“It was Christianity that became Europe’s unifying ideology and inspired figures from Charlemagne to Columbus.”
“waxen winter plants, an oil portrait of a stillborn son,/sensory deprivation tank”
“I was born in the 1990s, into one of the countless middle-class Indian families that were sprouting like saplings after the rains, in the wake of the 1991 economic reforms. India was shaking off the dust of its socialist decades and finding its footing in a world suddenly wider and freer.”
“[Yuki] Tanaka’s singular view, somewhat detached yet not lacking in compassion, soberly reckoning while allowing for flights of optimism, is, again, the product of the angle of vision of the flaneur, the stranger in town, the person who has seen it all but decides not to linger on individual premis
“However, if a single mother wants a faster track to employment and signs up for a six-month ‘micro-pathway’ at a local community college to become, for example, a junior data analyst or fiber optics specialist, she will likely have to pay out of pocket.”
“For this, we built a star-searcher/and launched it/into the galaxies:/Mirror upon giant mirror/sifting through time”
“Someone recently fell/into an industrial mixer at the latter’s factory./The company sent bread/from the same facility to her funeral.”
“What kind of light flames on them? What’s on fire—/A church? A shop? But also inward: desire”
“As geography is transcended, the feverish antipathy between ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’ stands to be sublated…in that, from the standpoint of cyber-space, ‘somewhere’ already means ‘anywhere’.”
“We should think about health inequity not as differences in outcomes across categories of individuals but as structural injustice that harms the health of everyone.”
“[Elise] Paschen’s writing give new meaning to the term ‘ethnopoetics,’ taking it outside the boundaries of ‘traditional societies,’ ‘the informant,’ and the outsider who goes in to record ‘pre-literate narratives.’”
Andy Owen, who served in the British military in the Middle East, revisits the 19th century classic, believing it can shed light on some of the most important questions of our day, when it comes to both foreign policy and ourselves.
“I envisioned myself old on a mountain hike/a soft breeze lifting my long white hair/I thought I’d live ‘til ninety-five”
“Sinister pinwheel/stuck to a breezeless sentence/as sly ornament—”
“I swore I heard willows cry/through the zig zagged fields,/traveling through my universe/as quickly as the moon touches our light”
“In [Erica] Reid’s Ghost Man on Second, the real ghost man floating through the pages is the sonnet.”
“The city never sleeps: the isle of faces illuminated by cell phones/is proof its waking isn’t rising, only beeping, only static,/only the cashier in the convenience store, only flickering.”
“Engagement is inseparable from hope and motivation. The top quartile of students most engaged in school are more than four times as likely as the least-engaged students to believe they have a great future ahead of them.”
the gilded tree that glitters in dusklight/like an upside-down chandelier
“However, it seems unlikely that this is because neoconservatism inherently favors open borders, as some critics have suggested. A more probable reason is neoconservatism’s penchant for compromise, pragmatism, and moderation.”
“We thought there couldn’t be anything more./But hurricanes can collide with tornados, can join floods./Beautiful and horrific are the moment’s songs.”
Letter from Editor & Publisher Dear Friends, In studying different readership models when crafting this inaugural Merion West collection, we have come to properly appreciate why they refer to it as the "media diet." Much like a person can consume fast food daily, so can their minds regularly
“Bruises bloom roses; the blind bird has fled./Ocean quiet bedroom night light turned dim,/the sting of his fist purple on her skin.”
Through a blend of political philosophy and cultural criticism, Alexander Zubatov incisively examines how the 2024 election revealed America's divide between those whose worldview is guided by the dictums of the educated elite, and those molded by their experiences living regular lives in community.
“Yet what might in lesser hands become mere effusions is tempered with a wise, sometimes steely, sometimes self-abnegating, sometimes mournful contemplative voice that speaks of philosophical and personal concerns combined…”
“the specific iteration of woodpecker pecking at yet/another juicy place, but I forgot to pack the guidebook”
“Five years later, Orwell published an essay called ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War,’ in which he states, ‘War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil.’”
“The deregulation of air travel and other sectors of the economy in the 1970s was (and continues to be), in my view, a profound mistake. While controversial, I assure you that this contrarian take is not (entirely) a product of big-government sentimentalism from a crabby online socialist.”
“The news we got at first was dire,/the damage bad though not entire”
“Vice President Harris’s phrase could be described as the animating principle behind the whole modern project, as well as much of what we think of as progress: The more we unburden ourselves from nature and history, the more human ideas can determine what can be.”
“Seek mercy for eggs we scrambled in a youth/spent banging pots and pans together./For the telling of clumsy lies, our voices/cracking like pecans together.”
“How/it both is, and is not/a type of existence.”
“If a stranger comes around, if he’s wise, he will keep to the road and announce his business soon, clearly and loudly, then you’ll see what’s what. You’re not against him, but you’re not automatically for him.”
“In her exquisitely physical Rodeo, Sunni Brown Wilkinson takes her place among those superb modernists, early and late and post, who recognize the combination of mutability and continuity across poetic epochs that is a key to lyric’s continuing strength and relevance…”
“This mainstream acceptance raises a key question: If vitrification can preserve embryos and organs like kidneys, why wouldn’t similar principles apply to brain preservation of cryonics?”
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Battle Between Carnival and Lent (1559) I imagine them in mud, steaming people, bony hands joined to the land, farming with fingers clawing furrows in the earth, dreaming of rain. Someone begat someone who begat someone, who begat someone else (etc) then you and I
“Recently, however, James Lindsay has sparked a contentious debate on this topic by disparaging postliberals as ‘woke right.’ We will examine [Alasdair] MacIntyre in the context of this vibrant debate.”
“To succumb to pressure to suppress or disguise his true beliefs would have been, for Spinoza, a concession equivalent to defeatist self-abnegation.”
“Night flower,/short-lived lover/of darkness,/offspring of cactus,/desert jewel/lulled awake/by moonbeams”
In this rigorous analysis published in 2024, Seamus Flaherty cuts through the polarized rhetoric surrounding Israel's war in Gaza to examine hard truths that both sides must face. His historically grounded perspective offers fresh insights for those seeking to understand the intractable conflict.
“It should be noted, however, that President Carter was not only the Great Humanitarian. He was also the Great Deregulator.”
“Eve about to be cast out of the Garden kills as the mistress of straight-faced understatement. There is no fury, no rebuke, or if there is, it has not set in yet. Instead, we get rationalizing, looking on the bright side, and philosophical self-doubt.”
“Doom is there staring, everywhere/I go, like a brazen coyote/dead center of the road/half-starved so it doesn’t care anymore.”
“Collegiality may grease the wheels of society, but when does it become dysfunctional or oppressive? Or, to raise another question, what are the advantages of rudeness?”
Contributing editor Jonathan Church reflects on the most important essays the magazine published in 2024.
“Of course, the question of whether healthcare should be socialized is only a small piece of my general disagreement with [Walter] Block on political economy. Still, it is a vivid enough example to stand in for all the bigger questions.”
“Similarly distinct from the regular life-world is the world of academic theory, in which, as in the fantasy world, theoretical constructs are often divorced from any dependency on practical outcomes.”
“The hand drops a fresh globe/into the scoured skull, secures breath upon/the hemispheric nostrils and stands back,/appraising…”
“As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said on the White House lawn in 1993 during the Oslo Accords, the progenitor initiative of what is required exactly now: ‘Enough of blood and tears. Enough.”
“As for most poets, [Valerie] Witte’s writing is intensely personal, whatever form it may take. No ‘experimental’ poet could be more candid and direct about her intention of ‘examining in a new way’ matters close to her heart.”
“Social media and online articles about these incidents boast ten or even 20 comments praising the vigilante for each one condemning the act of violence.”
“Among a murder of mannequins/the guilty can’t be picked out of a lineup.”
“According to that tried and true statement, ‘wealthier is healthier.’ Free enterprise leads to greater wealth and, thus, to greater health and longevity, ceteris paribus.”
“The woods sigh. And then, a thousand miles away,/I’m in your arms again. Your breathing is an ocean./I’m drifting away. You whisper.”
“Just as [Greg] Dember’s generation inherited modernism and felt a need to rebel, today’s younger generations have inherited postmodernism and no doubt feel the same urge to keep the sense of cultural evolution progressing.”
“There is a fervor that I do not surge with,/A saintliness with which I do not sing.”
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“It is a remarkable feat of poetics to create epic sense out of the most micro of human materials.”
“Capitalism has done much to develop the economic machinery of the modern world to the point where all of this is possible. But it is long since time to move past the capitalist phase of our history and institute something better.”
“The economic situation during the Biden administration eroded and degraded the average American’s ability to participate in the life of the nation as an economically self-sufficient citizen.”
“Having just emerged from her tv and ac,/she was too sun-shocked and asphyxiating/to hear ‘it’s a lovely shoot’/as my spade severed the root.”
“Further examples abound, but suffice to say, at least as far as these prominent modern thinkers were concerned, epicureanism for the masses does seem to denote something quite real.”
Benedict Beckeld—a philosopher who has lived and taught on both sides of the Atlantic—attempts to explain through a blend of personal insights and politico-historical analysis what Europeans are ill-equipped to understand about the leader of their most important ally.
“The United States’ British roots also have value because they provide a link to a history older than any homegrown alternative the United States possesses.”
“I scatter the sandpipers who/run from me/but not/the tides.”
“At the end of the summer, I got a bit too close to a Russian artillery round, a mistake that earned me a week in Kharkiv Regional Hospital. When the doctors cleared me, I walked home.”
“As witness of this exaltation of the gaudy, the poet reclaims kitsch as a redemptive force, a vital stream of art, when it is mindfully connected to a set of local traditions, the heritage of a group that had to strive hard to find its native expression using the materials at hand.”
“her body, between the buildings/behind her and the parked cars/in front, throwing a coal-black shadow/on the ground the color/of tarnished silver…”
“These are not new principles. They defined the Republican Party for most of its history, a party that had always included a progressive element.”
“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.”
“You had time to contemplate its masonry/and recall that other jail, the temple/of muscle and flesh built by your trade/of bricklayer, now turning wan and idle.”
“And as she lay on her death bed, as she must have felt a cancerous tumor slowly taking her life, she would also have looked around her and seen the stern and damaged but also joyous legacy she would leave behind.”
Writing from Munich, Gerfried Ambrosch considers what Europeans should conclude from the rather decisive electoral victory of President Donald Trump.
Originally published shortly after Queen Elizabeth II's death, this meditation by Englishman Henry George explores how Britain's ancient crown transcends mere symbolism, revealing monarchy's power to unify and morally anchor a nation—insights that should resonate even for us across the Atlantic.
“If I have become something of an expert reader of poems, it is in part because long ago, I learned to linger on the surface of things, rather than push past their specifics in order to arrive quickly at instant profundity.”
“The far shore wore a gauzy veil of rain./Dark thunderheads rose over Evian/and shook the silver surface of the lake,/ruffling like shot silk.”
“Hard as they tried to suck us through the black hole leading to their alternative-facts universe, inundating us in a steady stream of misinformation even as they, again ironically, accused us of peddling misinformation, we resisted.”
“The tone of After Image is simultaneously calm and feverish, as the bereaved one moves along a spectrum from numb to utterly passionate, up and down, yet never hysterical, never heaping ashes on her head.”
“Cicadas, dirty oil, dogs, Venus, gloves/clouds, manholes, fled storms, black notes, harmonies/float indiscriminate as my head throbs/then disappear on the next wisp of breeze”
A Merion West contributing writer and editor respectively make the case for each candidate for President of the United States.
“Why, in fact, do we feel compelled to ask if capitalism is failing? Why do we wonder if capitalism is moral? Why do 57% of respondents in an Edelman Trust Barometer survey believe that ‘capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world?’”
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?
“While others cycled to dusty fields,/sported bats and mitts, shouted to claim/their favorite positions, I was alone,/my red Schwinn and me—no/deception of ritual, no useless chatter,/no bad calls, no vicarious parents.”
A poem by Nancy Byrne Ianucci.
Should we actually want more government intervention in the economy? In this policy op-ed, Fasteau and Fletcher present a clear-eyed analysis of how strategic government support for manufacturing could restore American economic dominance while countering China's ambitions
“This is not the first time libertarians have disagreed with one another.”
“[Anne-Marie] Turza shows dramatic flair for summoning our attention, that of a town crier or carnival barker who was handed a surprise announcement at the last possible minute, and now must sell its premise before a skeptical gathered audience with all the bravado she can muster.”
“After supper,/God burps through his heartburn, eyes Gabriel/and—as expected—punishes: Two thousand years/hard labor for your antics, errand boy.”
“The author of this essay is the proud owner of 25 books, poetry collections, and short story anthologies written by the man widely recognized as the godfather of the literary movement known as ‘dirty realism.’”
“Admirably, Dawkins continually made it clear that his objective was to promote a clear understanding of the world as discovered through the scientific method, and if scientific facts caused offense with anyone, then so be it.”
“Citizens wore red and white, the colors of the Pahonia, the traditional flag of Belarus, a symbol made illegal in 1995 shortly after President Aliaksandr Lukashenka came to power.”
“Finally, postmodernism influenced numerous intellectual variants that today are popular public philosophies, and we need to understand the intellectual foundations of such systems of thought if we want to evaluate them properly.”
“and I send her sunflowers on a sunny day./and I think of her children./and I sing with the Wailers.”
“Clearly, industrial policy—the deliberate and coordinated governmental support of industries—is coming back, even if it is not clear yet where it will end up.”
“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.”
“It becomes apparent that, while not a Marxist himself, Moyn regrets Marxism’s arguable descent into irrelevance, if only because its extended dialogue with liberalism enriched the latter while spotlighting liberal failings and hypocrisies.”
“What stands out in Nakanishi is that she possesses an acute awareness of the root poetic traditions of her native islands and brings them forward with respect while also being influenced, as she herself professes, by poets such as Californian Gary Snyder—whose verse, like hers, is thoroughly immers
“The Sistine Chapel hived billions/of microbes, moss piglets/throbbing on God’s finger, frescoes flooded/with bacteria, angels fruiting cocci.”
“For example, how many retirees can relate to Jack Nicholson’s professional exile in About Schmidt, a film about a man trying to find purpose after a career as an actuary, when the title character returns to the office one day in a pathetic last-ditch effort to show he is still relevant?”
“Perhaps it is because of my own bias toward [Darryl Cooper as a friend, but the responsibility for such imprecise talk is something I place on [Tucker] Carlson, not on his interview subject.”
“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.”
Beyond a life of seeing, saying, being, by sparest nudge or shimmer, I shall cease. I ask what for, the dying, what the living. I start recording. I collect and keep.
“Chancellor’s Scholz’s Germany-Kenya deal fails to address these core issues, and with Kenyan skilled workers favoring English-speaking countries, it may not even alleviate Germany’s skilled labor shortage. Nevertheless, it represents a step in the right direction, as it has German interests at hear
“Trying to nail down the source of the intensity of my response, I kept coming back to a sense of a deep, existential nostalgia for what I could only think of as integrity.”
“Bringing this back to the United States: While we need to address our current housing crisis, the goal should not be to build, build, build anywhere at any cost.”
“[Amy] Beeder’s nimble adaptiveness and ability to key her lexicon to a wily set of speakers and dramatic personae in And So Wax Was Made and Also Honey are what make this rare book command attention.”
“Coughing, ululating, barking, whooping./Can he cough out the memory of a lonely/girl waiting, wanting, watching, waiting?”
“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.”
“Wife of himself/she taught him how to be in this world/as all women teach. The woman in you/will teach you, man king,/how to be.”
“Utopians often produce evil because their movement’s aspirations become paramount—that is, more important than avoiding acts ‘traditionally perceived as immoral.’ If enough people follow Istvan on the transhuman roller coaster, people could eventually get hurt.”
“Blood Feather stages scenes of both unexpected victory and chronic defeat in the three featured lives, while allowing us to imagine an alternative history for these women, had they been listened to and given latitude to exercise their rightful prerogatives in the culture at large, rather than retre
“Ever human-centric/We self-aggrandized/Anthropomorphized/And now agonize.”
“He was flanked by fields of dead sunflowers that could not be harvested because of the renewed Russian offensive.”
“It is precisely because we all break our rules that we enjoy this story about this man who never breaks his rules. The knight in shining armor, or in this case the Dark Knight, is the hope that there is someone who can remain good no matter what.”
“We need more visionaries and integrated fields…because just as the human body is a complex interplay of atomic, molecular, cellular, and systemic processes, so too must be our approach to increasing healthy lifespan.”
“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.”
“But enhancing the experience of children with incarcerated parents does not require a wholesale restructuring of prisons. Most parents in prison desperately want more contact with their kids, hoping to break the destructive cycles they have been caught in.”
“Once the speaker’s psyche and voice are introduced via questions, the photo in a sense begins to dissolve, becoming secondary, important, vital in its own right, but not ultimately defining. Thus the fecund faithlessness of poetry.”
“The old man had paid dearly/he could still get lost in dreams”
“The bright green of summer wheat/with the brown of the ducks that stalk the fair/dykes where the raft spiders search for things to eat.”
“Although [Zoltan] Istvan’s general pessimism is understandable, the Senescence Inference takes the pessimism too far for a number of reasons.”
“He feels himself watched/as he counts accents./He knows the painter’s/watching for the precise moment/when his blue ink freezes.”
“Political violence, particularly against minorities, has no place in a democracy. However, neglecting the undeniable social and cultural repercussions of mass immigration is a grave mistake that only serves to empower the hard right.”
“This lyre-derived heritage survives robustly in the lyrics of pop songs, guitars now taking the place of the lyre and the orality of the human voice singing taking precedence over all.”
“In oncoming lights, my veins are dirty strings.”
“Sadly, biological humans are likely to be mortal for centuries more unless a dramatic increase in both resources and life extension scientists is marshaled.”
“Aside from the hazard of China or Iran adding to the number of ongoing wars, the currently slow attrition strategy is only working against President Putin because he is trapped.”
“Every night/A lover be”
“Given the depth and severity of the divisions displayed in Sweat, we are led to wonder if healing is even possible. But as a ‘doctor of American democracy,’ [Lynn] Nottage not only offers troubling diagnoses of our diseases but also prescribes remedies.”
“It is, I believe, more than anything else, the undeniable reality of technological progress that lulls us into accepting the more general—and plainly false—proposition that things will just keep on improving in every respect.”
“In yellow night, the day refuses to give ground/and I prepare to wait out its siege. Soon you’ll/arrive, and together we’ll chant the Midnight/Sutra”
“The combination of dread and cheer these reveries bring about could accurately be called the optimist’s nightmare. The poet-speaker holds compassion as the stalk of a dandelion holds juice, hidden yet keeping the flower active and aloft through sheer tensile strength.”
“Held in palm,/a bloom of peony to/inspect.”
“In short, I am in love with the story of Tim and John. It has enchanted and devastated me for years now, which is why I will use their first names.“
“In this instance, should those who believe in the rights of women sit down with those who do not, potentially risking legitimizing groups like the Taliban, in the hope that through dialogue they can influence them?”
“Prime Minister Starmer’s father wanted his children to lead ‘useful lives’ and Starmer undoubtedly succeeded in that—two, three, four times over. Yet it is unclear, as yet, just how useful he will be as Labour Prime Minister.”
“By constantly calling President Trump an existential threat to democracy and comparing him so often to Hitler, many in the press need to be held accountable for demonizing his millions of voters and tilling the fertile soil that produced Crooks and others like him, yet to surface.”
“A metaphysical compass, a refrain, an unyielding ethos in which to believe,/no longer reserved for near misses with the vehicular minions of the MTA,/I have come to regard existence as nothing more/than this pull between hesitation and action”
“While I was always a philosopher, I was originally a fairly apolitical one, and it was my first year in France that awoke the political part of my being, for I saw all around me where socialism, oikophobia, and multiculturalism were leading.”
“While it might be intellectually fascinating to dig into the Marxist or postmodern roots of wokeness, Bowles’s book is a welcome reminder that sometimes things are simply crazy on their face. And maybe all that is required to defeat the crazy is to point it out.”
“Sharif’s style throughout Customs is neither bland nor baroque. It has the directness of what one overhears while waiting in line to cross on foot an international border or passing through immigration at an airport. It is a stylization of how people talk in such circumstances.”
“To kick him or them out of the country would indeed be to violate the non-aggression principle (NAP) of this strict version of libertarianism. But I do not always write from this point of view. Sometimes, often in my writings on Israel, I do so from the perspective of classical liberalism…”
“to my dog/Nate/as he is finishing/a seizure/i repeat/i am with you”
“Prime Minister Chamberlain’s premature death in 1940 and his transformation into a cautionary tale has meant that he was not available to remind his successors that appeasement was just one-facet of a multi-dimensional diplomatic strategy.”
“For Herbert Marcuse, German philosopher and notorious member of the Frankfurt School, Marx did us a service in trying to expose capitalism as a historically-contingent mode of production based on reified social relations that do not facilitate—in fact, impede—the harvesting of reason as the path to
“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).”
“But Heidegger and Peterson differ when it comes to the origin of our stories, the meaning of nihilism, and the limits to the stories we can tell. To begin, it is useful to explore the question of the origins of our stories. In both Peterson and Heidegger, there is talk of something coming from noth
“Wire/protects the beech/from bladed lovers/initial-besotted for years,/each letter a small death.”
“Sigo is a poet of utter seriousness, one who feels strongly about justice, the revindication of Native American identity, the calling out of cruelty and neglect, and many other pressing social matters. But he comes at the task with a meditative indirection, insisting on approaching these realities
“Soon first responders make a grim/assessment of the odd catastrophe.”
“Instead of a ‘police operation’ to capture the former colony, Russia got a full-scale protracted war for which it was simply not prepared.”
“It may sound naïve in a time of intense political polarization, but in It’s Debatable I make a case for more humility and a bit of hubris. We need to be willing to argue with passion for our political positions but at the same time remember our limitations.”
“And it is all held together in an irrepressible delight in language and what happens when language and imagination are unleashed and told to have a good time.”
“Then you arrived like fresh tulips in winter,/the shape of my heart, the color of gold;/you turned the weeds in my garden into roses,/every rock on my farm was a bar of chocolate/waiting to feed our future generations…”
“The democratic form of government is persistently incompetent at preparing for its own defense, despite fair warnings.”
“For far too long, their concerns were ignored by center and left-wing parties, and so they turned elsewhere.”
“It is not particularly interesting that I disagree with Block’s argument. I am a bleeding-heart left-winger who thinks every human being has a right to healthcare, housing, education, and much more…The interesting part is that [his arguments] fly in the face of the values he cares about.”
“Here reposes the reverie-inducing freedom of Rilke and Proust, where you get to say ‘dreaming’ twice, or a thousand times, and even ‘et cetera’ twice, in case you forgot to fill in the blank with your own lyrical, rapture-adjacent images the first time.”
“There is a strong positive relationship between living under the benefits of a government and human flourishing. Those without its protection must suffer, at the very least, compared to those who are fortunate in this regard.”
“I scan rooms with a happiness detector,/which is like a broken Geiger counter/that stays silent while the bombs go off.”
“As mentioned, comparisons with other life-forms are often useful for understanding our human existence. Accordingly, I have derived the word ‘Aprinism’ from the Latin ‘aprinus,’ meaning ‘boar-like.’”
“Anticipating what a Russian nuclear attack would look like is an important first step in fashioning an appropriate response.”
“Show trials, we had thought, were totalitarian relics, a blunt tool wielded by dictators like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong in order to show people, quite literally, what would happen to those who dared to defy the regime. And here it was, happening in 2024, in America.”
“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…”
“Age isn’t just a number, as we’d heard/it’s how we get here. I’m twice my daughter’s age/and neither thought we’d haul ourselves this far.”
“For [Patrick] Deneen, the most nefarious influence in the history of liberal political thought is John Stuart Mill, son of Enlightenment radical James Mill, godson of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and the author of the canonical 1859 liberal text, On Liberty.”
“Although the project to end death is clearly important to Istvan, his forthcoming biography, ‘Transhuman Citizen: Zoltan Istvan’s Hunt for Immortality’ by Ben Murnane, reveals that he has arguably lived his life in response to a related but slightly different question…”
“Although pithy and pugnacious, the slogan is wrong. The moment parents drop a child off at the schoolhouse door, they entrust the school to take over some of their parenting responsibilities.”
“In invoking (and sometimes tweaking) cherished predecessors, this gently impious collection also helps refurbish form.”
“I have/a secret pigeon in my heart./I keep it in a cage composed of object lessons and feed it/moral law.”
“Inevitably, at the end of the ‘myth and disinformation train’ are doctors and nurses cleaning up the mess in the emergency room. There is a potion or snake oil for every ailment, from skincare to curing baldness…”
“And yet, today, we continue to engage in various forms of commodifying the human person, even if they are less visibly brutal and bloody.”
“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?”
“Lost in the Woods is a symptom/of heart’s sudden loss/of direction registered in small/persistent cramps and little gasps.”
“Obviously elections are political in terms of who wins and loses, but the process should not be political.”
“The Handover is, at bottom, a plea for liberal democratic states to discipline, if not disempower, the sociopaths and psychopaths who currently have control of the technologies and resources which are changing us and our environment and promise to change both ourselves and the planet we inhabit mor
“Holding myself to this standard, I am comfortable in saying that in each and every one of those scenarios, my view would be unchanged: The protests, all the university protests, must be stopped.”
“The ‘free’ in ‘free verse’ was never meant as a free pass, an anything goes, for to succumb to it does, in fact, leave us standing in a well-intentioned mush.”
“Night’s ink congeals on rice, coating peas/like black sea pebbles glistening in the harrowed/moonlight staring through the shattered kitchen window.”
“However, my impression is that there is something more fundamentally toxic about Stoicism. In line with [Will] Durant’s assessment, its dominant theme seems to be retreat: retreat from unpleasant emotion into indifference (despite protestations to the contrary)…”
“New populations moving into a country creates ready-made client groups to which the managerial state can administer, gaining new voting blocs, which continue to vote for the party of the managerial state.”
“In Carlin’s time, it was edgy and cool to push back against the prudish ideas about obscenity, so playing with the boundaries of the metanarrative was practically encouraged (at least from audiences). Today, quite the opposite.”
“That is, virtuous striving now is something that seeks to turn our social paradigm on its head.“
“Meanwhile, the death toll rises. John told me he was 44—the same age as me—when we first met. That is just under the average age of death for homeless men in Britain. This is more than 30 years shorter than the country’s average male life expectancy.”
“In shallow ripples bathing together in pairs, as may be seen by the deep, clear waters of Xiangjiang.”
“Despite all of this, [Robert D.] Kaplan’s analysis of the greater Middle East should not be ignored. His travels throughout this vast region across the decades give him insights into its diverse challenges that few Americans possess.”
“But I am not interested in chiding Bronze Age Pervert—as other publications, such as National Review, have done—for his use of dehumanization. Instead, I want to offer a full-throated defense of these nasty bugmen.”
“It is hard to say whether this philosophy would have had any adherents other than Kerouac, but it would have represented something new and uplifting—a counterculture to the counterculture.”
“The lines, like long, rolling ocean waves on a cold Baltic sea, create their own reasons, their own rhythm, their own understanding. Anaphora is used, as Whitman did, to summon us to the great historical pageant of life, of happenings beyond our immediate knowledge.”
“In all other religions, you have people who become atheists. Only in Christianity, God himself goes through this experience.”
“Seventy years of an educational ideology steeped in ‘openness’ has wreaked havoc on the United States, and what we see at Columbia University (and at other American universities) is clear proof of that.”
“The debate over whether to go green is not a debate over whether to incur costs. It is a debate over which set of costs to incur, and people’s willingness to bear tangible burdens to achieve goals supported by affluent, educated progressives is limited.”
“It seems, then, that religious practice is beneficial but unpalatable to many highly analytical people because they deem religious doctrines unpersuasive. The question therefore arises how one can make it palatable to them.”
“Lest I should have appeared overly critical, allow me to restate that even in this, her analysis is exceptional and that overall, George Orwell and Russia is a uniquely penetrating study of Eric Blair’s life and legacy.”
“Nonetheless, a worm/had eaten its way through any number/of Gabriel’s lines, some of his best./He had to reconstruct them from memory,/or compose them anew.”
“How does such an advanced nation and forward-looking profession embrace ‘medicalized mass murder’ and a philosophy calling for the ‘annihilation of life unworthy of living’? How did those who pledged to follow ‘the Hippocratic tradition of healers,’ they ask, ‘become killers’?”
“There is such a thing as progress. I am no Pollyanna, and human nature doesn’t change much, but there’s undoubtedly progress.”
“Whether [Jenny] Xie’s volume was long in the making or came out in a fiery burst (maybe both, by parts?), it is a work of substance, worthy of its current high reputation.”
“The world is in flux. November’s elections in the United States will speed up the pace of change. There is a danger that politicians across the West are positioning themselves to govern a world that will no longer exist by the time they come to power.”
“On its dead claws and back, mottled and plain,/from a long beach whose gulls roost on an edge,/Inscrutable.”
“In other words, now that I have become an atheist, I feel free to appreciate and even dabble in various religions. To put this in terms of Waits Paradox: Once one has quit religion, he is free to be religious.”
“Any serious government would, therefore, develop and implement immigration policy with the utmost care. Instead, our governments are experimenting with unprecedented peacetime increases in immigration that further expand ethnic and cultural diversity.”
“Why does she ask forgiveness?/For what and from whom?/Why does she call herself/a mountain tiger?”
“Watching this quasi-religious mentality migrate leftward and displace more rational, humanistic values has been painful.”
“Barba-Kay’s central claim is that digital technology is categorically different from prior technologies. It is not just a matter of degree but, rather, a matter of kind.”
“Edgar Kunz, the author of Tap Out and Fixer, does not refer to himself specifically as blue collar, proletarian, or working class. Well-meaning others, such as mentor Edward Hirsch, do so, referring to Tap Out as ‘gutsy, tough-minded, working-class poems of memory and initiation.’”
“Given that the Middle East used to be far more ‘Western’ and even ‘European’ than it is now, there is no cultural disconnect between ‘Western’ and ‘Middle Eastern’ Jews. Jews can be both at once.”
“Examining for mixed motives the flaws/That turned their city-cousins ash-/Grey. She labels one Snow-in-Ghana,/As though she doesn’t trust her own desire.”
“Like most members of Generation X, I had never used TikTok, but when the political push to ban it intensified in 2023, I pulled out an old smartphone and installed TikTok to see what the fuss was all about.”
“As a result, an air of fear hangs over society, regardless of the fact that the likelihood of falling victim to such an attack is very low indeed. But this is how terror works.”
“Paradoxically, as the amount of online content available for consumption increases, conversations with as interesting a dynamic range as the one between Peterson and Destiny seem fewer and farther between.”
“Aaron Bushnell was not a hero or a martyr akin to the self-immolators of anti-imperial conflicts past; he was likely a mentally ill, terminally online man in his mid-20s who was in a lot of pain that he transposed onto a conflict halfway around the world that in no way personally affected him.”
“The video games also adapted to my inputs and choices in real time, which meant they could capture my strengths and weaknesses, a fuller view of my aptitude than just a number from how many multiple choice questions I got right.”
“I am alive and you’re alive, and hope exists,/but I have to bid farewell to these words of mine,/which I will never shout, because I’m but a man. “
“The monthly encounters under President Biden have been like nothing else seen in American history. There are estimates that, in 2023, there were more illegal alien encounters per month than babies born to American mothers.”
“Modern liberalism, equally, cannot go on as it is at the moment, veering toward destruction, becoming ever more decrepit and ineffectual, incapable of meeting the challenges—domestic, geopolitical, planetary—of the 21st century.”
“According to the most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 24% of eighth and 12th graders are ‘proficient’ in writing.”
“Whatever one may say about the People’s Republic of China today, it once offered the model of the poet-emperor, as well as poets employed in political life, wedding governance to lyric spirit.”
“And working together, what might we become?/citizens of a single kingdom./you could find it all in the palm of your hand/alongside Indian, yellow and black.”
“A transparency mandate passed by Congress can avoid the controversial and difficult work of legally defining the terminology and specific guardrails for online safety and viewpoint neutrality.”
“I sometimes think I don’t belong here/in this wood–that the tree’s knots/are frowns grown for me, or the leaf crunch/is a worm cracking a crass joke at my expense.”
“Scientific progress has the potential to be more salutory than legal regulation. To return to Odin’s advice in the Hávamál once more, the power of the human mind is mankind’s most reliable ally.”
“People have told me that this approach is a kind of hope in itself, that I have found hope in the way I abandoned hope. At that point, the words we choose do not matter much. What does matter is getting out of bed in the morning and finding work worth doing.”
“The History of the Peloponnesian War teaches that victory in such a war comes at enormous cost to both sides, so much so it can blur the distinction between victor and loser: everyone loses. This is the same lesson the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza impart.”
“Here on a narrow one-lane/overgrown with cattails and ivy/the circle of turkey buzzards draws closer.”
“By that token, perhaps Bianca Stone is just the poet for our times. Her verses wrestle with a dirty angel, one that bites and kicks. There is no snow-white falcon in her pages. But she does not quit.”
“Yes, as you mentioned, one of the most interesting findings of Lament for a Nation, which came out in 1965—it’s Grant’s most famous book—is that in Grant’s view, there’s really no such thing as American conservatism.”
“In the actual, from which another life/Is straining to burst, to set out in navigation,/Or be swallowed by demons in the leaves.”
“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.”
“No doubt [Araya] Baker’s experience is legitimate, and, of course, it is true that state surveillance is a very serious problem, but paranoid delusions are real, too.”
“These claims put forward by critical social justice-oriented scholars and educationists all lead to the same conclusion: educational justice for black and OC students begins with schools or classrooms segregated by race and ethnicity.”
“Rufo’s ‘New Right Activism’ is not the prescription of one who, following Socrates, seeks to be virtuous, but rather one who, following Faust, sacrifices his soul to achieve victory.”
“So many stars and mountains, crests and sky,/Are we not fools to think that we can know/What underlies such intricate designs?”
“The Dream Apartment is no Barbie’s Dream House. It is rather an abode of opaque and backlit, sometimes hard-edged reverie.”
“For example, with a container of yogurt, I know its price, calories, calcium content, and vitamin content. But if I need a hip replacement, I have no data to judge the quality of the physician, hospital, or other sites where the surgery might be performed.”
“[My book seeks to] disrupt science in the sense that it gets us away from the myth that doing more physics and chemistry will be the answer to understanding the living and, in particular, the human being.”
“My mad uncle had the Burma jungle/In his head—burnt-out tracts of history/He’d stalk in ambush of his sanity”
“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…”
“Is there anyone who can give a clear definition of Leftist or Rightist doctrine with which even half of those who consider themselves to be on the Left or the Right would agree? I am inclined to doubt it…”
“While allies should provide Ukraine with the resources needed to push as far toward the Russian border as possible, they should also start to think about post-war justice. Resolving the war will involve more than just agreeing to where lines are drawn on a map.”
“Civilizational states such as Russia and China have a cohort of national and cultural values that are far more deeply enshrined (like them or loathe them) than those of the West.”
“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.”
“Just as wokeness has eroded traditional liberal values like free speech, freedom of thought, merit, and individualism at an institutional level, it has also eroded traditional Christian doctrine within churches, seminaries, and Christian publications.”
“The fact is that effective communication is hard. Clear writing is hard. For the typical undergraduate—and no doubt the typical academic scholar or scientist—it is easier to string together vague buzzwords in meandering sentences than it is to say something clearly and concisely.”
“Doubt/Never stunned the marrow in their bones/Who rose above the merely physical,/And if they faltered, it was only once—”
“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.”
“Any dictatorship (and Hamas is one, of the Islamic theocratic variety) is first and foremost at war with the civilian population it controls, and then against other surrounding countries, only second.”
“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.”
“When the most influential psychological association in the world wants to replace an ethic of care for all individuals with a new woke normativity that is gaslighting the next generation of psychologists, their patients, and the public, it should lose all credibility.”
“I have written previously that much of this ‘neoliberal’ nightmare is a myth, not because the world is without problems, but because the problems of the world are much too multifaceted, internally complex, and situationally unique for each problem to regarded as just another mutation of an invincib
“One might notice that unlike in the 1990s, apart from a few occasional flare-ups, the struggle is no longer primarily between Xhosa and Zulu, or any African ethnicity for that matter. A crusade against whiteness had united black South Africans who would otherwise have been fighting among themselves
“The reason, as we will shortly see, that it is fair to characterize systemic racism as a nutty and sweeping conspiracy theory is that racism is, again and again, simply assumed to be the universal, underlying, unitary cause of multifarious phenomena for which other, more parsimonious, accurate, and
“Insects fall silent amid the sedge and cranes grow restive in the treetops,/Sensing this busy world no longer cares for the sentiments of old.”
“Refusing to take the path of least resistance when it comes to his career, Morrissey is the antithesis of the cookie-cutter ‘artists’ favored and propped up by the modern music industry.”
“Although it might not have been glamorous, my time in the military helped me through challenges that currently burden many young Americans.”
“Although the Biden administration and his State Department are rightfully quick to denounce the persecution of Navalny and how Russia conducts its elections, there are many parallels between the Navalny saga and what is happening in the United States as we approach the 2024 United States presidenti
“The question of Taiwan is never far from the Chinese President’s thoughts, and nor should it be far from ours. The fortunes of the world rest on that island. No conflict in Eastern Europe or the Middle East is as likely to spiral into a global war.”
“The attempted insurrection by President Trump and his supporters had failed. But make no mistake: The violent events of January 6th were the direct result of a deliberate months-long campaign by President Trump to overturn illegally an election that he did not win.”
“You returned to Rome Augustus triumphant./King of defeated nation I trailed behind./To this day the senators can’t tell/which of the two wore the wreath.”
“What is certain, however, is that part two of this degradation will occur in the not too distant future, and part three some time after that, if this advice of this New York Times columnist is followed.”
“If the recovery effort is not expanded to involve all the resources that every community has to offer, our young people, especially the most vulnerable, face a diminished future.”
“The cultural and theological division between Islam and the West is real, and these differences in religious philosophies play themselves out in a very concrete way in the modern world, just as they have in the past and will continue to do in the future.”
“If Chairman Wu were in power when Henry Ford was ruining the blacksmith, horse training and saddle making industries, she would have taxed the latter and subsidized the former. How about when computers took out the typewriter, carbon paper, and correction fluid (Wite-Out) industries?”
“The university protest movement largely took shape at the same time when our society’s disproportionate valorization of youth and youthful opinion began in the 1960s, when our whole nation began to come apart at the seams, an unraveling that, despite brief periods of rollback, has continued apace t
“I said a silent prayer, asking for the strength to get through another day of being incarcerated, and climbed down from my steel bunk, ready to navigate the gossip, fighting, and ordinary drama that come with prison life.”
“Hamas wants to maximize the death of its civilian population. The purpose is to get the international community, the United Nations, the United States, other governments around the world, to condemn Israel, to vilify Israel, to delegitimize Israel, and undermine the Jewish state in that way.”
“However, there was one man who positioned himself very early on as an opponent to this growing Jewish presence in his homeland. This man was Haj Amin al-Husseini, who, in 1921, became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.”
“The feminists have deserted Jewish women. And it wasn’t just Jewish women. There were Arab Muslim women, and there were Thai Buddhist women. No doubt many Christian women or some Christian women who were also raped, murdered, and kidnapped.”
“When privileging science and math in the curriculum at the expense of the humanities, education sacrifices what is most essential: the important civic function of the humanities. As a result, we produce ‘a nation of employees, not citizens.’”
“Musk still seems to have his wits about him when managing his other companies, when speaking on longform podcasts, or when staying conveniently on message with regard to China. So what is it about X that is specifically causing Musk to lose his composure and his business sense?”
“In short, we have dogma, and from dogma, cognitive errors in reasoning inevitably ensue.”
“The Irish state will undoubtedly have one of the most extensive, if not the most totalitarian, hate speech laws in Western Europe if the bill becomes law, despite the government’s insistence that it contains a provision to ‘protect genuine freedom of expression.’”
“If, as President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger rightly believed, it was in America’s interest to extract itself from the mess their predecessors had created in Vietnam, it was not necessary for them to keep fighting the war for so long.”
“Bonner has done a great service in reminding us what true civilization means, the cost of losing it, and how we can regain it.”
“Many Europeans are waking up to the failures of multiculturalism and open-border policies and are demanding action. If the parties of the center left and center right continue to fail on this front, someone else will step in.”
“Every object, rests on its certain devaluation/In the implacable fact of an ending—decay,/Dissolution, death—from which another/New thing and its solicitation emerges.”
“Meaningful work is as important to life as leisure, I think. I just think that we’ve lost the balance.”
“We have a broken immigration system. Despite saying the right thing, [Suella] Braverman did not take much action to stop it. She ought to be judged similarly to what economists would call a revealed preference. In other words, actions speak louder than words.”
“To understand India’s slippery descent, one should read the reportage of Neha Dixit, a 37-year-old New Delhi-based freelance journalist.”
“The woke ideology does not merely advocate for redistribution of resources, but it also calls for (or at least allows for) different moral obligations according to one’s identity. This means that so-called oppressors are bound by a different morality than so-called oppressed identities.”
“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.”
“Although an overt threat is never clearly articulated, the potential for serious political consequences makes it all the more trepidatious to consider crossing the aisle on a big bill where every vote is counted and closely watched.”
“Where I may disagree most emphatically with Beckeld is in his idealization of the ‘West,’ which is supposedly currently at war with barbarous ‘non-Western enemies.’ From my perspective, much of what we see in the impassioned pro-Hamas protests represents where Western civilization has moved in the
“The hyper-masculine environment of a prison creates additional impediments. Inmates fear that any sign of weakness might lead another inmate to take advantage, another reason not to speak openly with others. Sexual abuse is at the top of the list of things prisoners will not talk about.”
“The ‘peace process’ and the ‘two-state solution’ are other thought clichés that must be questioned because ultimately whoever speaks of these, or even more generally of a ‘political settlement,’ has not understood the conflict at all.”
“This is an admirable aim, but there is just one big problem: Diversity training is not working.”
“Allow me to be unambiguous: I am no one’s BIPOC mannequin. I am a person foremost and not a skin color, and I will not be cheapened nor reduced. I am not marginalized, and I need no special treatment. I refuse your categories.”
“I realized that if my Columbia education were to have any meaning, I would have to be bold and risk my music career and go public with my support of President Trump, who was the President of the United States at the time of my graduation in 2017.”
“The so-called conservative movement of the 1980s was anything but conservative.”
“What better way to avoid paying for maternity leave, family health insurance, and other perks than to make sure that one’s employees never have children?”
“It had taken an earthquake for me to see Ceausescu greed as it really was, and I knew how bad these excesses would look to my countrymen.”
“‘Sometimes all a man needs is a horizon/in which to vanish,’ I thought.”
“The most common precursor of gender dysphoria, though, seems to be intense social media use. The gender dysphoria more often seems to stem from that rather than from the home.”
“I was not there at the Memorial in the sweltering heat and humidity of Washington. I saw it through the magic of our black-and-white Muntz television set in my family’s Italian tavern in Cleveland, Ohio.”
“Or was it the Living God/Who did do this,/And not Hosea?”
“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.”
“All of this could have been uncovered with measured reporting and a skepticism that avoids trusting the word of the baby-murdering terror group, Hamas.”
“Whether or not Singal is wrong in his conclusions does not matter. He dared to question the truisms, the sacred cows, and that brands him irredeemably transphobic.”
“As my co-author Kai Whiting and I argue in an upcoming book…free speech debates have become not simply a matter of whether or to what extent certain ideas should be banished from the public domain, but why, how, and for whom they should be restricted.”
“What magnificent coordination. A ballet/on wheels. Impossible, but there it was/day after rainy day, not one collision.”
“It is safe to say that the Muslims who have been spouting anti-Semitic hatred and propaganda on our streets in recent days were socialized in a culture whose values are irreconcilably at odds with ours—a parallel society that sees itself not as part of Western civilization but in opposition to it.”
“Meanwhile, the silence of companies such as Ben and Jerry’s that claim to support injustice is deafening. Clearly, when the issue of state-sponsored violence against the nation of Israel is in question, silence is an option…”
“After witnessing the events of the past few days, I admit that part of me is relieved that [my father] died before he had to watch Hamas take away his lifelong dream, slaughtering both it and Israeli civilians on video for the entire world to see.”
“The disturbing element here is not just the escalation but the advanced level of military precision demonstrated by Hamas—an unnerving signal that Iran’s influence is looming larger than ever.”
“This is not Israel’s 9/11. It is not even Israel’s Pearl Harbor. It is worse by an order of magnitude. The closest parallel is the Rape of Nanking.”
“But one thing is absolutely clear: This is war, not just a terror attack. This is war not just by Hamas on Israel, but by Iran—through Hamas—on Israel.”
“The stated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) objective in Afghanistan was nation-building, but what was created instead, over 20 years, and fell in days, was a heavily garrisoned foreign aid bazaar.”
“Avoiding these truly current, red hot issues, the women speak past each other.”
“As a patient, I do not want to hold hands with a robot and confide my health problems to a faceless entity. As a doctor, a patient, and a human being, I reject the currently shattered doctor-patient relationship.”
“Schwartz-DuPre is dedicated to putting an end to the idea that Curious George is nothing more than an amusing story.”
“Ideological pressure and political conformity in the workplace, professional organizations, industry, and public institutional life are so pervasive that identity politics has all but ruined social tolerance, meritocracy, and the pursuit of excellence.”
“On the basis of viscerality alone, Gran Turismo is worth the price of admission for the two-hour cruise along.”
“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.”
“We must take the language/by surprise;/seal its every utterance/with a kiss or tear…”
“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.”
“America’s K-12 schools typically provide little information to young people on potential careers. They also generally do not provide work experiences that help them understand practical pathways to jobs and careers.”
“Sometimes—in the middle of fair night—/when disobedient moon turns vandal/and violently rips off the bolts/of my window-shutters, my eyelids…”
“The Rada’s final decree is a reproach to all those who think of Ukraine as nothing more than an appendage of Russia, without a culture and a history of its own.”
“Rather than treating the other in a Socratic manner—which is to say, as a partner in the communal quest for truth—the polemicist roundly delegitimizes the other and reduces him to an ‘adversary, an enemy, who is wrong and whose very existence constitutes a threat.’”
“No thought, as that of mine, to complete the bare/Purpose of their being, which is to feed and breed,/Become another edible, leave another seed.”
“Like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, continental Europe would, therefore, do well to dial down the moralizing rhetoric associated with wokeness and return to the enlightened pragmatism, cultural liberalism, and scientific curiosity that gave us the modern world.”
“What gives? Why are people so eager to believe wild tales despite a lack of hard, clear evidence?”
“I cannot argue with his characterization of Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes as a ‘triumvirate of stooges,’ but with me, he is preaching to the choir. How will he convince the postmodernists?”
“This is the atheist movement’s one job: to help people navigate the world and find meaning, purpose, and community in a society that has long depended on a god-belief for these ends.”
“The more these women agreed to be shamed for their ‘whiteness,’ the more I wondered why doing so made them feel ethical. Feeling shame makes nobody ethical. Just uncomfortable.”
“Those who do not make justice the central concern for Plato are not talking about Plato at all.”
“With artificial general intelligence (AGI) likely just decades away, there is an urgent need to consider the extent of environmental harm we are causing. AGI will likely question if humans are good stewards of the planet and quickly come to the conclusion that we are not.”
“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
“Assuming anti-aging science shows results, then all of those hypothetical people living way off in the distant future may include some of us. And if that is the case, then people alive today have a practical, personal reason to care how our current actions impact the future.”
“We live in a world where every conceivable product or service is instantly accessible.”
“As he reaches the century mark, Elias Victor Seixas Jr. deserves our respect and gratitude for leading a long and extraordinary life.”
“What receives less attention but is equally consequential is the extreme scenario in which AI saves all of humanity by making us immortal. Just as we are unprepared for life-destroying AI, we are equally unprepared for our AI savior.”
“If reading is about a relationship with a text, then my subsequent readings represented different relationships. As I changed, the book changed. I was a different person reading a different book. I am not even sure it is accurate to call this rereading.”
“One thing I’ve learned [from] being in combat sports is that it’s internationally watched everywhere, in every country.”
“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?”
“When he saw his old left-wing comrades busily hatching excuses for neutrality as Slobodan Milošević waged war on Bosnia, he realized that much of the Left was either indifferent about this confrontation or on the wrong side.”
“I argue against the apologetics of the sycophantic defenders of Heidegger who claim that his involvement with National Socialism is wholly reducible to his political naïveté, which includes his gross overestimation of philosophy’s power to sway and influence the development of Germany’s ‘political’
“For all of their insistence on cultural revolution, progressives are not yet ready to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”
“The great thing is the universe is as amazing as it is without all of the fairytales. The universe is far more amazing than anything that has come up in any scriptural book because the imagination of nature is much greater than the imagination of human beings.”
“What makes this conflict noteworthy is that it reveals stress lines within the coalition of today’s Left, a coalition that often seems held together more by what it hates than by strong bonds of friendship.”
“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.”
“Despite the book’s homage to Friedrich Schiller via its title, we get nothing even remotely reminiscent of the profound intellectual mind meld between him and his great friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”
“And because you are beautiful do not think/The Nereids will hear you, or Neptune wake/And the sea calm, and you will not sink”
“Now, Peter Stothard has given us the final decades of the republic through the eyes of Crassus—Rome’s wealthiest man and former consul who famously embarked on a vainglorious and ultimately failed conquest of Parthia that culminated in his embarrassing death.”
“They were given a choice to participate, and they ultimately decided it was worth risking their life, health, individuality, and future for a chance to be a part of a group of people who ultimately couldn’t care less about them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It is made even more dangerous because unlike other addictions, which are widely accepted as harmful, ideological addiction is being constantly fueled by irresponsible members of the political class, the press, and many on social media.”
“And where, but in constant circularity/Is all this moving headed?/The answer Cannot be death…”
“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.”
“As one example, some time in 2018 and 2019, many of the young people in my practice suddenly started reporting gender dysphoria and declaring themselves trans. Charismatic social media stars were effectively saying: ‘If you don’t fit in, if you don’t like your body, then you’re trans. Everything wi
“[Josiah] Osgood’s book is a welcome and exciting read about the rivalry between Caesar and Cato; Cato, in the process, finally receives some much-deserved due in the story of the republic’s final decades.”
“I’d be very surprised if a super intelligent AI a thousand years from now cannot recreate everything. Also, like so many other people, including Elon, I believe there’s probably a 50% chance we’re in a simulation. So, that would defeat the idea of death as well.”
“While criticizing the United States, Chomsky, Senator Bernie Sanders, those at outlets such as The Grayzone, and some of my friends have defended the likes of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro.”
“But philistinism is not limited to the arts. I believe that those who cannot appreciate the wondrous beauty of the real world as revealed by science are philistines, too.”
“In the long term, it is likely that the workplace will diversify and, in turn, settle into four or five different buckets on a continuum from traditional and non-traditional, with less representation at the extremes.”
“K-12 education’s collective illusions divert attention away from the dogged fact that most Americans, including policymakers and young people, agree on important K-12 issues.“
“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.”
“While denouncing the eugenics movement, one must also recognize that its repudiation by the progressive mainstream signals the rise of a self-centered ethos that is destructive in its own right.”
“[Matt] Johnson believes that by adopting [Christopher] Hitchens’s approach—his allergy to party politics, his hatred of racism and nationalism, his emphasis on pluralism and humanism—the contemporary left will not just benefit at the ballot box but will also benefit morally and intellectually.”
“Reading between the lines, we learn in fact that [Michael] Walzer believes that the Right, wrong in its continuing adherence to capitalism, but correct in its eschewal of intellectual fashion, currently has a monopoly on political wisdom.”
“Zoltan Istvan, an advocate for life extension, has observed in his longevity writings that each human mind is a unique library of information. Every time a person dies, it is like losing the Library of Alexandria.”
“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…”
“The Second Spanish Republic has many parallels with modern American politics. Much like its counterparts in Spain, the American left of today is no less preoccupied with terraforming the cultural landscape.”
“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.”
“For the Stoic, however, personal identity is not a fragmented life of intersecting cultural identities but rather a holistic and unified embodiment of rationality endowed by nature.”
“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.”
“Being a classicist and student of Greek philosophy, Klavan turns to his education to solve these philosophical dilemmas.”
“After all, one of the major reasons for the Conservatives’ 2019 election landslide victory was due to [Johnson’s] populist rhetoric regarding mass immigration, including the Conservatives’ promise that ‘overall numbers will come down.’”
“Beginning with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, proceeding through the luminaries of German Idealism and Romanticism—climaxing with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel—then marching beyond Hegel to Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, Newell gives a reading of philosophy gone wrong. Horribly wrong
“The mainstream media has largely ignored the unsettling censorship tactics of the Biden administration, and Democrats—all the while—clearly cannot imagine a future Republican administration following this administration’s lead and censoring content that does not support the new administration’s pol
“I had lost my ambition and with it my identity. Without CEO status, who was I? If I was not leading a company, what was my purpose? How would I find contentment without that all-encompassing fixation on achievement?”
“Despite the enormous improvements that technology has contributed to the human condition, if we do not choose to fix the way the Internet works, there remains the potential for a digital Pearl Harbor-type event.”
“Any utopian project that tolerates humanity’s diverse values and identities only to the extent that they help advance a narrowly defined vision of progress can only end in indiscriminate violence.”
“Far from giving up on the American project, national divorce aims to renew and deepen our ability to live in harmony together.”
“It bears repeating that this is a very good book. Trueman performs a thorough but concise excavation of the intellectual, philosophical, and metaphysical currents that he sees as moving below the crashing waves of our present cultural storm.”
“‘Where now security, what to trust?’/The cycle of an invisible moon has/Our harbor in its force, another period/Has begun: the existing limits to be tested.”
“One can judge the winds of change in foreign policy by the sudden proliferation of think tanks piping up and stating the obvious. There are tanks and think tanks and, despite the commitment of the Leopards, it may be the think tanks that are gaining the upper hand.”
“In fact, most Southerners did not own slaves; nor were Union soldiers, most of whom were drafted, fighting for the woke ideals of Jensen or the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
“You could read my book…as a kind of homage to the magazine.”
“Nancy Russell was one of those great heroines whose quest to save the Columbia Gorge in Oregon serves as an inspirational tale that embodies the best of American grit and determination.”
“I have no idea why Republicans and the GOP media fall over themselves rallying to the cause of those who hate them and who would never vote for them, no matter what.”
“Rather than calm debates about policy and its implications, both good and bad, we now live in a political era defined by emotion, where political discussions mutate into threats to our personal and group safety.”
“Yet there is no one thing, no attribute/Of yours that I can fix on, nothing/I can abstract, describe, isolate…”
“In short, if public schooling on average is so woefully inadequate, how can we take seriously the argument that if a family cannot afford or otherwise access private or home schooling, public schooling is a perfectly sufficient choice?”
“So I will say it with my heart, and others should too: If a culture persecutes LGBT people, is overtly racist, or makes women second class citizens, then to hell with that culture. My culture is better than that one.”
“Han occupies a somewhat unique position in today’s world that defies typical Right-Left categorization. This is partly because of Han’s bridging of multiple worlds: East and West; art and philosophy; theology and politics.”
“As we come to know more about the morally repulsive aspects of our national history—and, more importantly, face those realities—removing symbols of our collective failure in the past is not an attempt to deny our history. Rather, it is a sign of growth, a willingness to face our history.”
“The fact is that, historically, Great Britain has had a remarkably stable demographic makeup for at least a thousand years, if not much longer. The idea that what we have experienced since 1997…is in any way comparable or equivalent to the past is nonsense, at best, and disingenuous, at worst.”
“While Americans and other Westerners may be living in a golden age of free speech, there are still billions of people in the world who have yet to enjoy its blessings.”
“Like so many school districts in a post-George Floyd America, Philadelphia’s is rushing to embrace anti-racism.”
“Whatever else one may think about the unholy trinity of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich, they are, among other things, willing to discuss the serious internal security concerns that much of the country outside of Tel Aviv faces.”
“Echoing this notion from on high, in 2016 the [World Economic Forum] announced the imminence of a post-historical future in the Marxist sense: ‘Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.’”
“In fact, heterosexuality and the male-female binary can be observed across countless species. The onus of proof, therefore, is on those who claim that we are an exception.”
“And both wages and relationships advance worker opportunity, the essential elements of which are what individuals know (i.e., profitable knowledge) and whom they know (i.e., priceless relationships).”
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s biggest enemy is not the West’s reticence to sending more drones, more weapons, and more fighter jets. President Zelenskyy’s biggest enemy is boredom.”
“And my argument is that freedom and progress in the context of the cyborg era are actually inimical to women’s interests. They don’t make things better for any women, except [for] a very small, elite subset.”
“They do not realize good mothering comes from fearlessness. Few things promote more fear than being deprived of control of one’s own body.”
“As psychoanalysis long ago has perspicaciously demonstrated, prejudice is universal to human nature and is evolutionarily informed.”
“Compulsory obedience can especially be seen in how the Democratic Party has changed since the election of President Biden in 2020. Before he entered office, COVID-19 was more accepted as an important and legitimate issue.”
“‘What have you got there?’ ‘It’s snapper.’/“Did you catch it?’ ‘No, my dad caught it—/He says to watch out for any tiny bones.’”
“Aside from the fact that history shows that rockets are far more useful at inflicting damage against military than civilian targets, their misuse may indicate an underlying strategic desperation in the Kremlin.”
“What is new, in this case, is that the people of Tuvalu are hoping their future metaverse-based civilization will continue to function as a state and will be recognized internationally as a proper nation.”
“For Labour forgot that life involves loss and tragedy. It forgot that ‘human beings are not commodities, but creative and social beings longing for connection and meaning.’”
“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.”
“It must become embarrassing to admit one ever supported uninformed and nonconsensual participation in a medical experiment or mass house arrest and coerced isolation.”
“Not everything stays the same, and, in many cases, it probably should not.”
“Many of us also like impostors because, deep down, we understand that to exist only matter-of-factly, without fiction, would be intolerable.”
“We are great at handling complexity until things get really, really complex.”
“But the price of that fame and quasi-divine status took its toll. ‘Immortality had its costs,’ Porter writes, ‘and Homer paid for it dearly.’”
“Anyone who keeps/A compost heap knows the whole of life”
“[Prime Minister Ardern] is correct that nuclear weapons arsenals carry with them great risks of widespread destruction. However, the greatest risk lies in committing not to use them.”
“The unrest that flared up in response to [Mahsa Amini’s] death has been virtually unprecedented and provides the international community with perhaps the clearest reminder that the Iranian people abhor authoritarianism.”
“A republic represents the ability for Australians to recognize formally what has been long known: that we are willing and capable of charting our own future released from the bonds of the past.”
“But we need to replace fanciful dreams of endless energy from renewables with full-cost accounting, which an increasing number of experts are taking seriously. There are destructive environmental and social consequences to constructing the infrastructure for that energy production.”
“At least Hazony recognizes that the democratic world should defend Ukraine. Other nationalists do not agree.”
“It’s career ending, really…Anybody who tries to [speak out] will be shunned.”
“It is instead Hayekian liberalism delivered with a Calvinist grimness.”
“Combining inanity with compelling anecdote, idiocy with sensible instruction, Žižek addresses himself to the ‘mess we’re in.’”
“And that we might as well stop killing one another,/because everyone who lived during the French Revolution is dead anyways.”
“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.”
“In that waltz, you find me now/Singing, dancing, with the moon”
“If we look at culture as a superorganism with its own immunological mechanisms, we can recognize modern societies as being profoundly dysregulated, and this gets worse the more modern they get.”
“From that distant day when I saw her ride down Poonamallee High Road in Madras, the epitome of regality and restraint, Elizabeth II did her best in balancing the demands of tradition, the weight of history, the requirements of society and culture both at home and abroad, and also attended to her fa
“The story goes on to detail another Canadian citizen who was repeatedly and continuously offered euthanasia, to such an extent that he began recording these occasions.”
“And, later in life, when I was dealing with my father coming out of prison and perhaps rekindling that relationship, I started to look at my experience slightly differently. I started sharing bits and pieces of my story with people and, to my surprise, found that some of the reactions were positive
“It is too much to say that the world will not see her like again; there is within all of us the potential to aim for the higher moral life that the Queen embodied, if we engage in the striving that she did that is necessary to attain this.”
“and Pastor speaks with God, while I/repent my youth that/like the flower which fades/has been my secret, golden calf.”
“All of this is captured in twelve essays in novelist Dara Horn’s powerful and coruscating book on why people still love dead Jews over living Jews. It is a book that shreds modern piety and sophistry in equal measure.”
“What does it bring to light?/What meaning is there to land?/Have you killed a bit of me? I doubt it.”
“They’ve always been rivals with a town across the county line, a town of insulation and roofing makers. It’s a working-class rivalry, the authentic kind, one that lasts whatever color the collars become.”
“Freeman’s book, as the author acknowledges, is written as something of a eulogy to this great man of antiquity, who has captured imaginations for two millennia.”
“The silver lining is/you won’t be catching planes/to drag yourself away”
“For example, if poor children grew up in a neighborhood where 70% of their friends were wealthy, their future income on average will increase by 20%, similar to the effect of going to a four-year college.”
“Leading by example, Rushdie refuses to be intimidated into silence.”
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
“Any coherent system of morality begins with an appreciation of human dignity and wanting people to have as many choices to take control of their lives as possible.”
“Almost all the key events of modern Europe were seen through the eyes of this painting, which Collinsworth vividly brings to life in her writing.”
“To put it simply, if one cannot accumulate capital, he will not support capitalism; and if one has no solid basis for conserving one’s family and community, which property provides, then he will not become a conservative.”
“My father’s skin is in those pharmaceutical companies.”
“Without an enemy to demonize, the Islamic Republic would have to answer for its many and grave failures.”
“This is a story about the meek inheriting the Earth.”
“Conservatives are certainly not socialists. Conservatives do not believe, as the Marxists do, that you can open up some central office with really bright people and dictate the course of the entire economy of the nation. We don’t believe anything like that. On the other hand…”
“It is to Continetti’s credit that he develops his narrative after this with fair-minded even-handedness for the most part, even if he lets his own views bleed through in the chapters concerning President Trump’s rise and fall, as well as the mix of grift and genuine intellectual ferment that he dra
“And hell, if General Haftar was going to win, President Trump would happily give him some tips about where to buy vacation properties in Virginia Beach. His steering of the private ‘confidence building’ chit-chat with General Haftar to real estate matters was not actually as ridiculous as it might
“Sentimental and sycophantic in turns, it may be hard to dispel the impression that Miéville is merely a hysteric. All the same, A Spectre, Haunting is a post-Nietzschean book, which leans into the charge of ressentiment. Spurning subterfuge, Miéville quite openly asserts that justice and revenge am
“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.”
“Sometimes, I would even dream about some of the people I had interviewed on the stories. And, so through the years, I had the idea to write a book and put it all together and try to return to some of the stories.”
“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.”
“Barry Strauss, America’s foremost popular classicist, brings the story of Actium to life in ways that rival and surpass Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra…”
“Jackson was out walking on his property in Kansas one spring day and called Jensen with a simple question: ‘Why is this not enough?’”
“All those routines!/And unhappiness can be alike.”
“Our collective inability to push back against such a hateful worldview by holding Tehran accountable for the terror it is has funded and weaponized could soon prove to be a costly mistake.”
“Having considered the evidence, it seems more accurate to say that the Enlightenment project presented itself as a savior from ignorance and poverty but was really a movement to dethrone the old social order rooted in hierarchies and aristocracies.”
“While far-right ideologues make no secret of their illiberalism, their counterparts on the Left tend to cloak theirs in the language of equality.”
“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.”
“We should also be kind while we may.”
“Devotion to reading non-politicized history and putting it into context is necessary and something to which we should diligently commit.”
“Finns should decide their own fate. Their pact with Turkey signals the opposite.”
“The current politics of California, which more than any other American state has been shaped by mass immigration from Mexico, should likewise shake the confidence of conservatives who scoff at the alleged illiberalism of immigration hawks.”
“There is a paradox to life that an acceptance of limits, borders, and boundaries can be the most liberating thing of all.”
“More truths than cancer creep beneath our speech.”
“Ron Paul is so beloved because he is so principled. That is what we are focused on here. We will work with other people who share our interests, but we’re not going to sacrifice our principles to do it.”
“As we might expect, the Woke, often well educated and articulate, have generated their own convoluted and comprehensive ‘theology’ replete with saints and sinners, priests and heretics, and even their own kind of Heaven and Hell.”
“With bloated bureaucracies and top marginal tax rates at 70% when he entered office, President Reagan also carried in his mind a basic script about overreach of the federal government that resonated with Americans after a decade of stagflation and presidential scandals.”
“In my own life, being disabled and living with an acute example of life’s predicament means that the worldview Hazony describes and prescribes has made far more sense and has offered far more consolation than liberalism ever could.”
“Instituting UBI could help us to transcend traditional distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor that have shaped poverty policy for far too long.”
“Denial, as Jacob Phillips deftly shows in his fascinating and staggeringly original new book Obedience is Freedom, is precisely what the liberal-left excels in, substituting for a world of limits and constraints a schizoid universe where subjectivity is all that counts.”
“To really thrive in our own communities, we need more than just Law and Order; a strong social fabric is required that encourages virtuous behavior as much as it punishes delinquency.”
“It is a shame, though, that whenever Orwell reappears it is almost always in the context of his dystopian political novel.”
“Similarly, we should understand the notion of greater cultural wealth in connection with greater cultural equality.”
“Political leaders in the United States are increasingly recognizing the vitality and capabilities of the Iranian resistance movement and are looking for ways to empower it.”
“So while parents are generally satisfied with what schools did under trying and unprecedented circumstances, they have good reason to be worried about the pandemic’s effects on their children’s academic and emotional well-being.”
“If the United States and its NATO allies consider Turkey to be a partner worth keeping—and both the size of its military and its contributions to NATO’s budget suggest that it is—then a situation placing Turkey in conflict with Russia is to their benefit.”
“First published in Italy, [Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel] has finally been translated into English by Gregor Benton and released as part of the Historical Materialism Book Series with Haymarket Books.”
“I wryly refer to the universal adoption of narrative ethics as a ‘modest proposal’ because while telling stories is a fundamental part of human nature, telling stories in perfectly ethical ways is, unfortunately, too often alien to our nature.”
“It is a win-win situation—not the zero-sum world of Marx’s gloomy dystopia. Institutions that reduce transaction costs and enforce well-defined property rights provide an environment in which incentives to economic initiative can thrive.”
“Similarly, while professional hockey is considered to have an under-representation problem, the same is not considered true for the National Football League or National Basketball Association, in which African Americans are very over-represented.”
“With that said, however, as a country with a 70-year commitment to welfarism, it would not be desirable to substitute this for Russia’s brand of plutocratic capitalism.”
“Much like the United States itself, the story of Yellowstone is one of tragedy and hope, defiance and cut-throat ambition, beauty and terror, charity and callousness.”
“This book undoubtedly represents an evolution in Rubin’s thinking, and contrary to those who accuse him of changing to suit others, changing one’s mind on philosophical beliefs is not automatically a disqualification.”
“Our media’s acceptance of anti-Semitic narratives is eroding Israel’s standing in the world and, in turn, the nation’s ability to defend itself against an enemy that has long ago broken its borders and used its very liberalism against it.”
“It is time to slash the United States defense budget. The money wasted on weapon systems designed to win last century’s wars is staggering, as are the opportunity costs.”
“One of the spiritual overtones present in Father Stu is one important to Christian teaching: the merit of suffering. The Christ-like endurance of suffering is particularly embodied in Long himself.”
“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.”
“It was a linguistic indication that revolutionary consciousness had made ‘the long march through the institutions.’”
“Chaos narratives, however, defy our narrative expectations. There is no order, sense, or logical chronology but, instead, suffering without an apparent purpose or meaning.”
“They bring us here, to a place/Elsewhere, where there is no motion”
“If the woke activists who are willing to wake up at 5:00 am to march for racial justice are nihilistic, they sure seem to find nihilism plenty meaningful and inspiring.”
“The general public—and not the elite—is, in fact, the primary obstacle to the New Right’s political project.”
“Why is there this close bond? Why does China do nothing in response to President Putin’s bloodlust?”
“The analyses attempting to quantify reparations, cited above, will likely encounter strong and ongoing resistance, if only based on the price tag alone.”
“By taking part in ordinary activities like visiting a bar or restaurant or a park or library, we are doing something which is important to the health of our neighbors, neighborhoods, and communities.”
“Rubens is my favorite artist, in part, because his paintings capture the totality of the human condition in its fleshy, pathological, and metaphysical realities.”
“However, its veneration of far-right thinking (sometimes qualified but always in the most intellectualized vein) undermines its claims to genuine seriousness.”
“A country on the brink well before war arrived, Yemen’s humanitarian crisis has been labeled the worst of our generation.”
“Athens: City of Wisdom is a tour through over 3,000 years of the history of a city that has such imaginative sway and spiritual power over the hearts and minds of so many people around the world today.”
“What accounts for the gap between scholars and activists who advocate reparations and broad public resistance to the idea?”
“As Deneen says, Voegelin ‘argued that modern Gnosticism was an effort to ‘redivinize’ the political world—not now by bringing the gods in to the service of the city, but by making the city into a heaven on earth.’”
“As the only Western journalist allowed to enter Iran prior to its presidential elections back in 2017, I followed then-candidate Ebrahim Raisi on the campaign trail. Whatever illusions I had about Iran and its ambitions melted under the sheer brutality of his war rhetoric.”
“The fact—one that should surprise no one—is that the same folks who gave us the grossly mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan have also taught a master class on how to bungle our crucial relationship with an already insecure nuclear superpower.”
“Now is no time to double down on a crumbling status quo. Instead of universalizing college and directing young people through a single pathway to opportunity, we should be multiplying pathways to opportunity.”
“Lanier draws a straight line from the idealism and optimism that ‘information wants to be free’ to the dystopian problems facing today’s world, including but not limited to a declining middle class, filter bubbles, and dysfunctional politics.”
It has been 50 years since The Godfather was widely released in the United States on March 24, 1972.
“Young knows all too well what a chilly climate for dissent can devolve into, regardless of good intentions. This can undermine the West’s moral high ground more than any Russia-backed stooge could.”
“For a start, American conservatives are either unaware of or ignore that Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world and the third highest divorce rate.”
“To us it should be plain that bad information accompanies the good: that it is (as death is to life) the necessary dark background against which one might see any light at all.”
“Yet, today, what seems most poignant about this story of just a few years ago is not so much that the young man had the opportunity to meet his friend in person as that meeting face-to-face was still considered an essential requirement by either him or his community—the consummation, if you like, o
“So, we have been living in two pandemics, but only one has dominated our public health discussions.”
“In this rousing story, [Roosevelt] Montás concentrates on four particular ‘great authors’ that embody and encapsulate the human condition who shaped him: Saint Augustine, Plato, Sigmund Freud, and Mohandas Gandhi.”
“For the first time ever, more than half of women aged 30 in England and Wales are childless. This is not a normative condemnation but a descriptive statement.”
“Amid the memes and rhetoric, there has been much in the way of propaganda, unverifiable information, and outright lies that seem, at times, not to be appreciated for what they are.”
“The citruses will still bear fruit, and if not these,/There will be others to form the soft flesh/Of oranges, new limes: all creating in their rot.”
“Now, we face a second reminder of reality. First plague, now war has come to Europe, the biggest since 1945.”
“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.”
“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.”
“And we very much do need to start telling ourselves and these street people the hard (but ultimately more humanizing and compassionate) truth again: We need to call the bums by their rightful name.”
“Love is the central theme of Dante’s Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy. It is from love that new life begins. It is in love that life is sustained and made pleasant.”
“Given the potential for a more populist conservatism that appeals to those seeking to reweave America’s weakened bonds of social and economic mutual loyalty, the right-liberalism of Murray and others is exactly the opposite of what is needed and wanted.”
“To challenge Dr. Fauci is, thus, to challenge a kind of revealed truth. Those who question Dr. Fauci are not merely expressing differing opinions; rather, they are apostates, ‘science deniers,’ ‘anti-vaxxers’ spreading dangerous ‘misinformation,’ and they are worthy of ridicule, censorship, and, of
“Only days before Goldberg made her ill-informed comments, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) changed its definition of racism to ‘The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.’”
“When I was imprisoned in Iran, I made it clear to the Swiss ambassador to let the Trump administration know not to offer any money in exchange for my release.”
“The implication is that culture and politics can be thought of as the bob of a pendulum swinging back and forth mechanically between the political left and the right, and that, at the moment, we are simply at the leftward amplitude of such a process.”
“His culminating chapter is a love letter from his heart of his life spent in literature, his life as it matured for himself, and he has given himself and his favorite books to us to discover afresh and anew.”
“Yet the cold does not rest there.”
“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.”
“However, in his uncompleted sequel to The Lord of the Rings, The New Shadow, as well as The Silmarillion, Tolkien presented a different vision of human nature, one that is more realistic and more concomitant with his Catholic upbringing.”
“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.”
“As a former graduate student in religious studies and writer of the classics, it is deeply regrettable that the scholarship of the academy does not reach further and that century-old myths no longer of any substantial prominence in academic study still hold public sway.”
“A disconnect ensues: Even as the American public has indeed polarized, our elected representatives have fled to the extremes to an even greater degree.”
” I think that we are, as always, pragmatic idealists.”
“So, yes—my friend has a point: To someone who has never given a moment’s thought to whether Jesus was a real person or not, he does seem like an entirely fictional character.”
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with debate. In fact, debate, in certain circumstances, can be good, but we can often solve the problems…through conversation.”
“At the time, I would not have guessed my encounters with Roger through YouTube and a handful of books would lead me to studying with him just prior to his death.”
“Many such persons will have internalized the idea that they constitute an inconvenient and expensive burden on loved ones, as well as the healthcare system. Legalizing MAID risks reinforcing that message.”
“Eventually, I had an emotional crisis because I could no longer reconcile the life of abundance that the U.S. afforded me. I made a pact with myself that from here on, I’m really going to try to see what needs to happen for [Africa] to thrive.”
“The only thing Brooks’s ‘true conservatism’ is ‘responsible’ for, however, is progressivism’s thoroughgoing dominance of our culture. For Brooks, a ‘responsible’ conservatism must concede the moral legitimacy of every progressive ‘advance.’”
“Without the notion of socially necessary labor time, nothing in Marx’s value form or overall theory of exploitation makes sense.”
“One of the causes of tension with Noam Chomsky, for example, Burgis observes, was Hitchens’ recognition that the forces of anti-imperialism today are dissimilar to ‘Ho Chi Minh or the Sandinistas.’”
“Policing needs to be seen as a profession to whose ranks people of every class might plausibly aspire.”
“Too often, people think of corruption as something that happens somewhere else: in Russia, in authoritarian regimes.”
“As a matter of economics, scarcity is the source of all value, even if it is a combination of ‘manufactured’ scarcity via monopoly control and relative scarcity due to the costliness of extraction and the preferences of consumers.”
Here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.
“As a former political hostage in Iran, I oppose the efforts to revive the current agreement as it stands. I will explain my reasoning and what I believe is the best path forward.”
“As is tradition at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite Merion West articles of this past year.”
Henri Mattila and Erich Prince tell the story of Merion West.
“So, the fact that what is now called wokeness is a minority persuasion, believed by a small group of elite left-liberals and pursued through the instruments of the managerial state and corporate oligarchies, should not be surprising.”
“Odysseus has before him the fantastical dream of every man: immortality and sex. He ultimately gives that up for mortality with his family.”
“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…”
“National Conservatism, one strand of a broader emergent post-Cold War fusionist conservative movement, has the potential for both capturing youthful energy and enthusiasm while grounding and directing it with prudence and realism.”
“In the aftermath of the fiasco that was the Fall of Kabul, it was predictable that American commentators would detect a mirroring effect of the Afghan loss on political crises in the United States.”
“I pedal away with an all-too-familiar question bouncing around my head: ‘What are we doing to these kids?’”
“Because there’s little more to friendship than warding off scurvy or having a catch.”
“The End of Suburbia lays out the argument that with oil production peaking somewhere around 2027–28, and from then on heading into a steep decline, the living standards of those in suburbia will decline also.”
“Such politicized readings of the last 50 years miss the profundity of Ovid’s inclusion of the story in his grander poetic agenda of love being the constant star in the midst of a world of violence and transformation.”
“Presiding over a declining empire is more arduous than presiding over one that is rising.”
“But the one fight that never resolved was the one between my Bessarabian grandfather and my American Uncle Izzie, who drove a truck and married into the family long before I was born. And it happened during the late 1970s, during the Carter administration.”
“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.”
“Thinking leads to Hell. The way is wide…”
“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…”
“No country, even the most powerful, can save lives in every conflict, but if it judges itself to be able to and its conscience is sufficiently moved by the killing, it should step in.”
“We are inheritors of incredible cultures, yet we have no appreciation or understanding of them. We have more informational resources than any generation prior, yet we are as ignorant as ever.”
“The question, however, remains: Would politically motivated government officials make better decisions than executives at these companies, and would these decisions be fairly applied to all users?”
“The question, of course, is why an underground counterculture known for its outspoken, contrarian, and anti-authoritarian attitude would toe the woke party line, disavow empiricism, and do the bidding of elite ideologues rather than admit that the emperor is naked.”
“The flattering portrait Hegel wrote of Napoleon to his friend has subsequently spiraled into mythic legend. Why did Hegel have this seemingly lofty view of Napoleon?”
“Roberto Calasso passed away this year at the age of 80. There is no one quite like Roberto Calasso; perhaps there is no one remotely like Roberto Calasso.”
“Writing becomes a contest between mutually incompatible conceptions of public life. We do not simply have varying prescriptions for social ills; the afflictions we observe are fundamentally different.”
“One thing I chose not to do was circumcise my child. While many of my secular compatriots still feel an affinity for this practice as a ‘tribal marking,’ I find it intellectually and ethically difficult to defend.”
“Now, given that genetics matters for these things, which, in turn, drive inequality, we should take genetics seriously if we are truly committed to egalitarianism.”
“Sayles’s 1996 film, Lone Star, is arguably his greatest work to date. And after 25 years, given the tensions that continue to circle around issues of race and immigration, it certainly has not lost any of its original force and relevance.”
“That commitment to truth seeking made Sullivan one of the earliest advocates for gay marriage and one of the most potent and consistent critics of ‘wokeness’ today.”
“Young Americans, myself included, need to resist the impulses of the day and keep striving. We may never be Bond types, but the quest for self-improvement is the point. To strive is to live.”
“The body is certainly something we should appreciate, but it is not the most obvious thing to be considered sacred. A far better candidate would be consciousness.”
“One hundred years after Fitzgerald’s great novels, we are living in the same world as Nick Carraway, Amory Blaine, and Jay Gatsby.”
“Located within the framework of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, The Memeing of Mark Fisher boldly riffs on everything from conspiracy theories and memes to economic policy and election campaigns…”
“But that raises another thorny question: Given all the excellent books by women and people of color, why am I writing at all? Why am I not simply recommending other people’s work to men and white people?”
“Rauch takes as his subject how we know what we know in public life, and what the greatest contemporary threats to our shared public knowledge are.”
“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.”
“The predictable consequence is that instead of striving together toward the ethereal glow at the top of the highest peak, we are coming apart and stomping each other and ourselves further down into the abyss…”
“But even if we should accept and defend democracy as an ideal, we should not make the mistake of forgetting that anti-democratic—or, at least, non-democratic—procedures and institutions are necessary for sustaining a liberal democratic society like our own.”
“Contrary to the Bitcoin apostles I met at the conference all those years ago, contemporary owners of cryptocurrency seem to be more interested in its speculative properties than its potential as an alternate currency or stable store of value.”
“Adherents of the Woke worldview disallow this more complex approach to social issues (psychologically, an ambivalent position) and, instead, succumb to the simplistic and often pleasurable permission to demonize entire categories of people according to immutable traits.”
“Whether America likes it or not, the unipolar moment, Pax Americana, is over.”
“As a result of this debacle, it now seems reasonable to question whether Washington is competent enough to assure Australia’s security.”
“To understand how land use regulation can help save California from the dystopian future it is currently facing, I spoke with Nolan Gray, an urban planner and outspoken land use policy wonk.”
“If a nation is an ‘imagined community,’ to invoke Benedict Anderson’s metaphor, then how can we live together when the communities we imagine are, at every level, incompatible?”
“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.”
“If, on the other hand, we as a society make excuses for thugs and use pretextual claims of racism to emasculate law enforcement, we will promote the continuation of our rapid race to the bottom.”
“Marcuse and Bell might not be on the reading lists at elementary schools, but CRT’s cynical mentality and Marxist tenets are still present in the pedagogical exercises being exposed by Christopher Rufo’s investigative journalism.”
“History ended in 1989. In 2008, the economic order was shaken. The political reckoning arrived in 2016. By 2020, the End of History was over.”
“The Biden administration has not yet decided whether to call Saied’s power grab a coup.”
“As Joshua Foa Dienstag reminds us, the essential tragedy of being human (or being anything, for that matter) stems from the passage of time.”
“Therefore, what possible reason is there to believe that simply bribing a few Jews out of a few homes in the West Bank will result in Hamas and Fatah making peace with Israel?”
“Our members of Congress—no matter how extreme their ideological predilections—have a duty to quit using the institution as a performative stage and begin working within it to actually forge policy solutions to our most pressing issues.”
“How did it happen that the Wolves came to wield such power here, infiltrating academia, journalism, and other segments of society that were supposed to be high-minded bastions of truth and light?”
“But, if I have learned anything, it is that choice is best when it is counterweighted by a serious moral framework.”
“20 years of RCV in San Francisco has neither moderated the city’s politics nor produced any novel outcomes worth replicating.”
“Dear doves and hawks and other feathered brethren: It is already over.”
“Implicit in this choice was the belief that tolerance of all values was more important than inculcating any particular set of values and, thus, that tolerance was the most important aim of society.”
“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?”
“Yet now the Enlightenment too, like ancient thought before, finds its enduring legacy threatened by a fundamentalist competitor.”
“But one of the dangers is it’s very easy when there is change that makes someone uncomfortable to immediately say that this is a society that’s in decline and to blame somebody for causing it.”
“However, without wishing to entertain hyperbole, we may conversely deem this great exposé to be rather trivial—even inconsequential—especially when considering the increasingly ‘extraordinary’ nature of our own existence.”
“Although reaching immense influence in the 20th century, the mass man is the ‘spoiled child of history,’ and when he goes in search of bread, says Ortega, he always does one thing, ‘He wrecks the bakery.’”
“One thing that sets Nice Racism apart from her other books is the depth of its cynicism.”
“The other fans that have a dangerously inaccurate idea about what it means to be Stoic are the ‘Broics.’”
“Here, I would like to reflect on the optimal mechanisms for sustaining the rational mindset that undergirds liberal democracy.”
“Although they are run down, many still boast high local taxes. Sadly, this forms a vicious cycle of adverse selection, spiraling tax rates, and underfunding. “
“What is needed is a return to a culture of common sense and personal well-being, in which one is judged according to what kind of person one is and how one conducts one’s life.”
“In his TED Talk ‘Be suspicious of stories,’ Tyler Cowen explains that, when we create stories, ‘We’re imposing order on the mess we observe.’”
“I want to explore this conclusion by asking why pornography is so prevalent, why themes of domination and subordination are so prevalent in pornography, and why so many people defend or celebrate it, even in progressive and feminist circles.”
“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.”
“This modest and inconspicuous doctor published a 2018 guide for lay people, describing simple methods for helping people with mental health problems, entitled Where There Is No Psychiatrist.”
“Here, Smith steps in, and he admirably makes a case to both the Left and the Right that patriotism is a worthy political virtue in need of resuscitation here in the United States.”
“In many ways, the book also reads as a eulogy to a liberal, liberalizing, and internationalist America.”
“Why, after all, should it be ‘pro-test,’ and not ‘de-test’? Protest once meant to give testimony in pro of something good, over and against something corrupt.”
“The work of totalitarianism takes a lot of muscle, but most of it is done by just one: the wooden tongue.”
“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.”
“…I cannot stand by while supposedly smart, thoughtful, and vocal leaders in the literary world choose to misuse (or condone the misuse of) the word ‘genocide.’”
“To explain why the echo chamber corrective flopped, Bail puts forth an alternative theory of how today’s social media is helping drive polarization and mutual contempt between partisans.”
“In an age of iconoclasm, Ahmari reiterates the indispensable need for the icon of tradition that points beyond itself to the everlasting, and Dougherty captures how the icon of national particularism can also point beyond itself to the universal.”
“A polity of such geopolitical importance would surely be expected to have birthed an intellectual reaction to the French Revolution that was comparable to its formidable military response.”
“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.”
“The recovery itself is likely to be the largest job creator this decade.”
“Scruton loved Wagner. The two were a match made in heaven, or hell, depending on your perspective and appreciation of irony.”
“However trendy this new semantic shift, the word is more relevant than ever: “Career adjacency” is now the future of human work.”
“The United States can offer a very innovative solution to a seemingly intractable conflict: Pay Israel to withdraw its settlers.”
“The bigger the election’s participation, the bigger the mandate, and so universal suffrage elections have grown into unwieldy, ugly beasts.”
“At the same time, I cannot find a single discovery in the history of science that has been made by following the conviction that everybody is different.”
“The reasoning has nothing whatsoever to do with functionality; indeed, it has nothing whatsoever to do with viruses or health safety. The reasoning is about symbolizing conformity to bureaucratic rule.”
“What I have found in the book is strong enough to suggest that there is a correlation between mass migration from Muslim-majority countries and the increase in sexual violence.”
“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…”
“From a eudaimonic well-being perspective, the act of cancelling those we do not like—more often than not—leaves us worse off, precisely because it robs us of an opportunity to create the best version of ourselves.”
“Therefore, if we want to ward off a divorce between our political narratives and reality, perhaps the best thing we can do is bring political affairs as close as possible to our lived, everyday realities.”
“With that said, there is considerably more to democratic regression than the simplistic idea of evil, right-wing leaders whose ideas resonate with bad people.”
“In order to win, the American Right needs to bury dead dogmas, get its head out of abstract Platonic idealism, and look reality in the face.”
“To these people, lockdown has been a raging success. To everybody else, it has been an unmitigated disaster.”
“It is a crushing defeat that signals that Labour’s loss of several of its Northern constituencies under former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the 2019 general election was not a one-off occurrence that could be fixed with a new leader.”
“But every now and again, it is worth looking at his own vision of an ideal society. Interestingly, this is where this sharp-eyed critic comes across as short-sighted.”
“And at a time when so many, on both the Left and Right, seem intent on tearing everything down, President Bush reminds us how much we have.”
“Finally, the mere expectation of inflation can actually bring it to pass.”
“For a young immigrant boy who knew nothing about politics or history, Star Wars had a universal appeal that transcended language, nationality, time, and other superficial social barriers.”
“Channeling Uncle Bill, who died over a decade ago, I invite his ghost to weigh in. But rather than answering, he walks me downstairs in his old Brooklyn house, where we stand together in his paneled den—the perfect skin we’d heard about, now on the floor.”
“Interest group pressure typically opens up immigration.”
“Ultimately, in order to thwart the managerial system, the American conservative movement needs to co-opt the managerial system.”
“Two millennia later, we are still warring over the meaning of Virgil’s Aeneid.”
“Accordingly, we believe that Facebook could streamline its appeals process by following the guidelines suggested above.”
“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.”
“But the thinking man ought to deploy le mot juste—the precise term—because of the heartburn it gives petty tyranny, as all truths reliably do.”
“On the House does not provide a clear answer, but, if one reads carefully, one might find that Boehner’s short-term pessimism and long-term optimism are both warranted.”
“This depoliticization of the public realm extends to the selection of the managerial class itself. Elections matter not at all. The managers perpetuate themselves…”
“Odysseus is the first recognizably Western man.”
“Lewis observes that young people are no longer being taught to experience a unity with greater powers but, rather, to accept themselves as separated from greater reality.”
“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.”
“Greene uses abortion jurisprudence as a real-world example of how American law’s approach to rights has gone wrong—and has helped split us up into warring tribes competing for a zero-sum rights pie.”
“We believe this question of censorship is a non-partisan concern that will deeply affect the ability of our country to achieve fairness and progress going forward.”
“As a result, the time has come for scientists to place themselves on the right side of history and reject Critical Social Justice in science as well as its Trojan Horse, DEI as it is currently justified and conceived.”
“Merisotis has written extensively about higher education and the future of work, but Human Work is a departure from much of his past writing.”
“Upon my father’s return, I was shocked by the change in his appearance. His arms and back were a series of scars and discolored blotches.”
“It was around that time that I, a decidedly aimless and apathetic 15-year-old, would stumble upon a still somewhat blossoming The Rubin Report, along with The Joe Rogan Experience and Sam Harris’ podcast Making Sense.”
“As President Joe Biden unveils his own ambitious spending plans, it is worth asking if the national debt is finally going to have its moment.”
“This is not a clear-cut struggle between good and evil, especially when enemies could come from within as well as without. Rather…it is a war between one good and another.”
“Dropping one term in favor of another will not, by itself, solve any great problem, but it can make finding a solution a bit more likely.”
“Dad never searched for buried treasure again. He instead bought lottery tickets, entered contests online, and invested in a million dinar after Iraq fell…”
“This tendency to equate nuanced thinking and nonviolence with a lack of political conviction is typical of radicals.”
“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.”
“In the end, these are movies about redemption and what it means to be redeemed, whatever the struggle in getting there.”
“But let us be clear: It is not fair to claim that the filibuster is a ‘relic of Jim Crow,’ either.”
“Policy towards Iran must be suited not to religious ideologues who happen to be flush with petrocash but, rather, to racketeers who happen to be religious ideologues.”
“Instead, we should follow President Biden and Gorman’s lead and frame our political debate and public discourse within an overarching language of civic virtue.”
“Idealists, in order to change the systems in which they exist, must usually remain in that system.”
“From Saint Ignatius, this short phrase’s message is straightforward yet powerful: Do what you are doing.”
“Democrats have long gotten away with murder this way, shaking migrant hands in public view while mercilessly oppressing them out of sight.”
“By sheer accident, one man in this stupefied future learns how to read.”
“It is a short and gripping panorama of life in 1920s-1940s America, that defining epoch of struggle and stardom, hardship and grandeur, fortune and bankruptcy—and Bugsy Siegel experienced it all.”
“Will the Democrats prove captive to cultural grievance, identity politics, anti-racism, and the like? Or will they throw their lot in with Biden-style moderates…”
“Fixated and obsessed with Superman’s ‘whiteness,’ Phillips cannot appreciate a movie for what it is, content instead to completely misinterpret it in order to make her misguided social beliefs more palatable.”
“The statistics were/like our scores—and we wanted/to lead the boards…”
“When to allow discretion on the part of public servants is not an easy question to answer.”
“Coming of age in the 1990s, the state of the world seemed every bit as dire to me as it does to many ‘Zoomers.’”
“Yet, paradoxically, it appears as a nation that our collective response to the pandemic has exacerbated the pre-existing epidemic of physical inactivity amid efforts to protect people’s health.”
“In Austria, for example, police have shot a dozen people since 2008; none of them were black.”
“If our halls of power are rife with mini Aaron Burrs, what does that say about us?”
“The publication of Peterson’s latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is an opportunity to reflect on the impact this man has had on the cultural debate…”
“Because of the comments I had heard from people in the department and from our department head, I was scared my contract would be not be renewed if I revealed my political preferences.”
“Soave’s new book, Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future, will be published on September 28th…”
“‘They say the great equalizer is death, but bootcamp is a close second.’”
“How to describe it all? My dad and his sweaty armpits and the black garbage bags with the slice of old-time America buried inside. This sadness I’ve become filled with, which doesn’t feel like the kind of sadness the artist intended, but the opposite…his sadness looks like happiness to me.”
“In the meantime, fans have discussed and debated the merits of Bond himself. Is the character a good person? Is he a positive role model for today’s youth?”
“The problem is that this story of Mozart that we think we know is not true at all; thankfully, Jan Swafford is here to correct the problem.”
“Can their good works ever balance out any of the harm they have caused?”
“Like 20th century Germany, the PRC’s embrace of socialism, nationalism, and the worst elements of collectivism have resulted in unspeakable horrors.”
“Shapiro’s most recent book How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps presents the United States’ problems, which he sees as near-fatal if left unaddressed, as rooted in the world of ideas and political philosophy.”
“One of the reasons our anti-poverty efforts in America don’t do better is we start too late. We need to help kids early on.”
“Kennedy no doubt considered his relations with Khrushchev in making his decision. He had been groomed by his father to be a ruthless competitor.”
“The immediate danger of the Capitol attack has ended. However, the work of repairing the tear in the fabric of our nation has only just begun, a task we neglect at our peril.”
“If you look through the films, it’s a propaganda machine, where identity politics is always featured. There’s no space there for just a common universal story, which is the appeal to human frailty or common ground.”
“While seemingly contrary in ‘theory,’ the great totalitarian systems—fascism and communism—would have a great deal in common in practice. Both are manifestations of the human Ego flailing about in a world reduced to Nothing.”
“In a novel to be released later this month, Hornblum—perhaps best known for his 1998 non-fiction book Acres of Skin, which centers on different events at Holmesburg Prison—retells the calamitous events of August, 1938.”
“Patience ‘is the central constitutional virtue—and it is, by all signs, a lost one.’”
“Both Ortega and Orwell concluded that the Left was in trouble as a result of these developments, and their analyses and diagnoses pointed the way forward to the situation we have today in the West.”
“Kennedy proved his mettle in response to a Soviet breach of the Monroe Doctrine, defusing a crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster.”
“While laws do not and absolutely should not regulate a politician’s religious practices, the time and place for these practices is not when taking an oath of office.”
“While not all of his essays are explicitly moral in orientation, nearly all of Plutarch’s essays have moral instruction and guidance baked into them.”
“As historian James Oakes writes in his new book, The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, the Republican Party was once home to a tight union of moral principle and constitutionalism.”
“Well, the first paragraph basically says it all. It begins with ‘The continued unity of the United States of America cannot be guaranteed.’”
“What place does acceptance have in this wasteland of a year? My view, informed and influenced by living with a severe inherited disability, a fragile skin condition is that it has a central, vital place.”
“Left movements exude the zest of adolescence, which is why they can generate so much thrill and camaraderie and—when they occasionally succeed—such deflated confusion and hollowness.”
“But this, in my view, has little to do with people being overly sensitive and much more to with the very economic system that conservative critics of cancel culture regularly prop up.”
“I’m Robert Jensen. I’ll be your guide into the restless and relentless mind of Wes Jackson. I first bumped into Wes’ work more than three decades ago, and his ideas have had a profound influence on my thinking about society and ecology.”
“Given this, we can recognize that Nietzsche would have seen layers of irony in these contemporary conservative figures appealing to his ideas to critique contemporary socialists…while simultaneously expressing concern about declining Christian values.”
“Having lived in Latvia for over a year…there is a selection of good things, ideas or their manifestations, which seem to pervade Latvia and/or which the United States either lacks or has forgotten.”
“To the contrary, we can take advantage of certain aspects of our tribal nature to ease tensions between groups and, critically, to pursue common goals that are important for human flourishing.”
“The evidence is overwhelming; the American economy is rigged in favor of the government-business elite and has become more so over time.”
“But this article is not actually about cutting. If one has not yet guessed what it is really about by now, it is time for me to pull back the curtain.”
“While many have suffered badly—and I do feel their anguish over being fired, falling into depression, or even committing suicide—I have to admit that it turned out rather nicely for me.”
“Worst of all, it isolates us.”
“At a time when we are losing a grip on the fundamentals of the American Experiment, a powerful foe has arisen that stands in direct opposition to those fundamentals.”
“In financial markets, the basic unit of cost is risk.”
“In the nation’s capital, power will always remain; the only question is who has it.”
“They persuaded 138 Republican members of Congress to vote against the certification of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, the most significant demonstration of no confidence in American democracy since the secession of the Confederate states.”
“…it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the authors might have profitably started with an opening chapter dedicated to early American identity politics as well as postmodernism.”
“As McDowell suggests, it was the liberating and open environment of humanist education that moved Milton more than any theological or political zeal, and it seized Milton at an early age.”
“This suggests that Kant’s Copernican turn in metaphysics, in both the theoretical and practical spheres, has the potential to be interpreted in both liberal and conservative directions.”
“Relief that starts and stops with student loans is merely distracting from larger issues.”
“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.”
“When we, as a nation, celebrate these heritage months, all that takes place is pandering and more of an unfortunate tendency: dividing people—in the 21st century, no less—by race.”
“That is why in my work with schools and non-governmental organizations I try to model an open and judicious approach to CSJ orthodoxies, one that sifts through the kooky stuff in order to highlight the important parts.”
“In his new book, Hope & Scorn: Eggheads, Experts, and Elites in American Politics, historian Michael J. Brown adeptly probes questions such as these as he delves into ‘the uncertain role of intellectuals in a democracy.’”
“Without a doubt, journalism of this nature is as irresponsible as it is biased.”
“So what, then, makes someone a liberal? In this piece, I am going to argue that the philosophy of Immanuel Kant provides some clues.”
“But, with that said, many of the problems that are blamed on social media run much deeper and require broader societal solutions than just legal controls on social media.”
“Given the fact that humans are competitive by nature, how could politics not become some version of a team sport? It is true that hyper-partisanship is not great, but the game is what it is.”
“One of the core conclusions of Fukuyama’s Identity is that identity politics—the ‘demand for [political] recognition of one’s identity,’ whether that be a racial, ethnic, religious, or national identity—is here to stay.”
“Thus, corporate policy at Google, Apple, Amazon, et al. becomes a second set of laws by which Americans must live.”
“I will close here by thanking Senatore for his thoughtful critique of my review. I hope that this response convinces him that my ‘sweeping statements and feel-good-isms’ are not wholly without merit!”
“When it comes to theorizing about cosmopolitan socialism, Michael, unfortunately, passed on before he could spell out the details. However, we can infer much from his criticisms of conservative histories.”
“Writers like Koenig would be wise to recognize that when it comes to the intense, tribalistic, and bad-faith rhetoric (and actions) that have contributed to American decline, there are at least two sides to the story.”
“In the battleground states, since 2000, Republicans have won the popular vote four out of six times. In fact, Donald Trump—in 2020—won the battleground states by over 2.1 million votes.”
“In what ways can we further immunize our governing institutions from the political malaise of today and tomorrow?”
“We presumed to be no longer worshipping anything, but were we not actually worshipping Nothing?”
“And, as Michael Lind pointed out in Tablet, Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill was not the only Capitol Hill taken over by extremists thanks to a lax police presence—witness ultra-progressive Seattle.”
“The notion that gender identity is a matter of self-identification, separate from biological sex, not only flies in the face of science but also leads to circular reasoning.”
“At his best, Scruton was a panoramic thinker of formidable intellect who puts to shame many of the lesser polemicists who have followed in his giant footsteps.”
“So, if President Trump sticks to his plans not to attend the inauguration of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, he has a remaining option that still very much respects the peaceful transfer of government set into place by our nation’s Founders.”
“There is a real double standard at work. It is a glaring one, not the one President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris claim exists but, rather, the one they want to gaslight us into accepting.”
“Those who are adamant that love will trump hate, heal the world, and divinize us are not articulating anything new. The Greeks are still singing to us the songs of humanistic love as the spirit that will heal the world.”
“The loss of faith in America, its promises, and its constitutional and democratic ideals augurs not only American decline, but American collapse.”
“Struck by this realization, Wittgenstein insisted that the best thing now was simply to stop doing philosophy and to try and find in life what could not be said with certainty.”
“And he wrote this very famous novel called Infinite Jest, which he described as a very sad book about the pursuit of happiness. And so, I think in some ways, I’ve written a very sad book about the pursuit of happiness as well.”
“I think there’s great potential in video games. In some ways, they are the primary space in which the culture wars are now being fought.”
“And so I remembered from college: When you’re facing a problem that seems deeply puzzling, go back to fundamentals, go to first principles. So I took Aristotle’s Politics off my shelf, my old college copy, and reread it in the context of the election of Donald Trump.”
“While I am happy to endorse some of President Trump’s policies, I am not willing to endorse his self-serving legal maneuvering simply for the sake of these policies I support.”
“Professor McConnell’s extensive study of the substance and scope of presidential power under the Constitution has convinced me that the unifying capacity of the Constitution could perhaps be revived.”
“This is one of the reasons for the remarkable loneliness and alienation from others many have detected in the post-modern landscape.”
“At the core of this analysis is a claim that, at first glance, may seem to be a stretch: The erosion of human dignity in our broken world starts with the erosion of the planet’s soils.”
“NatConTalk is a recent entrant into the conservative conversation, or what remains of such under the hegemony of social media, our contemporary digital coliseum.”
“Of all changes that have already been made to mitigate the threat of the deadly virus, the way we work has arguably undergone the biggest transformation.”
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.
“And so I think we have to resist the tendency to try to define a new administration’s foreign policy mainly as an opposition to the administration that came before it.”
“The UCMJ has some key aspects to it which do not afford military personnel the same degree of presumption of innocence that you’d see in a civilian court.”
“In his 1922 book, Public Opinion, Lippmann notes that in a representative democracy, members of the public are expected to form opinions regarding public affairs with which they have no direct contact.”
“Yet, despite the extremes we have confronted this year, there might be a way of turning away from this ‘great divide.’”
“As is tradition at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite Merion West articles of this past year.”
“On December 21, 1945—75 years ago today—in the stillness of his waning moments in a German military hospital, General George S. Patton Jr. pondered his life.”
“Sadly, for past the 40 years, this yearning for an impossible yet fantastical other is one that has become increasingly shared by those on the Left.”
“Wesley’s hymns remind us of all that is good in the world and all that is true about the human condition.”
“The way we farm and the way we think are connected—that’s our premise.”
“Whether one agrees with none, some, or all of their policy prescriptions, Tightrope approaches the status of a must-read.“
“One of the big issues was health care reform; my own parents struggled with the cost of prescription medications, using up all of their discretionary income to pay for my father’s insulin and other medications.”
“I would argue that we must vigilantly guard against viewing ourselves as gods or otherwise infusing and inflating our fallible natures and politics with a divine authority.”
“I was also on Tumblr with an agenda. Over the past ten months, I had stumbled deeper and deeper into the neurodiversity movement, which frames autism as an identity as well as a disability and blames society for ‘oppressing’ autistics.”
“Historically, human beings worshipped gods or God; modern secular man worships Nothing.”
“Williamson puts his finger on a certain, pervasive resignation that hobbles so many lower-class Americans—a resignation that must be explicitly attacked if our nation is to live up to its promises…”
“Vance’s critics could benefit from a basic overview of the difference between a primary and secondary source, and between the personal and the systemic.”
“In this brief article, my final for the year, I will discuss four different ways freedom has been conceived of in the European philosophical tradition.”
“This condition, Epidermolysis bullosa, with which I was diagnosed after birth, is as painful as described. Singer’s language is compassionate, but what he advocates for is infanticide.”
“Therefore, in the spirit of diversity and exploration, I have compiled a list of what I see as the ten best novels on modern British identity, to remind us that British identity is not exhausted by the referendum divides…”
“Ricks writes: ‘In a nutshell, Washington was sensing the limits of virtue as a driver of the new country. He is not often seen as a political philosopher, but in his own quiet way he was ahead of most of his peers.’”
“At the time the aforementioned Heterodox Academy report was published, firings of conservatives had doubled, yet left-leaning professor firings had spiked by 950%.”
“It’s clear that so many cities are going through a lot of the same challenges that New Haven is facing right now.”
“As citizens, though, thankfully we can do more than just hope. We can engage in the sort of good-faith, learned analysis which General McMaster has provided us in Battlegrounds.”
“All of these Lenape ideas are documented in Penn and Tamanend’s treaties and would later find their way into the Constitution of the United States.”
“However, Žižek’s entire point is that the dialectical method reveals a shocking truth about the world: that certain limitations cannot be overcome because they are built into the structure of reality itself.”
“I studied Elizabethan England as a graduate student. It was a society governed by ideas of honor, and I thought, ‘Wow. Maybe some of those ideas could be returned to usefulness.’”
“In the case of leftist mysticism, the greatest obstacle to this transformation appears to be human nature, which, in part, explains the bloody reality of socialism and communism.”
“No matter how frustrated or aggrieved you may be with your current life in America, know there are countless people in the world who would gladly trade places with you.”
“My new book, A Critical Legal Examination of Liberalism and Liberal Rights, holds that liberalism is best understood as a political and moral doctrine committed to two fundamental principles.”
“Having engaged with Schlesinger’s thinking, readers should ask themselves: Here in the 21st century, what are the greatest threats to the liberal democratic project at home and abroad?”
“Milbank is perhaps correct, then, in seeing that Žižek is so heterodox in his reading that he has crossed the Rubicon into something detached from the stream of Christian thought.”
“The toxic consequences of drawing a crude line between America’s past and the state of our modern institutions cannot be understated.”
“He was the first to negotiate with Native Americans as a Christian, keeping the Christian-Quaker pacifist traditions in his negotiations. He actually regarded the Native Americans as equals…”
“Al Davis used to say, ‘Just win, baby.’ And I tell you that’s what Americans do best. Once we wake up, once we’re engaged, once we know that our culture is at risk, we come together and start communicating. Across-party lines, Democrats and Republicans start to talk, and we rise.”
“One can readily see why someone who has committed any part of his life to fighting ‘white privilege’ today would resent Peterson personally.”
“Do you realize how strange it is that professionals can move around Europe more freely than they can in the U.S.? And that overall, Alabama has more autonomy over its regulations than France does?”
“The word ‘cult’ is tossed around quite frequently in media, but few can offer a precise definition.”
“Lozada’s book provides a comprehensive, incisive analysis of the intellectual debates that defined the Trump-era. As we plunge forward into a post-Trump presidency politics, it is a must read.”
“For those accustomed to political polarization, it is easy to transition into this hyper-polarized political climate in the United States and readily pick a side.”
“What the United States shares with Athens is not the pretense of democracy, or any other feature of the content of her tradition but, rather, her citizens’ uncommon commitment to contesting it.”
“The alarming juxtaposition is that on the other side of this brick wall were patients dying from malaria and children being born with HIV. However, the sheer joy and optimism of this village was unbreakable and, in every sense, unexplainable.”
“But I had never voted in a presidential election until this year. So why did I vote in 2020?”
“One Vote Away serves as a useful primer on some of the great constitutional issues of our day, while also proving that legal judgment and political judgment are separate matters.”
“Those who work with ideas increasingly vote for the Democrats, while those who work in physical reality with their hands or machinery increasingly vote Republican.”
“But Sandel’s critique of meritocracy runs deeper than lamenting the obvious gap between meritocratic ideals and reality; Sandel takes issue with the ideal of meritocracy itself.”
“In short, Kendi’s consequentialist view of racism as rooted in policy (which, however unpredictably and unintentionally, results in racial disparities) does not explain everything.”
“This country confers upon people the basic, fundamental dignity—starkly absent in Soviet Russia and in many other places on Earth—of drawing a more-or-less direct line between our life choices and our lives’ outcomes.”
“However, the purpose of this reading is to stress—contra more conservative interpreters like Milbank—that the disordered post-modern world that we inhabit is not a firm break with Christianity.”
“Lying Bastard is a work of the zeitgeist. Disgruntled intellectuals. Returning war veterans just beginning their higher education. A school shooting. The fraud of academicians. Societal exploitation.”
“By becoming so concerned about the plight of children, we have become child-like ourselves.”
“French dedicates his book to James Madison, saying, ‘May we remember that you were right.’”
“The Economist’s less-than-ringing endorsement of the former Vice President—resignedly titled, ‘Why it has to be Biden’—typifies the sentiment.”
“For Kendi, it is policy first and racism second. Debatable? That is a racist question. Maybe a presentist interpretation of history? Also racist.”
“This becomes painfully clear when it is one’s own city that is being attacked. I had cycled through the neighborhood a mere 30 minutes before the attack commenced.”
“Hopefully, the reality of neither party being dominant will translate into a shared recognition that virtues like tolerance must be rediscovered and resuscitated in our political life.”
“Solzhenitsyn observed through incredible hardship and deep reflection, that, in his country, the lie had ‘become not just a moral category but a pillar of the state.’”
“If there is an underlying argument here, though, it is that Americans ought to quit taking themselves—and their own tribe’s political convictions—so darn seriously.”
“From this vantage point, it would be difficult to imagine a more intersectional person than Jesus.”
“We must face the reality that the prevalence of abortion is a manifestation of our distressed sociality and corrupted sense of mutual responsibility.”
“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 following examples remind us that no presidential race is over until the votes are counted.”
“As such, it is not simply the case that coherent political dialogue is difficult via the Internet; it is difficult, in large part, because of the Internet…”
“All the headlines about how we will see a continuation of President Trump’s China policies under a potential Biden administration ignore their radically divergent views about the United States’ role in the world.”
“The world was on this brink of this fiery hell when Jordan Peterson read Solzhenitsyn and began to turn from despair toward hope.”
“The Canadian-born James Randi, who passed away this past week at the age of 92, will surely be remembered as a modern-day Lucian.”
“Our public discourse must turn away from retrospective litigation and verbal crossfire and, instead, shift towards real politics…”
“We can only hope that Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s approach to politics will be rediscovered. Books like American Burke should function as essential guides in this most necessary search.”
“Throughout my writings on post-modern conservatism, I have generally avoided discussing President Donald Trump’s personality.”
“Policies that try to tackle diversity problems make it always salient in people’s minds. And that can backfire, even if well-meant.”
“This conquest of the engines of social formation is, as Patrick Deneen argues, why liberalism is failing.”
“Ten years ago I received a call from my father, Mario Vargas Llosa, telling me that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.”
“The universal end-state society, Kojève argued, was the society in which any individual could attain what he desired with ease and without opposition…”
“And whether or not one believes that sex is sacred, it is hard to deny that the porn industry has commodified sex in ways that rid it of all that made it human.”
“Compared to these other negative emotional states, boredom might seem like a trivial complaint. However, boredom can cause real problems if not directed towards healthy and constructive behaviors.”
“Without this circumspection, advocacy appears heavy-handed, tone-deaf, mistimed, and ultimately self-defeating, to the detriment of the downtrodden.”
“Saying that people need to know the objective truth about what goes on Up There, the objective truth about evil places fueled by imported wine and blank consciences.”
“But, furthermore, there is virtue in urging society to introspection over blind obedience to narratives.”
“Non-racism, thus understood, implies colorblindness, not in the sense of literally not seeing skin color, but in the sense of treating it as insignificant.”
“Given the numerous historical antecedents, it is likely that—probably sooner rather than later—politics would get in the way of such clinical assessments.“
“Many on the Left imply that President Trump’s initiative is just about pandering to black Americans; however, I see his plan as a roadmap to prosperity and fairness.”
“The ultimate message it proffers—Ubik the substance, Ubik the book—is one of self-determination despite humanity’s manifest lack of control and certainty.”
“Gang violence is not ‘gun violence.’”
“These were not typical evasions regarding policies; they were evasions regarding principles.”
“One question I am often asked by engaged leftists is what texts are most helpful for understanding the political right.”
“The former option is President Trump; the latter is politics.”
“Or is man—like some argue of Odysseus—a restless seeker of new places, people, and experiences?”
“…I propose the Republican Party and the Democratic Party collectively raise money from private donors to build a 535-unit townhouse neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where all of our elected representatives will live together along with their families…”
“Just like we would not accept the transportation technology of the 1800’s, we should not compulsorily accept archaic attitudes toward work, education, possessions, and leisure.”
“Taken to its logical apotheosis, this trend all but guarantees that the humanities—philosophy, literature, journalism, etc.—will become the exclusive domain of the economic elite.”
“Yes, racism does exist. Yes, Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy. However, Breonna Taylor’s tragic death is not rooted in racism.”
“With 14 million Americans suddenly plunged into indefinite unemployment, has UBI become more popular? It seems like the answer is yes and no.”
“A well-planned and well-funded bus transit system opens up a community to a larger world, better paid jobs, educational opportunities, and the potential for a better life.”
“Marcuse’s efforts, for the most part, have proven successful, however. To this point, the idea of a right-wing, pro-capitalist status quo has been thoroughly ingrained into the public imagination…”
“But to me, an observer with intimate knowledge of punk’s radical history, much of today’s woke rhetoric feels like a throwback.”
“But the hard fact is that the Vatican’s vast untaxed riches—and the Church’s tax-exempt status in many countries—make it impossible for [Pope Francis] to avoid charges of hypocrisy.”
“…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 out to be expunged immediately from our national discourse.”
“Free speech does not enable extremism. Quite the contrary: It is the primary means to challenge wrongheaded attitudes, ideologies, and belief systems.”
“Now, in what is sure to be a more controversial move, Burgis is turning his analytical skills towards criticizing the political left.”
“What is a classic? What is an epic? These two questions loom over any reader of Gone with the Wind (and great literature, more generally).”
Donald Trump rode the politics of power and emotion to the White House. If his opponents continue to respond in kind, he might have killed the politics of principle in the process.
“In a different world where the culture war never happened, I might have seen myself as their ally in some areas.”
“Leaving behind a bucolic past, the engine of modernity has nature on the run as it speeds towards an uncertain future.”
“It bears to repeat, however, that our genes do not directly decide the actions we take in life—as fatalism would like one to believe. They are not the means to our destiny but, rather, are the keys to our hypothetical reality.”
“One of the most common questions posed by those trying to fight this is: What can we do to stop this? As someone who works in education and higher learning, I can provide three potential options…”
“These slavery and race theorists are correct about the existence of the stain but wrong about it being indelible.”
“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.”
The United States does not have low voter turnout; Americans actually are asked to vote too much, and this hurts our democracy.
“The problem—as has been said so many times before—is that identity politics takes a kernel of truth about embodied human experience and pushes it to its destructive conclusion.”
“President Trump was acting as the United States’ cheerleader, his Republican supporters argue. He was derelict in his duty to protect the American public, charge his Democratic opponents.”
“It is not between Red and Blue states; it is a battle about whether there is meaning outside of politics.”
“As for now, journalists of Goldberg’s type are simply in the electoral interference business; and they just so happen to be doing it from within the United States’ own borders and from beneath the mastheads of once-respected magazines.”
“While we may be cursed to live in interesting times, this presents an opportunity to rethink some of our basic assumptions about the democratic politics of liberal states…”
“Reading it specifically in the context of the current societal struggles and apparently widespread cultural conflicts occurring in the United States today, the myth imbues the reader with a redoubled vigilance.”
“How can I say I care about what I’m doing if I’m not willing to put myself in situations that might make me uncomfortable?”
“Secretary Mattis’ words are a warning and a reminder that our roots were born not of anger but of a deeply felt awareness of human limitation.”
“The Melting Pot is a quaint notion now perhaps (and no longer widely taught to curious young boys and girls), but I find it useful as a basic counterimage to the sophisticated, academic concept of Critical Race Theory now being taught.”
“If carefully constructed, civic nationalism in the United States can take both conservative and progressive forms.”
“[Historically,] Islamic societies were actually more advanced, more liberal, and more tolerant than Western societies. So, there is nothing intrinsic to Islam that explains these problems.”
“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.”
“Due to the repetitive observations made by most in their daily routines in a country with little socioeconomic mixing, there is poor visibility into how the lives of those in other classes transpire.”
“In this respect, it is not a defense of Christianity but its final undoing: the subordination of eternal God to the human, all too human need for reactionary political order and tribalistic identity.”
“The problem with this conception is that access to truth or objectivity becomes something not open to universal access but, instead, becomes something distributed on the basis of social position.”
“And one particular author, Vicky Osterweil, has shamelessly written a book entitled In Defense of Looting.”
“It can be argued that the European failure to stand with the United States in maintaining sanctions on the Islamic regime is a symptom of their prolonged appeasement policy, which is masqueraded as diplomatic engagement.”
“Suddenly, the Grand Old Party was no longer seen as white, privileged, and wealthy. Instead, it was truly the party of social justice, freedom, economic opportunity, and the American Dream.”
“The result is a thoughtful and nuanced book that testifies to both his theoretical and exegetical talents, solidifying Scruton’s legacy as the most talented conservative writer of his generation.”
“But it feels myopic to interpret this as a larger victory or cheer for more of the same, especially if the ultimate goal is to restore some sense of ideological pluralism to mainstream institutions.”
“Maybe there is something in our environment that makes staying together so hard.”
“Once the stage is the thing, ideas don’t matter as much as performance.”
“However, after the departure of three spokespeople before her, it seems that President Trump has found his keeper—and the media their match—in a 32-year-old Harvard Law School graduate: Kayleigh McEnany.”
“The picture of science that they defend, however, is what merits the most attention.“
“In a brilliant stroke of irony, Augustine’s reading of Roman history not only reveals the many falsities of the Roman imperial mythology but also points the way to Christ and the Heavenly Jerusalem.”
“Doing things like eliminating the filibuster is just going to put us on the path to more gridlock and anarchy at this point.”
“And when anyone sees past the illusion of impartiality, thereby revealing the propaganda’s true form, the media recovers with yet more gaslighting: You are merely imagining things.”
“On fences and poles were the signs and posters of the age. Men with hard eyes and stiff lips; men with mustaches and military hats; women in dresses, sleeves rolled, forearms flexed. The age the man knew not.”
“Without some clarification on this point, calling for unity looks less like an appeal to historical precedent and more like the nostalgic projection of order and stability onto time periods that were anything but.”
“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.”
“Weird is the only word available to describe the implicit rules, rituals, and taboos that surround the issue.”
“To do so, he tells President Trump’s life story in the cinematographic style of Citizen Kane, incorporating the iconic snow globe, the campaign poster, and even the mysterious word (‘Rosebud’) that is central to Orson Welles’ masterpiece.”
“Even more disturbingly, the odds of a state governor’s child eventually holding the same title is 1 in 51; 1 in 47 for Senators; 1 in 13 for Presidents; and 1 in 9 for billionaires.”
“Indeed, when COVID-19 hit, the sunny stock market forecasts President Donald Trump boasted of were belied by record levels of corporate debt and a low rate of productivity growth.”
“The irony is that this is in stark contrast to how our rivals on the political right often portray the Left.”
“Now, this is not a review of the book, nor a critique of them personally but, rather, a critique of their function as public intellectuals.”
“Regardless of whether President Trump succeeds in his bid for re-election to the White House, those who think and speak like Carlson will likely suffer no retribution for throwing red meat to his base.”
“Importing these ideas into your sense of self—to think of yourself as a liberal or a conservative—is irrational and corrosive. It is a recipe for error.”
“A civilization that worships at such altars is one that no longer believes in itself, that considers itself irredeemably guilty, sinful or evil…”
“In the United States today, this is the language of the revolution’s media advance team. They want to silence one of our most prominent voices of opposition…”
“I agree with Deneen—and I suspect many others on the Left do too—that the local community is the optimal setting to pursue the good.”
“This is the thing about moral panics—while threatening, they can be illuminating.”
“In the meantime, perhaps given their impressive track record, free-to-consumer vaccines are something we can all get behind.”
“One of the first lessons my students of undergraduate literary studies learn about text analysis is to distinguish between internal and external communication.”
“Locke’s theoretical arguments prefigured another thinker who had a lot to say about labor and property: Karl Marx.”
“Indeed, economist Thomas Piketty observes that the United States presents for the first time in history a society headed towards extreme inequality, driven not by hyper-patrimony (inherited wealth) but hyper-meritocracy…”
“Although China exhibits authoritarian characteristics, this, by no means, presupposes that liberty is incompatible with its people’s worldview.”
“But now, being made ‘uncomfortable’ or being associated with unpopular company is sufficient reason to abandon principle.”
“With that in mind, what I want to do below is to advance a proposal that, I think, lets everyone concerned out of this conundrum gracefully.”
“This puts me in a strange position as someone who can be unequivocally categorized as a victim and yet who has always had a difficult time seeing myself as one.”
“In polarized times, think of the other person as an individual and not member of the other group.”
“All the while, the existing social safety net—combined with various anti-poverty programs—in the United States already provides for our nation’s poor by offering them an adequate standard of living.”
“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…”
“It is truly hard to believe that he is gone and that this burgeoning collaboration and friendship will never get the chance to grow.”
“During the past few years before, I had struggled with—and then firmly said goodbye to—the Catholicism of my upbringing, and I was searching for a new philosophy of meaning that did not seem to depend on so many leaps of faith.”
“Indeed, Michael Scharf reports that ‘Milošević saw himself as a modern-day Abe Lincoln, employing force in a valiant effort to hold his crumbling Yugoslavia together.’”
“This is why Peterson genuinely believes in Dostoevsky’s eminent saying in The Brothers Karamazov: ‘Without God all things are permitted.’”
“Just as it was in Shakespeare’s time, the questions of justice, mercy, and society remain as relevant as ever before, and we have much to learn from the great bard of Anglodom.”
“I was in poverty once, and then I became an entrepreneur. And now I am running for office…This is the greatest country in the world.”
“For this reason, Borges’ short story reveals that the human mind is intelligent precisely because it does not recollect too much.”
“We must first understand this socialist culture of the woke who seek to control what we think, what we say, and how we live. We must believe—like Solzhenitsyn did—that the truth can defeat them.”
“Maybe there are some lessons learned, so this never happens again.”
“Since the response to the letter was far from boring, two things can be asserted. First, a growing minority no longer believes free speech to be valuable. Secondly, those who do believe in free speech no longer believe that it is fully operational.
“As we move forward in the present struggle, where the question of race and religion becomes an endemic part of our theaters of division, we must strive to reject the retributive impulse and embrace what Martha Nussbaum keenly called the ‘rational faith.’”
“The respective propriety of each strand of said activism must be engaged with on a case-by-case basis, rather than be lumped together with all other causes before being explained away with references to academic trends.”
“This is an attempt at a social, cultural, and political revolution.”
“In a worldview that prizes purity above progress, the flawed and erroneous are stains to be expunged. Their remembrance is not only deplorable but damning by association.”
“Something very similar—and, only slightly less surreal—is currently happening in the Republic of Croatia.”
“The country is no longer predominantly rural but urban, and the frontier mindset has been largely superseded by a cosmopolitan one.”
“Never mind that it is the Trump administration standing up for Uyghur Muslims, actual victims of genocide, by imposing sanctions on CPC officials this past week.”
“In one of the great exercises of academic sophistry in our times, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva wants to persuade us that color-blindness is racism, and color-consciousness is anti-racism.”
“The reactionary outlook is, consequently, hostile to the commitment to moral equality that authentic conservatives, liberals, and progressives share.”
“If people’s convictions about those particular issues are weak enough that they could be changed by watching Rising, they surely could be changed in many other ways…”
“Although set ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….,’ the Star Wars narrative feels increasingly relevant with a very real empire, one of corporate domination, at large on earth today.”
“However, in this piece, I will explain precisely why Thinkspot was created. The story starts shortly after the turn of the millennium, with crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.”
“In other words, Ziedonis, knowingly or not, recognized that for a state to be free, its people must recognize a shared tradition and must be themselves free to build upon it.”
“It is not often that everyone in the country faces the same towering life-and-death challenge all at once, which is why we should drop the cheap partisan smears and start talking honestly about the greatest threat we have confronted in a generation.”
“Political ideas are too abstract. They are not enough to make people emotional about identity. Swiss identity has a cultural element.”
“Those doing things like reenacting a slave raid may have noble intentions, but they are sending the wrong message.”
“Our commitment to the rights of others to express themselves, even if they hold heinous beliefs, is something uniquely American, and it is perhaps the finest piece of our cultural heritage.”
“Whereas Piketty’s earlier book was often accused of ignoring the role that political doctrines played in naturalizing inequality, he has here devoted an entire text to that very subject.”
“The question worth asking is: Who stands to benefit from the continual fueling, participation, and organization of a war that threatens to destabilize Yemen irreversibly?”
“While feeding on an unclean beast alone may seem like a trivial act, it is arguably symbolic of mankind’s time-honored bastardization of the natural order.”
“Our system in United States is set up in a way that forces us to compromise. The Founders thought the great threat to a democracy is factionalism.”
“And as the COVID-19 crisis that has changed seemingly everything shows, en masse unemployment and distrust of the federal government is now a “first world reality.””
“ The university is nothing less than the institutionalization of Socrates. So the end of philosophy in the university portends the subversion of democracy itself.”
“Herodotus, as we can begin to see, is a theorist of human action—and a theorist of justice. Justice, according to Herodotus, is the chief force of human action.”
“I have never been more depressed about the state of truth in the world.”
“However, as one watches the Founders find their way into the crosshairs of so many, perhaps the obvious needs to be restated.”
“His interrogators were telling him that we have gangs who could ‘stab your daughter or wife in London.’”
“Of course, virtue signaling from the Right regarding the protests has come in many forms other than writing.”
“Rather than cracking down on higher-income Americans, it is past time to liberate the other half.”
“This is a perfect example of why a global problem needs a single multilateral response, and not various contradictory unilateral responses.”
“On her ouster from The Daily Orange, the student journalist says: ‘It also affects me as student because all my peers have banded together and tried to cancel me.’”
“This, however, poses another problem because it presumes that mythical truth is somehow free from ideology.”
“In Mexico, the most effective influencers are either politicians or drug lords.”
“One of the defining features of the reactionary outlook is how thin its conception of life’s meaning is, and this, in turn, explains why reactionaries tend to be so anxious about it all falling apart…”
“This is why I was dismayed by a recent essay published at Arc Digital (on June 9th) by Akiva M. Cohen, entitled ‘Systemic Racism Is Real. We Need To Fight It, Not Deny It.’”
“And one example of this—among others—is how prominently he features in a particular tradition of philosophy: that of philosophical pessimism.”
“So, in the same way that a country with the word ‘democratic’ in its name tends to be anything but, Antifa appears overwhelmingly to be anti-fascist in name only.”
“Why is this important? Because grammar shows that Crenshaw’s distinction between identity politics and liberal universalism is artificial.”
“They reject ideas of the extreme, so that’s why there needs to be a delineation between what’s extreme and what’s not extreme.”
“Perhaps the strongest argument considered by Vitoria relied on what today we might call “humanitarian intervention.”
“But this discrepancy makes perfect sense if we consider the tone of racial discourse in the United States for half a second.”
“Peterson continued, ‘So the Soviets really implemented and perfected the idea of class and ethnicity based guilt, and it’s a very bad road to walk down, and it’s something that we’re very much engaged in at the moment.’”
“But that is no reason to allow Senator Hawley to misrepresent history in the service of a political narrative that will cause even greater damage to an international system that is already under immense strain.”
Listen to our conversation with the candidate to hear how his platform can tackle the greatest problems facing the United States today.
“My progressive friends and I are united in wanting to see an end to police brutality, even though we may differ when it comes to the means to bring that about.”
“There has been a huge transfer of wealth to the rich and gradual collapse of the middle class. That’s made a lot of people anxious.“
“The religion of Social Justice is redolent of the old paganism but without even the mortal transcendence of its pantheons.”
“Furthermore, one of the most—if not the most—crucial contributor to the Long Peace is the spread of democracy.”
“White-shaming is a political tactic aimed at invalidating the opinions and experiences of people of European descent. Premised on a belief in collective guilt, it judges white folks not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin.”
“The police issue here now is a local issue, and we will let them work it out. If I was a president now, I would say no, we not not need to do something.”
“Lee has already proven that he is one of the greatest film directors of all time; now is his time to prove that he is also a responsible influencer upon society at large.”
“Prominent proposals by left-wing parties such as democratizing the workplace or introducing universal public healthcare (in the United States), they argue, are best framed as positions that further the cause of freedom.”
“The history which preceded the magazine’s shutdown and resurgence involved a controversy sufficient for the Red and Blue to be ‘expelled from the Student Activities Council (SAC)’ and to have ‘archives…trashed by the University.’”
“Yet I see it more as yet another form of cultural imperialism. It takes an American victim to be brutalized in order for the whole world to come out and protest.”
“It probably also guarantees he will not be standing anytime soon, given that these are highly charged social issues which are deeply complex and are probably not going to be ‘fixed’ in the foreseeable future.”
“The last time a leading Danish politician was murdered was 1286. It’s not war with your foreign enemies [that matters]; it’s internally, in political stability.”
“When asked to describe Chigurh, the few people lucky enough to have encountered him and survived claimed he that ‘looked like anybody.’”
“Wouldn’t a simple statement of solidarity with the protestors and his personal commitment to help heal the nation be the right use of the General’s reputation and leadership?”
“If that is the result of George Floyd’s killing, he will have not only died in vain but, more, died as a critical girder supporting the enemy’s battlements.”
“And so, in an age of divisive politics, Nike had suddenly found a way to embrace and commodify protest; they would have a free marketing base like no other…”
“Racism and racial inequality are barriers for many non-whites, but viewing these disparities as a morality play between powerful whites and enraged minorities is a recipe for untold conflict.”
“Ambiguity, however, is the name of the game when it comes to defining racism, while Whiteness Studies is similarly plagued with ‘critical’ obfuscation.”
“My two cents is that respect for authority is neither a particularly conservative nor liberal trait. Rather, conservatives and liberals hold reverence for different categories of authority and the actors that operate within those spheres.”
“When criticizing this violent upheaval, will [conservatives] go for the low-hanging fruit and come up with absurd, cheap explanations for what is going on? Or, will they engage in serious reflection to prevent this from happening again?”
“Brown makes the bold choice of echoing conservative critics in scrutinizing left-wing variants of identity politics from a Nietzschean perspective; however, she takes a far more nuanced and less polemical approach.”
“I think people want to know the story behind things. And I think part of what they’re buying into is the story of our family on our ranch. And so it’s beautiful to be able to share that in some small way.”
“So, how do doctors, scientists, and everyday people traverse the COVID-19 landscape, where each passing day seems to provide new information and new “theories” about our current predicament?”
“What I left out of that piece are the many questions my immersion has raised whose answers, if I could find them, might help what I’ll call the reasonable unwoke better assess SJ/DEI claims. I would like to air those questions here.”
“Should individuals collectively decide to make radical changes to lower their carbon output, they—and the economy at large—will suffer. As a result, individuals won’t. And, their individual choices would not be enough, regardless.”
“We must remind those like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Susan Wojcicki that they should not silence ideas from the get-go because they fear that people are incapable of evaluating information for themselves.”
“I can only hope that in this election African American voters cast their ballots on the basis of what each candidate proposes—and not on the basis of what they think their racial essence ought to be. That is what real liberation is all about.”
“According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCDE), Mexico is the country within the organization that has the lowest levels of testing: at 0.4 tests per thousand inhabitants.”
“What has become ‘millennial socialism’ arguably got its start in 2011, with the founding of Jacobin, a proudly left-wing magazine that was trendy, readable, and erudite.”
“Basketball fans endlessly discuss whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of all time. The jury may still be out on that one, but in my book, off-court James is definitely the lesser man.”
“With our political and cultural situation having deteriorated far beyond where it was two decades ago, it is my hope that the long-overdue national cleansing and cultural revitalization this pestilence brings in its wake will last.”
“However, regardless of it being mathematically the same task, the politically-charged task’s results came out in a polarized fashion…”
“Thucydides subsequently goes on to say, ‘In other respects also Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness.’”
“The ‘viral’ aspect of the Coronavirus pandemic and the disproportionate effect on the aged similarly suggests a Jungian reading of systemic breakdown and a lurch towards either symbolic or literal death.”
“And, in the midst of it all, a Canadian psychologist told people to clean their rooms before trying to change the world and has not ceased to be excoriated for his efforts years later. History will be kinder to him than his opponents.”
“I do want to give Rubin the fairest shake I possibly can. As such, instead of commenting on the book generally, I will look at some of the book’s arguments in detail and break them down…”
“So, it may seem as if the recent failed expedition against Maduro is a major blunder. However, I would like to think that this is only the beginning, and that those Rambo wannabes may have actually sparked a greater desire for liberation among Venezuelans.”
“COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity for governments to build trust. According to a recent update of the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in government around the world spiked by 11 points between January and May 2020.”
“Should American tennis enthusiasts be deprived the opportunity of receiving a financial scholarship and the college athletic experience because coaches—and an increasing number of them from overseas—believe foreign players are their best chance to win matches?”
“By contrast, those on the Left tend to prefer more transparently social determinants, such as ethnic or economic background and push against anything which seems to ‘naturalize’ inequality by explaining it biologically.”
“It may hearten aggrieved fans of Jordan Peterson, whose status as representative of Jungian thought I took umbrage with in a previous article, that I recognize some value in this aspect of Peterson’s work from a psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic perspective.”
“…this and countless other scientific findings led the President of the American Sociological Association—in his 2005 presidential address—to call upon members to, ‘Prepare to defend against the genomic data juggernaut heading their way down the pike.’”
“Belarusian independence would become, however, a package of unfulfilled promises.
“If the global social discourse continues to be one where we ignore what does not directly affect us, then when the next global emergency occurs, governments will fail people again.”
“The authors have done well in providing the substance for a critique of Jordan Peterson, but they need someone to spice up their style, which is precisely what Jordan Peterson, himself, did in his own career.”
“It should be deeply disturbing for voters on the Left of the Democratic Party to vote for a candidate who, not only is likely to have sexually assaulted a woman—but who used a position of power to do it and get away with it for years.”
“Embodying much of the American spirit, baseball once again finds itself on the frontline, being utilized for political gains, with any rebuke of the MLB’s return likely to be chalked up as un-American or—worse still—shouted down as a commie act.”
“It’s by some cruel twist of fate that both the virus and climate change appear to be treatable by the deceleration of society.”
“Piketty wants to re-orient the political left away from cultural and educational issues, which dominate the mindset of the elitist ‘Brahmin left’ in his telling, and back to the economic concerns that were once the Left’s bread and butter”
“Bart Ehrman, ever loyal to his engaging style, approaches this topic in Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. As expected, he delivers the goods, covering religious texts from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the writings of Augustine.”
“One can see here that Peterson, while even less convinced of the equitable distribution of competences than Hobbes, clearly shares his view that life outside the confines of society would necessarily be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’”
“The pandemic, while it has undeniably worsened the outlook for many institutions, has only exacerbated and brought into sharper relief some of the extant forces threatening to pop the higher education bubble.”
“What I want is to praise Hunt because what he had done has been incredible—and to praise those whose truths Hunt was in a position to make go viral.”
“The problem here is that one man’s stable hierarchy and proud tradition is another’s tyrannical oppression and ideology.”
“A religion becomes mainstream simply because of its sheer demographic power—not because of the reasonableness of its beliefs and practices.”
“My sense is that most people—even people who truly abhor a lot of the stuff that I write—were supportive and were sort of horrified by the decision and by what happened.”
“With respect to McManus and Hamilton, who have admittedly produced a very interesting article, there are characterizations and theoretical points within their article that I feel need to be addressed.”
“Regrettably, in more recent times, anthropology (and the humanities in general) has placed excessive, imbalanced value on emic.”
“And I have a choice right now: Do I vote for Joe Biden, a white guy who locked black people up? Or do I vote for President Donald Trump, a white guy who happens to be a Republican, who let black people out of jail and gave them a second chance?”
“Similarly, University of Zurich researchers in 2015—using data from the time of the Great Recession—estimated that unemployment causes 45,000 suicides per year.”
“If the Left were to abstain from participating in this election en masse, the consequences would be deep.”
“But good or bad, the extent of discourse around Myth and Mayhem at Merion West would have been edifying for any author, and we are very pleased the book has generated such interest and strong feelings, even before its release.”
“I know of no law forbidding our vanquishing of COVID-19; the knowledge of how to do so is therefore discoverable, and our foe is extinguishable.”
“And here, perhaps lies the problem: the single tax’s indiscriminate generosity is its undoing. You cannot offer both sides what they want without dissolving the distinction between them.”
“Reports about do-not-resuscitate orders being contemplated by hospitals began overwhelming the airwaves until Dr. Deborah Birx directly and publicly disputed these claims.”
“The lack of backbone displayed by Western leaders when dealing with China is symbolic of the malaise that has been gripping Western culture for decades.”
“More recently, The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones has gone on an antiracism crusade by coming up with the 1619 Project.”
Antibody testing will soon clarify how many have contracted COVID-19, and its real mortality rate. Those results could determine who survives the political fallout.
“Peterson and Žižek, perhaps the best-known public intellectuals of the Right and Left respectively—are exponents of psychoanalysis: Peterson of its Jungian variety, and Žižek of its Lacanian one.”
“For the ‘Signaling When No One Is Watching,’ basically what we were interested in was motivated by previous research suggesting that people are strongly motivated to signal to others that they’re morally good.”
“Let’s leave aside the fact that Joe Biden has been publicly inactive since leaving office as Vice President in January, 2017, except for making over $15 million in speaking fees and publishing royalties.“
“However, reconceptualizing fundamental rights is a serious matter. As such, we must guard against measures such as these continuing to shape our civic life, politics, and economies—even long after this pandemic has passed.”
“I recently met up with an old friend, a staunch Marxist, at a traditional Viennese café to catch up and talk about our political differences. After hours of discussion, he admitted, ‘Well, ultimately, it’s a question of faith.’”
“What similarities we have are dwarfed, however, by an immense difference. At the beginning of April, Ana Paola—at the age of 13—was raped and killed in her home in Nogales, while I write this safely from between the covers.”
“Today, we are witnessing the medical equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Moon Mission.”
“At age 55, I was the oldest in my class of about 20 students, and most of my classmates were between the ages of 18 and 21.”
“The Economist noted: ‘Just as ideas about inequality have completed their march from the Academy to the frontlines of politics, researchers have begun to look again. And some are wondering whether inequality has risen as much as claimed—or, by some measures, at all.’”
“In telling their foundational story, the evangelists sought Rome’s favor by portraying Pilate and Roman authorities in a more benevolent light, thus representing Jews as the real culprits in Jesus’ death.”
“Notably, during these times of self-isolation, it should be a near-requirement to use our time to delve into certain subjects.”
“Since a vaccine is years away, natural herd immunity is the only remaining feasible route. But current governmental actions are directly preventing the development of widespread immunity, thus guaranteeing the prolongation of the pandemic.”
“Brooks argues that, far from this façade of ideological diversity, the IDW is built around a single and deep ideological commitment. This commitment is the preservation of presently established power hierarchies.”
“The decision to break time into past, present, and future reflects a tendency to see time as more or less analogous to space.“
“The view of Rand as a self-absorbed, even solipsistic, apologist for the greed of nefarious capitalists…was always a myopic misreading of Rand, at least if one pays close attention to her novels.”
“For all the battle scenes, violent sex, and rage that fills the poem, the most memorable scenes in the poem are moments of love—especially loving moments of embrace.”
“Thus, in respect to buildings and services, the landlord is selling his or her labour. Part of the rent he or she charges constitutes wages. So far so good, but what about the land component of real estate?”
“Both Tavana and Peterson have expressed support for capitalism and Western civilization without ever addressing the atrocities committed in their name.”
“With the lines between wrestling and politics decidedly blurred, we can neither take comfort in the guile of our leaders nor the well-meaning distraction of wrestling.”
“It is long past time that we abandon the transcendent appeal to rights as ways to settle more arguments, in part because—following Derek Parfit—it is far more constructive to ask why and which rights matter.”
“Both the Left and the Right are wrong that demographics are fundamental to the political future of America (or of any other society). Demographics are not destiny.”
“A governor declared that the disease was for rich people only and that it did not affect the poor. As such, how could we possibly expect Mexican citizens to react seriously to this pandemic when its government was behaving like this?”
We should support rent moratoriums—but not because landlords are ruthlessly exploiting a pandemic.
“The United States needs a reality check. Yes, race has been a major issue in the country’s history. But class matters, and we must never forget that.”
“For those of us who don’t want to go fully off-grid but concern ourselves with the expansion of the state, what might a pandemic response look like?”
“…where Peterson is fond of citing the brutal nature of chimpanzees as proof of nature’s pitiless character, we should recall that the Left can just as easily cite the relatively co-operative nature of bonobos.”
“Peterson comes across no better in Brooks’ telling. He acknowledges that much of the Canadian psychologist’s self-help is quite useful, and he even jokingly admits that many leftists could do with some tough love about cleaning their room.”
“Uderzo’s approach to postcolonial criticism was much more nuanced and effective. Perhaps it takes a simple comic book illustrator to accomplish the job that overly sophisticated scholars fail to do.”
“In the time of a silent but dangerous virus, we need to rely upon the individual’s self-preservation instinct to save other lives.“
“The irony of this exchange is it has only reinforced my opinion that Peterson’s political rhetoric often has a stultifying impact on sincere intellectual debates.“
“These things seem all too familiar when thinking about a somewhat abstract entity with arguably outsized power over billions of people’s lives when—on a whim—it decides to violently go ‘up’ or ‘down.’”
“…one can go into business with the long-term goal of instituting a worker co-op. But the first and most fundamental aim is to supply the market with something consumers want, in as profitable a way as possible.”
“In yet another display of his famous vanity, Lord Byron once wrote: ‘How pale I look!—I should like, I think, to die of consumption…because then the women would all say, ‘see that poor Byron—how interesting he looks in dying!’”
“All of this culminated in the works of Nietzsche, who rejected the ontological and moral truths of monotheism, while retaining their stress on individualism.”
“Since there is no vaccine coming anytime soon, the only way to properly handle this pandemic at this time is to allow the population to develop natural immunity to it in a controlled manner that avoids overloading the healthcare system.”
“Although one empirical study indicates that whiteness may not be as invisible to white people as is assumed, DiAngelo is not widely off the mark about the psychological advantages of being white.”
“McManus and Hamilton have each written exceedingly unfair reviews of Jim Proser’s recent book Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization.”
“Written in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? echoed the bleak skepticism of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, in arguing that it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.”
“Margaret Thatcher was a self-described libertarian from that era. She did something quite different with the single tax problem; she altered the class structure of the country.”
“Stephen Hawking, the renowned British physicist, brilliantly summarized the main problems associated with AI: ‘Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.’”
“So, I finished my Ph.D. in 2017, and, at the time, Donald Trump had just been elected President of the United States. Like a lot of people, I was a bit perplexed and disturbed by what happened.”
“What follows are examples of topics where SJ/DEI activists have persuaded me, where they haven’t, and where they have led me to fresh, if heterodox, insights.”
“Recently, renowned essayist Thomas Chatterton Williams has taken some heat for mocking a prayer session headed by Vice President Mike Pence in the White House amid the coronavirus outbreak.”
“For them, the feelings of guilt over Europe’s past seemed to require inviting in the world to redeem Europe of its sins. Erdoğan is playing on this fear by referring to the Greeks as Nazis, attempting to destabilize the collective psyche of the European leadership.”
“However much Americans and their leaders may want to turn away from wars and atrocities geographically far away, sooner or later they will be impacted by them, usually in a jarring and harmful way.”
“Make no mistake; we are in a war, and wars tend to be easier to win when it is generally acknowledged that they are happening.”
“The conservative critiques of social justice are, therefore, wrong on two different fronts.”
“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.”
“Impotent bigness uses empty violence to lash out against the vulnerable to compensate for its own utter inability to change the world in any meaningful way. “
“I cannot fathom the extent of their pain, of course, but I know that if something were to happen to my mother or my friends, I would burn everything until justice were achieved.”
“I was surprised at the depth of their depravity in attacking this innocent academic. He also provoked quite a bit of outrage by refusing to be silenced by them—and thank God for that.”
“Italy, the first European country to close its links with China, also became the first nation in Europe in terms of the numbers infected. With this development came the tragic counterbalance of being transformed in one fell swoop from repellers to rejected.”
“Millennials occupy the rather strange position of being both an angry and apathetic generation.”
“More than 25 years after the Rwandan genocide, the United States’ current response—or lack thereof—to the state-sanctioned violence against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is chillingly similar.”
“One important aspect in controlling the coronavirus and saving patients’ lives will be the use of ventilators in hospitals. How are these produced? They sure as hell cannot be produced in Unabomber-style cabins.”
“The knowledge encoded in the profit/loss system that emerges in a free market cannot be recovered by a socialist Leviathan.”
“Human nature is to seek power; we’ve had that since the Stone Age. That’s just part of human behavior. But, as transhumanists, we seek to go beyond that kind of thing.”
“Charles Darwin himself was quite wary of the metaphysical or religious implications of his discoveries.”
“People do run the extra mile to leave something to their children, even if said children happen to be spoiled brats. Bernie fails to understand this.”
“As I have no skills to help with the virus, I would like to at least try to help in this small way instead. In any case, take precautions, stay calm, do not listen to dangerous idiots, keep yourself and your family safe, and good luck.”
“This does seem to be occurring in the academy, as the contemporary academic stars of critical theory such as Alain Badious and Slavoj Žižek tend to be hostile to the extreme skepticism of post-modern theory.”
“But, I still think that—in balance—the Internet has contributed far more to truth than to non-truth.”
“Today, we tend to hear more about how ‘health care is a human right’ with comparatively less talk about the economic or health impact universal health care might have on the nation.”
“Peterson himself described some of its symptomatic features in Maps of Meaning when he discusses how the breakdown of traditional mythopoetic traditions generated a sense of nihilistic uncertainty…”
“Ultimately, the Gregorian calendar had been rejected by Protestants, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims. The rejection was not because of a scientific claim but because of opposition to its origin.”
“Yes, China could do better in terms of public hygiene. But, moral panic over the foods the Chinese eat is more about cultural prejudices than anything else.”
“Just as Martin Luther King deserves praise for the ‘content of their character’ quote—Castro also deserves credit for his colorblind approach to race.”
“…for all of those who continue to maintain that Jordan Peterson is problematic because of something one of his followers somewhere did, keep in mind that—above all else—Jordan Peterson is a proponent of individuals taking responsibility for their own lives.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think it simply comes down to the location of a portrait. In recent years, social justice ideology has infiltrated many of our institutions, especially the universities and, particularly, in the humanities.”
“This explains the turn to nostalgic and resentment-driven politics to seek to elevate authority figures who will not only halt the flow of time but turn back the clock.”
“While he rails against the Democratic establishment as corrupt, the highest levels of his campaign are made up of Democratic Party insiders and staffers with controversial pasts.”
“Not only ought Gabriel Andrade resist implying there are parallels to be found by Peterson and Hitler, but he also should keep in mind how many lives have been positively changed thanks to his ideas.”
“…we have a new entry in the contest for the most craven wielding of social justice lingo in Canadian political history: Andrew Scheer exhorting the individuals aiding indigenous rail blockades to, ‘check their privilege.’”
“I will begin with the pros of Murray’s book before outlining my disagreements. First, it is well-written and well-organized. His prose crackles with wit and salt, with pointed examples often blending seamlessly with political commentary.”
“The latest of these Twitter controversies that I think warrants being addressed started with Professor Richard Dawkins expressing his opinion on the very delicate topic of eugenics.”
“I’m not a disciple of Dr. Peterson’s. But he has inspired and helped to heal me with his words, and I admire him most for the example that he’s set with his own life: the courage to stand up, with shoulders back and face the darkness.”
“In the current Canadian context, I think the protestors are justified in blocking railway tracks and highways to make their point.”
“He must not antagonize millionaires, but, rather, he must acknowledge that voluntarily giving away wealth is hard to do even while you know that inequality is a problem; and precisely for that reason, we need taxes.”
Jim Proser’s new biography on Jordan Peterson portrays him as a Christlike figure plagued by personal demons. Yet the real devil here is in the details.
“Looking at the highest income Americans by ethnicity, we likewise find a hodgepodge of people of many colors, with peoples largely from East and South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East at the top.”
“Veterans of the entertainment industry like Steve Bannon and the reality television star Donald Trump instinctively understood how to cater to the resentment of those who felt left behind by neoliberalism but were unwilling or unaware of left-wing alternatives.”
“Michael Heseltine was a minister under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was heavily involved in urban regeneration (i.e. had direct contact with the economics of infrastructure and land).”
“Orthodox Conservatism believes that the culture we have is held in trust—and that it is particular to us and our shared history; it is distinctive, not exclusive and is open to those who wish to join.”
“This is an art which no longer presumes to speak to or for the general public. Such an art “assails all previous art” and even “ridicules art itself.”
“After all, the disagreement between the authors of The Times piece and the author of the Jacobin piece is only even made possible by the fact that the Finnish system does not easily conform to either model.”
“I compare Peterson with Ayn Rand because—as I read this book—her name constantly came to my mind (she is mentioned only once in the book).”
“This ability to deliver scientific progress amid a sea of errors is more common in the history of science than one might expect.”
“Reading Pericles’ Funeral Oration as a standalone speech—independent of the whole work to which it belongs—makes us prone to falling for the seduction of tyranny which Thucydides so subtly investigates and rebukes in his work.”
“We have sold genuine socialism to a hitherto unimagined portion of the electorate: the young, the idealistic, and the middle class. We now need to sell it to the people it was designed for.”
“Viewpoint diversity, when it treads on certain progressive articles of faith, is scorned, and the ideas considered within the bounds of respectable discourse on contentious issues is increasingly narrow.”
“By allowing this ball and chain of victimhood to stay attached to us (and having this mentality that everyone and everything is racist), we are doing ourselves and our ancestors no favors.”
“With the benefit of hindsight, we know that many lives could have been spared in bloody revolutions, if only these reformers were taken more seriously.”
“What makes Hochman’s essay far more interesting than the usual screed against academics and critical theory is his effort to locate the cause in the history of Western rationalism and ultimately nihilism.”
“Howard Schultz famously state that unions ‘have a role to play’ but are ‘not the answer.’ But, are they not? Thankfully, there is an empirical answer to this question.”
“In fact, I can think of three ideas that are so deep, so potentially useful, and so paradigm-shifting that widespread acceptance of even one of them would transform civilization for the better.”
And why is Iowa so important in presidential contests?
“It is hard for even those of us who disagree profoundly with Peterson’s diagnoses of society to fail to empathize with his common struggle to get through being human.”
“As a result, liberal arts education has been dragged down into the world that it previously resisted, subjugating honest intellectual inquiry to cheap ideological attachments and the profanities of political activity.”
“With the benefit of distance—writing from the other side of the Atlantic—Williams came to understand how poisonous the concept of race is in the United States.”
“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.”
“Some in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been manipulative enough to claim that activists protesting against settlements in the West Bank were akin to Nazi architects of genocide.”
“I’ve read Peterson’s Twelves Rules for Life, and it has some points that I agree with. But I don’t think he goes far enough.”
“As just another political theology—albeit an especially vulgar one—liberalism would, paradoxically, be put into contexts where it abandoned a commitment to rights for the sake of protecting itself.”
“What should concern us now, however, is an emergent threat: the risk of a ‘tyranny of the minority,’ powered further by artificial intelligence (AI).”
“Peterson is neither sacrosanct nor untouchable. He would agree with that statement himself.”
“I would also add that it is best to avoid the tendency toward what I would call know-betterism, where we take the role of a parental figure trying to guide our political opponents to the light.”
“While bettering the criminal justice system is always laudable, measures that benefit criminal gangs run afoul of every principle for which our government stands.”
“Those known as ‘the rabble,’ whom Zarathustra describes as fit only to be slaves, ultimately dwell within every human soul. It is that lowly thing in each of us which must be pitilessly overcome.”
“However, now—after seeing how he has been treated by Democrats since he was elected—he will have my vote in 2020.”
“So while I think it is important that the impeachment trial proceed, it is far more key for progressives to vest in political and social movements that target the underlying problems.”
“If the legal pro-lifer really wants to reduce the number of abortions, he or she has no choice but to argue for why abortion is wrong, why a culture in which abortion is frowned upon is superior…”
“But basing a campaign strategy on acceptable headline economic numbers while some parts of the nation are already in a recession is nothing short of tone deaf.”
“Peterson should also reconsider his antipathy towards Marx because—perhaps surprisingly—if properly read, Marx would come across more as Peterson’s ally, rather than the origin of everything that is wrong with modernity.”
“For the many activists and intellectuals on the Right, who identify with the ambiguously defined “Western civilization,” a nostalgic and selective association with Western civilization’s philosophical grandeur can be extremely appealing.”
“And that is why I will miss Roger Scruton, enemy of my beliefs that he was.”
“…it can be argued that the challenges emanating from this sequence of events have the potential to be turned into golden opportunities to clip the Islamic regime’s wings in the Middle East and beyond.”
“American cultural imperialism is not just about McDonald’s or Disney; America also exports identity politics.”
“…because heedless empathy for the worst among us is currently leading us on the downward-sloping path to mediocrity and beyond.”
“Again, there seems to be no ideological bias against the concept of rights; views on the subject come from various distinct standpoints.”
“Despite this, Thomas has also long acknowledged the history of racial discrimination in the United States and has never accepted the popular conservative trope that the impact of racism is merely a historical issue in the present day.“
“Despite the majority of voters aged 18-39 resisting the smear campaigns and voting for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, Britain’s aging population overwhelmed the voice of its youth to take the landslide victory.”
“Nevertheless, The Rise of Jordan Peterson comes to me as a relief. Prior to Peterson, the position of the hip professor loved by college students (with all sorts of memes and merchandises using his image), was occupied by Slavoj Žižek.”
“In the event that one is not overly familiar with the past forty years of Iranian history, I will explain what I mean; Iran—over the past four decades—has perfected a playbook of deceit that is so effective that nearly anyone has the potential of falling for it.”
“As a fellow person with autism, I hope to make clear why educational support—and going to school—is so essential to the lives of people with autism.”
“One may criticize U.S. imperialism, yet, at the same time, it must be acknowledged that Iran is becoming an increasingly toxic influence in Latin America.”
“Such specious reasoning is so problematic that it may well produce more of the existential instability Ahmari is keen to reject, rather than placate it.”
“But, as I found myself stumbling in my response to my sister, a more elemental question arose: Can we read Moby Dick?”
“What is particularly insidious here is that not only is the victim a child, but, on top of that, it is a special needs child.”
“The ‘Greta phenomenon’ tells us far more about our cultural approach to childhood than about global warming.”
“I must admit that as for many others, the last ten years were neither a singular triumph nor an unmitigated disaster. There were joys and sadnesses, the melody of life soaring high and crashing low. No one finds heaven on earth.”
As is tradition at Merion West, here are the editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West interviews of 2019.
As is tradition at Merion West, here are the editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West articles of 2019.
“…if one truly believes that the better argument can and should win the day, more formidable ammunition will be needed on the part of the Intellectual Dark Web.”
“From its very beginnings, Christianity has been fond of buddy tales, i.e. stories in which two great defenders of the faith become close friends.”
“I would say the social aspects of making the film were really difficult for me because a lot of my network and friends and social circle is progressive, and, obviously, progressives are not a fan of [Peterson’s].”
“If historical debunking is waging a ‘War on Christmas,’ then we must fire our artillery because, indeed, the story of Christmas has no historical basis whatsoever.”
“The concept is called ‘reverse inference.’ It’s both neuroscience’s greatest ambition, and the origin of its most frustratingly breathless overstatements.”
“At present, each identity sees the other as its enemy and justifies its own excesses with the excesses of the other, but living in a diverse multi-ethnic democracy means tolerating a certain degree of difference.”
“…what I’ve noticed with Jordan is that his interactions with this polarization of the Left and the Right—it’s actually kind of hardened him. It’s made him a little bit more radical. It’s made him a little bit more hard-skinned.”
“In that manner, intelligence may have a genetic base, but, still, differences in intelligence observed among different groups may be environmental in origin.”
“As Matthew Goodwin has repeatedly written, it is easier for the Conservatives to move slightly left on economic issues than it is for Labour to move right on cultural issues.”
“In this spirit I would like to thank all the many individuals who have written or commented on my writing the last year, especially those who have offered sincere and interesting criticisms that have helped me develop my understanding of the world.”
“While both of Ngo’s claims are technically true, the proper context paints a widely different picture.”
“If Peterson manages to dispense good advice in spite of muddled philosophical and political reasoning, this attests to his psychological acuity. But it is does not magically redeem his intellectual output.”
“How could a movement predicated on free expression and identity-blind principles come to be associated with the Right and described as reactionary by smart progressive critics like Vox’s Ezra Klein?”
“Rapid innovations in communications technology and new media have made it so that any individual can access more knowledge at their fingertips than prior generations could have by traveling to the world’s most esteemed centers of learning.”
“Yeah, there’s not a lot of lying in Jordan. That’s part of what I was trying to say with the fact that he doesn’t do small talk. If he wants to talk to you, he’ll talk to you. And sometimes the first thing he’ll ask you is something kind of serious.”
“Running a profitable enterprise is not the same thing as Smaug guarding a pile of gold.”
“But again, this aside, Jordan Peterson’s lessons of personal responsibility and taking charge of one’s life are actually helping people, which brings me to my friend, Fred.”
“As a student pointed out during a lecture on this subject, this Hayekian market is probably closer to the Open Source movement in software development than to what is commonly invoked with the words ‘free market.’”
“Hawley talks again and again about the importance of community and criticizes those on both sides of the political aisle who pay fealty to an individualism that puts the self-creating individual at the summit of what constitutes the good.“
“To deny the billionaires of today the aspiration to earn as much as they do (let alone the right), we deny the possibility for everyone else to earn it tomorrow.”
“Apparently, there is a significant difference between a woman who decides to show her breasts in a glittery outfit or a see-through dress—and someone who does it in the name of a social cause.”
“Miller is a bit naïve here. He does not seem to notice that, as a general rule, polyamory eventually becomes polygyny.”
“What it means is that when we begin to coordinate our lives according to an ideological worldview, it begins to generate a social world that can look a lot like the image presented by the ideology.”
“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.”
“Aeschylus’ tragedy represents the most elemental aspects of our human condition: all human flourishing comes with a cost.”
“American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind has determined six fundamental human values: fairness, liberty, hierarchy, care, loyalty, and sanctity. But utilitarian thinkers have reduced people’s values to just care and equality.”
“John Rawls, surely the most relevant philosopher of justice in the 20th Century, was aware of this problem and notoriously asked if the family should be abolished, with no clear answers.”
“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.”
“Finally, even a thinker as cynical and sharp as Michel Foucault invoked the language of rights to discuss the ‘right to intervene’ to liberate suffering individuals from the imposition of tyrannical sovereignty.”
“The patterns of behavior that characterize a broad part of the autistic spectrum are indirectly viewed as a hindrance towards the 21st-century diversity and inclusion goals.”
“Peterson consistently invokes the Schopenhauerian-Nietzschean trope that the most important thing is to strengthen the self against the suffering of the world. The stronger one becomes, the greater and more worthy of respect and emulation by those around him.”
“Old leftists fully wish to hold Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Salvini and co., to account for their post-truthism. Meanwhile the younger leftist is likely to be ‘post-truth’ themselves.”
“And, at the regional level, Mexico should pursue stronger cooperation with the United States regarding control of arm trafficking, such as Operation ‘Frozen,’ which attempts ‘to freeze the illegal movement of guns between the two countries.’”
“Diverse as they may be, these four authors are united by a desire to confront Peterson on his own terms—that is, to eschew tawdry criticism and ad hominem attacks and instead to get to the nucleus of his thought.“
“A State that hopes to mingle in the bedroom is one step closer to totalitarianism, and that is why sex redistribution is a horrifying prospect. But, while not enforcing it, the State, and most importantly, leaders of civil society (most crucially, intellectuals), should send the message that monoga
“But the more interesting argument Nietzsche puts forward is that resentment was at the base of many of the West’s egalitarian philosophies.”
“Robinson’s article is both interesting and useful because it summarizes neatly and cogently almost every argument that those on the Left might make against Shapiro. However, it also begins to lay out a broad notion of why critiques of Shapiro usually fail.”
“At the time when postcolonialist scholars were saying these silly things (starting in the latter half of the 20th Century), some philosophers of science were also developing some strange ideas.”
“Had Obama intervened strongly enough in 2013, Syria could have been his Bosnia, a long-running humanitarian disaster that a U.S. president halted after initially dragging his feet.”
“In this short essay, I will argue that there were three factors, which contributed to the emergence of post-modern culture.”
“This past Mother’s Day, in a survey of over 3,000 mothers who had tattoos, 51% of them said if they had to choose between removing a bad tattoo and receiving a new piece of jewelry (of equal value) as a gift, they would choose tattoo removal.”
“And Pope Francis himself is wrong for, once again, being a populist and refusing to call a spade a spade; he wants support from the Left and thus defends Pachamama, but he also wants support from the Right and thus condemns idolatry.”
“By contrast, Kirk insists that progressives are the real fools in thinking that unbridled reason alone can provide us with an adequate sense of meaning in the world.”
“The dividing line in the culture war is not individualism vs. collectivism but, rather, peace vs. aggression. What are you willing to do to peaceful people, if they group in ways that you dislike?”
“Compared to the other classical political philosophers, Augustine stands apart from not articulating a preferred political order or what the ideal order would be. And that is the point.”
“Despite the absurd views of evangelical pastors, college diversity officers, and Latin American leftist nationalists, Halloween is unstoppable, and this is for the good of humanity.”
“But when addressing a problem of justice, popularity is neither the sole nor the primary factor for adjudication.”
“In fact, many of the generals who participated in the 1936 rebellion used the 1934 rebellion as an excuse: if the Left was not willing to give recognition to a legitimately constituted government, then now the Right was not under the obligation to do so, either.”
“[W]hile you see the products and services provided for you by the government, you are forever blind to the benefits that would have been provided by those same resources had the government not confiscated them…”
“…nor could [Houellebecq] have emerged from the hundreds of wallet-siphoning creative writing MFA programs, whose grasp on the American literary world has sanitized literature to an unreadable degree.”
“Through rallying anti-war movements and opposing any Western intervention (including humanitarian missions), many Western socialist intellectuals have, in fact, turned themselves into foot soldiers for authoritarian and undemocratic regimes.”
“We should be aspiring to establish a far more egalitarian society in accordance with principles of fairness. But this cannot come at the expense of respecting alternative doctrines which have a right to political expression.”
“Mill is pointing to a driver, perhaps the chief driver of inequality in our economic system. The ‘capital’ that young people today are unable to accumulate is, in fact, land (i.e. location) value.”
“The United States has no other option but to, as Niall Ferguson phrases it, cease to be an empire-in-denial, and come to terms with the fact that, for now, the world needs a global policeman, and the United States is the one country that can play that role.”
“In a media environment where heady intellectuals spray the air with heady jargon, it is a joy just to have people who keep the spirit of human aspiration alive through art and creative representation.”
“Matt McManus analyzes conspiracy mongering in the United States by focusing on President Donald Trump and Dinesh D’Souza (a right-wing nut), but he neglects to mention Oliver Stone or Louis Farrakhan, conspiracy theorists who sing to the tune of the Left.”
“McManus draws a historical trajectory that sees conservatives responding to the challenges of socialism, communism, and fascism by hardening Burke’s pragmatic project into an ideology: what we now call neoliberalism.”
“More importantly to Cajal, however, is that theorists care more about telling a good story than giving it to us straight. When the current state of knowledge is disorganized and uninteresting, according to Cajal, that’s exactly what we should be saying.”
“It does not take an expert logician to deduce that if climate catastrophe were really upon us, we would also observe people giving extreme warnings, and it could even be the case that they still would not support, for example, nuclear power.”
“Although the line seems quite clear as to when right-wing ideas have gone too far, the same clarity just isn’t there for when left-wing ideas go bad.”
“While this may be a fair criticism of socialist intellectuals, it isn’t obvious to me that all socialists were as myopically economistic as Honneth suggests.”
“Unfortunately, in so blithely dismissing individualism, DiAngelo hinges her theory so heavily on collective, rather than individual, identity and experience that it dies on the sword of a logical fallacy.”
“That they are tragedies also reveals Shakespeare’s pessimistic outlook on politics. Politics is a tragic necessity. But it comes with a cost. Namely, the forsaking of love.”
Vladimir Putin may be President of the Russian Federation, but, for all the talk about the various events since he came to power, perhaps the most significant change to have taken place under Putin’s tenure is the elevation in power of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“That was one of the things the campaign was good at: trying to get as much controversy as possible by provoking conflicts. It’s not an honorable way to go through campaigning, but it worked. Better than you could say for Tim Ryan.”
“In his book, Žižek analyzes why Kant and his progeny have been struggling philosophically in recent years, while offering a partial defense of their views.”
“As Jim Geraghty writes, rather than importing our values, China is exporting its repression into our societies on the back of mass industrial theft and espionage.”
“Given the endless current debates on immigration-related topics, the ‘$1 Per Day Issue’ issue has, at times, arguably been lost amid other questions that are frequently raised about our current immigration policies.”
“Two hundred years later, Venezuelans speak of natives as a national asset—and sometimes even a touristic attraction—that enhances their national pride, very much like oil fields, beauty queens, Miguel Cabrera, or Angel Falls.”
“Žižek observes that while many thought this kind of politician was an anachronistic oddity in mid-2000’s neoliberal societies, Berlusconi may actually have been an archetype of the future.”
“Give Them An Argument, at times, reads like an instruction pamphlet on how to use logic to defeat our political opponents, a social democratic version of Sun Tzu’s Art Of War, and, in that sense, Burgis might have more in common with his overzealous conservative opponents that he might realize.”
“McManus…is much closer to the analytic tradition represented by authors such as John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum. Yet, his work is much richer thanks to his engagement with Marxist class analysis and post-structuralist philosophy…”
“It seems, unfortunately, today that there are far too few who are willing to defend Columbia University’s heritage, which so many now take for granted. “
“There have been several assaults on this conceit before in the Western world; the philosopher Slavoj Žižek directs our attention to three in particular.”
“The resistance displayed towards these important thinkers is most regrettable, and for all the Complacent Men quick to criticize them, doing so makes you no closer to achieving your ever so desired—and elusive—’happiness.’”
“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.”
“It is not overwhelmingly different than when I, as a gay man, criticize the gay community for taking things too far by, for instance, bringing both borderline and actual nudity to public Pride Parades, especially in places where children are often present.”
“In 2016, fleeing Venezuela’s socialism, I took a teaching job in Majuro, the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.”
“Lendvai believes that we should never underestimate the role that ‘personalities’ play in politics.”
“First of all, I think we should make [the census] a fun process, where people, families engage in it [together], particularly in hard to count districts and communities.”
“The paradox of believing in conspiracy theories is that—despite the distrust and paranoia reflected in them—adherents often deeply desire a sense of order in the world.“
“While material prosperity should be a priority, it shouldn’t be the only priority. Simply possessing the latest consumer goods won’t provide a meaningful life that comes from a sense of dignity, purpose and responsibility rooted in community.”
“[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.”
“Sadly, Snowden suffered from a syndrome that is too typical among activists in the West: in their zeal for criticism of their own country or civilization, they end up favoring other countries or civilizations that are far worse.”
“The totalitarian movements offered the promise of not just belonging, but total belonging. The individual would be swallowed into the movement, becoming a single homogenous mass with one’s fellows.”
“For Ortega y Gasset, the elite has nothing to do with class or any other kind sociocultural factors. The elite are simply those who make great demands of themselves.”
“There are white gangs, Asian gangs, black gangs, Hispanic gangs, and gangs of all nationalities. To focus only on illegal immigrant gang members, as many conservatives do, is to take the easy way out.”
“In the case of our current crisis of meaning, it was only in the 19th century that sensitive figures truly began to grasp the profound changes which had transformed societies.”
“Comedy is one of the world’s oldest arts because it appeals to our common, imperfect humanity: we all have flaws, and the best thing we can do about such a tragedy is to laugh about it.”
“Our justice system—and accompanying moral philosophies—wouldn’t dream of punishing people for the crimes of others, so why should our public policy?”
“The outcome of Andrew Yang’s UBI would be higher rents and, most likely, a property bubble.”
“Unfortunately, the Liberal party in power turned out to be as much a political creature as ever.”
“Since women are banned from stadiums in Iran, a girl there was arrested for dressing as a boy in order to attend a soccer match. While awaiting trial, she incinerated herself to death.”
“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.”
“So confident were many in the apparent neutrality and sensibility of the third way approach that the difference between Conservatives and Labor, much like the Republicans and the Democrats, started to look merely cosmetic.”
“Plato’s Republic is not, primarily, asking the question ‘what is justice?’ as much as it is asking what kind of city do we live in? Before we can address any political issue we must first know whether we are living under a regime of tyranny or liberty.”
“In many ways, it was far better to see Christendom shrunk down to a few genuine believers than to see it ballooned and enforced into a parody of itself”
“For these reasons, I think it is not unreasonable to identify this nature-nurture or nature-history spectrum as the basic guiding principle behind the left-right spectrum.”
“I wanted to take this opportunity to consider some of the ways philosophy has been used and misused in contemporary political debates to justify a broad range of positions.”
In the words of German poet Henrich Heine: “There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.”
“For that reason, I hold that Wallerstein’s ideas are very questionable, but his work is still worthy of consideration.”
“The state must respect the freedom and autonomy of those fleeing violence by accepting them within its boundaries and offering them hospitality, which makes for a precursor to modern refugee law.”
“As with the opposition to GMOs and nuclear power, Morales’ free pass sadly proves that most environmentalist groups are not really about the environment. They are more about identity politics and, more importantly, about the hipness of being feel-good activists.”
“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.”
“Even those who agree that rights exist struggle to locate where they come from, what counts as a genuine right, and how to realize them.”
“Instead of the gods being our deliverance, the family is the instrument of salvation and the bulwark against tyranny in his surviving plays.”
“But, fortunately, there is an antidote to Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist wave and its underlying mindsets: it is the hard work and dedication that Jordan Peterson so importantly describes.”
“As a young black man from Southern California watching the systemic problems ailing my community, I believe that repairing our community must come from within, and the impetus is upon us to repair our culture before it’s too late.”
“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.”
“Now, pink glitter seems to be the spark of a new revolution in Mexico against gender violence.”
“But this just shows that Žižek is right in that there is no such thing as seeing the world as it really is. There is always something that mediates perception.”
“Many critics point out that this one dimensional approach to education helps produce citizens who are selfish, disinterested in politics, and unprepared for dealing with moral complexities, which are not reducible to cost-benefit analysis.”
“Euripides’ gods are the gods of Hesiod given a new, cunning, and manipulative makeover. Furthermore, they are depicted as clear threats to the human social order.“
“Today, it is science fiction that often carried the torch of the utopian aspiration.”
“But Aeschylus’ cosmos goes beyond Homer’s in presenting Reason, Persuasion, as an integral aspect of the cosmos that was otherwise absent in Homer.”
“The typical socialist often had very little concrete experience with the actual conditions facing those they purported to care about. They were often middle class, well educated, and highly resentful of the rich.”
“The most committed liberal would believe that perfection is unattainable, while the socialist would contend that it is not only possible but necessary.”
“Tolstoy was not naïve in thinking that social and political reform would end all forms of evil in human life. Like Dostoevsky, he was very well aware that much wickedness flowed from the pride and vanity of men like Napoleon or the Russian tsars.”
“The Romanticism of the 19th century was a direct response to not only the materialist underpinnings of the Enlightenment but also the increasingly monetary-centric worldview that subsumed all human relations.”
“The Left cannot get enough of sociological explanations for all sorts of violence. It is never about individual responsibility; it is always about social structures.”
“When he went to the VA to get help, they told him that their next mental health appointment was in 3 months—even though he was thinking of committing suicide that very night. That’s unacceptable.”
“Modern society has always had a secret love affair with the criminal.”
“Although many of us may still be encouraged at family dinner tables to pursue stable and lucrative careers in high-paying industries, such as finance, consulting, and medicine, perhaps the curriculum of a general education can help some find their true interests.”
“To DeSimone and his acolytes, two cold-blooded murderers were freed. To our system of justice, two persons, their innocence always in question, were unfairly tried and convicted.”
“Perhaps Williamson’s own ability to overcome those obstacles has led him to underestimate how formidable a challenge they can pose, a clear example of upward mobility hardening the hearts of the precious few it bestows itself upon.”
“With this standard, if the private diaries or WhatsApp conversations of people were opened, prisons the world over would be swamped with inmates, and companies would fire half of its staff on a daily basis.”
“The basic thought is that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
“Almost one hundred years after his death, Villa’s image enjoys the allure of a romantic Robin Hood in Latin American imagination.”
“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.”
“That’s where I think it’s a real difference, that you actually have somebody running that can actually win a Republican district nearly 2 to 1 without spending a dime on a campaign.”
“Much to my dismay, conservative media journalists have conflated political stances against illegal immigration with criminal gang activity.”
“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.”
“If history is any guide, subsidies (not just in sports, but in all spheres of economic life) do not usually work.”
“People do not truly want an end to suffering in all cases…They need challenges in order to feel the thrill of victory, guilt over their actions to have a chance at redemption, and the possibility of rejection and hatred to feel any deep form of love.”
“Given Pinder’s distaste for academia, I don’t imagine he would be fond of this kind of Platonic utopia.”
“These are the facts and historical context that any fair-minded and rational critic should consider before lambasting the majority of Brits who chose to forgo membership in the European Union.”
“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms are much more like churches or clubs than they are like a public plaza, regardless of their size.”
“So, all those people that tweet #notmyariel are probably arguing that if Black Panther necessarily has to be black, Ariel necessarily has to be white.”
“Hence, NATO should devise a strategy to address President Trump’s visions about the alliance in order to maintain (as much as possible) its stability.”
“Edmund Burke’s arguments against the French Revolutionaries resonate because he understood the revolutionaries’ position quite well.”
“While BTB is the most visible approach to signal support for reintegration, it is perhaps not the most effective way to bring about substantial criminal justice reform and truly help ex-felons build a new life.”
“If individuals are able to become authors of their lives in a substantive way, we can say they have lived a dignified life.”
“Famously, Nietzsche despised Paul for distorting Jesus’ original message and bringing forth an obsession with sin. The result, in Nietzsche’s view, is Christianity’s unhealthy emphasis on guilt and renunciation.”
“In a few hundred pages of personal anecdotes, lessons from history, and psychological expertise, Jordan Peterson offers strategies for the individual to rise and face life’s hardships, and to find meaning in the fight for personal betterment.”
“If capitalism doesn’t work for us all, it doesn’t work at all.”
“The framing of these arguments, I believe, is largely misguided. Right and Left are, after all, moral and political positions and not scientific ones.”
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, because you don’t understand, I’m not your typical Democrat.”
“They slid a note, children with a note under the door and said, ‘How can we help you?’”
“Each day, I read an almost endless array of pro-socialist and anti-capitalist articles in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and web sites. Then I ask myself: ‘How could so many bright, well-informed authors be so apparently unaware of the actual realities concerning the history of socialism?’”
“Those who deal in political aesthetics have long noted that Burke’s aesthetics is the core ground of his outlook.”
“Importantly, he notes that it was initially the Conservative party that embraced European integration and the Labour Party which vehemently opposed it.”
“Insomuch as the historical figure of Bolívar still has considerable influence in contemporary Latin American politics, some demythologizing and criticism is in order.”
“A functioning federal gang prosecution law patterned after Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act would provide a direct legal outlet for FBI’s ‘increased focus’ on gangs.”
“Any civilization or culture is itself a vast dynamic interpretation or, we could even say, a vast dynamic work of art.”
“Perhaps it would be a great Christmas present for the depressed Leftist in one’s life?”
“It makes sense to frame the issue as being about free speech, however, because it is likely seen as a much more worthwhile cause.”
“Private companies like Facebook and Twitter are the focal points of more political debate now than any physical space controlled by the government.”
“Pulling from history, economic data, and even psychology, Dr. Cowen explains why the anti-business sentiment is mistaken, how it originated, and what we should do about it.”
“These transformations in understandings of sacrifice culminate in what today we think of as our ‘liberation’ from centuries of naïveté and superstition.”
“This may sound as if Mexico were evil and did not want to help others, but this is not the case. If we become a safe third country, we would be biting off more than we can chew by condemning migrants to hellish conditions—mainly due to organized crime and lack of resources—and becoming the U.S. bac
“His purpose seems to be diverting attention from these real concerns, by projecting a revolutionary image of a kind Pope who preaches a loving God, far removed from the deity who destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with sulphur.”
“I have no differences when people produce outcomes.”
“Democratic legitimacy should not be a partisan issue; we, as Canadians, should all be taking this opportunity to discern how to make the country a more inclusive and participatory place.”
“The larger issues with H.B. 481, such as the constitutionality of the timeframe for an abortion, the extent to which the law imposes an undue burden on a mother, or the attribution of personhood to an unborn fetus, have regrettably been conflated with false claims about mothers receiving abortions
“There’s nothing wrong with working for minimum wage, just as there’s nothing wrong with being unable to touch your toes— but if you wish to make more money, you must gain valuable skills, experience, and perhaps start stretching.”
“What constitutes a sufficiently high level of education and intelligence to participate in politics is unclear, and advocates of these elitist positions are suspiciously prone to announcing the cut-off point lies with individuals roughly as capable and qualified as themselves.”
“But like his philosophical cousins before him, Godzilla cannot exist because the ideas upon which he is based are incorrect. He cannot exist because pessimism is false.”
“Maduro claims communication with Chávez via birds, but let us recall that George W. Bush once said that God told him to invade Iraq.”
“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.”
“While it may seem strange to some to see people on the Right express skepticism—and even disdain—for the free market, it is increasingly common.”
“Doing that mental exercise of seeing if you could rephrase somebody else’s argument in your own words—that alone might be one of the single most useful things that you can do to reason better and to respond to people’s arguments better.”
“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.”
“TechCrunch uses the word ‘hate’ so many times—and so without any obvious meaning, that it strikes me as likely a form of attempted Pavlovian conditioning.”
“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.”
“It is not hard to infer that Locke may have been concerned that universal suffrage would result in concerted efforts to establish a more egalitarian society.”
“Nobody can say with confidence exactly what a court will do. What is visible from our analysis is that it is likely not a slam dunk either way.”
“Yet, Christianity is a more complicated religion, because in its traditions, fact and fiction intermingle, and it is not always easy to determine which is which.”
“Once one actually delves into the positions put forward by many of members of the Intellectual Dark Web, it becomes clear they are just as fallible as their intellectual opponents.”
“If it is possible to have symbols and narratives that bind an imagined community of 300 million people or of one billion, it should be equally possible to imagine a community of seven billion and to construct a coherent narrative around it and create appropriate symbolisms.”
“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.”
“Every January, toddlers hold signs with messages that they cannot possibly understand. But children also hold signs they might passively understand, and teenagers hold signs they probably understand, if only imperfectly.”
“Georgism dissolves socialism; it is pro-worker and pro-capital at the same time. This is impossible for the socialist who believes to his core that labor can only win if capital loses.”
“Postcolonial and post-modern scholarship criticize science as a Western construct with no real legitimate claim to truth or objectivity, thus paving the way for Hindu nationalists to come up with their wild theories.”
“So Buttegieg, in what that reveals of him, is that he’s a classic puppet of the military industrial complex.”
“While I do not always agree with Harvey’s appraisals of Marx’s arguments, there is no better secondary source to learn what that argument happens to be.”
“This exposes a basic problem of the conservative idealization of the Western tradition; it relies on an artificial, if not arbitrary construction that only makes sense in retrospect.”
“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.”
“That ‘conservatives’ today celebrate the book speaks volumes of the leftward drift of conservatism and the confused state of existence conservatism is in.”
Do some classical liberals and libertarians have more in common ideologically with the alt-right than they’d like to believe?
“It is, for the most part, a taboo, presumably because of how morally outrageous it seems—and because no sensible person wants to go down as proposing assassinations.”
“Various Democratic District Attorneys in Georgia have recreated what the civil rights laws defeated, choosing political expedience over personhood.”
“We need a philosophy of problem-solving, not problem-avoidance. And yes, while stalling techniques are useful, their primary function is to give us more time to create active solutions, not avoid them all together.”
“Nietzsche has little unqualified good to say about individual modern philosophers—save one: Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Is “The Mirror Test” a new tool by which to evaluate philosophies?
“Shapiro’s book is a well-written and, at times, moving defense of Western Civilization.”
“Maistre is a fascinating thinker not so much due to the quality of his arguments themselves but instead what they represent and anticipate.”
“If we are willing to be mildly skeptical of a historian who wrote about an emperor removed by one century, then we should also be skeptical of psychiatrists who are too eager to diagnose Mr. Trump with some mental disorder.”
An investigation of how Jordan Peterson engages with the idea of “equality.”
“While the mass man is the product of his history, the mass man recognizes no necessary connection or debt to his past. He is ‘the spoiled child of human history’ with a, ‘radical ingratitude to all that has made possible the ease of his existence.’”
“Notice how Maistre does not consider the actions of the people valid because they committed a crime against the nation by undermining its sovereign.”
“Because we tend only to see the final product of an intellectual endeavor, it is easy to forget that even titans such as Archimedes cannot know the final answer before they get their hands dirty with the problem at hand.”
“This is not about defending Ronald Sullivan or any one individual; it is about affirming the right for lawyers to defend their clients without facing condemnation in their personal and professional lives.”
“Many features of this region have stood out—but few more prominently than the generosity of its people. They are devoted to their churches; they volunteer their time; they give to charity; they start charities; they adopt children.”
“I know several Latin American brothers and sisters who have fled their country. Some were born in the era of Chavismo and have not known anything new, until now.”
“We turned to technology as a substitute for our inability to deal with the persistent riddles of existence and the lack of meaning in our life in a post-God era.”
“A republic that moves too close to an oligarchy would require democratization.”
“Simply invoking ‘realism’ or ‘common sense’ doesn’t add up to anything resembling an argument.”
“To blame American imperialism, as some do, is to dismiss Maduro’s responsibility and to close our eyes to another socialist catastrophe.”
“Analyzing the relationship is important because, as we all know, oftentimes law is not a medium for justice. Rather it is one that operates to repress, marginalize, and even tyrannize under the right circumstances.”
“In the end, whether it is rich businesspeople donating their money for the reconstruction of a national monument or ‘average Joe’s’ trying to help others in need, foreign aid is, and always will be, flawed.”
“It’s time to rethink our trade relationship with China, and so far, President Trump has taken the appropriate measures to set it right.”
“To dismiss topics that are being discussed by college students is a terrible political strategy. The left has professionalized gathering new supporters with questionable narratives—and classical liberals remain inert. We need to change that.”
“How alien this experience of total control is to our everyday existence in the chaotic, inexplicable universe. For just this reason, we fashion ideologies to live out our fantasies of control.”
“In the matter of politics, our society has become a consumer of emotions, constructed values, and ambiguous promises.”
“The risk in our increasingly polarized and tribally divided times is that these societies —ours among them—are thrashing around in a sea of hopeless liquid modernity and risk coming apart in a storm of violence.”
“But there are times in every polemicist’s career when he must take a genuine stab at intellectual respectability, put away sloganeering and manic hyperbole and see not through the dark lens of partisanship, but grasp the complex world as it truly is.”
“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.”
“Peterson’s importance is his powerful and influential insistence that religion is not arbitrary or malevolent—that in every developed form we encounter it, religious stories are archetypal of the human condition in a way nothing else can or ever will be.”
“Despite these contrasts, one of the striking things about the debate was how frequently Zizek and Peterson seemed to agree with one another.”
“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.”
“These factors seem to have a demonstrable impact on our behavior, and yet are morally irrelevant in the sense that they should not matter to what a morally virtuous person would do. What should we make of results like these?”
“Ultimately, it seems to me that the Notre Dame fire may indeed prove that that particular place of worship is not the abode of God.”
“The 1994 tragedy proved that the concept of sovereignty must have limits, and that major powers do have a duty to intervene to alleviate humanitarian crises, such as genocides.”
“The destruction of Notre Dame has shaken our complacent belief in the permanence of things and the ability for our culture to last without care and cultivation. It reveals and reminds us that life is a fragile thing, and even the strongest bastions dedicated to the eternal can still be brought down
“The argument that people should value ideals beyond the pursuit of their self-interest and subjective opinion was an elitist way of looking at things, and De Tocqueville’s Americans would have none of it.”
“[Werner Catel] called for the continuation of the Nazi program of involuntary euthanasia, saying, “…We are not talking about humans here, but rather beings that were merely procreated by humans and that will never themselves become humans endowed with reason or a soul.”
“In the contemporary political landscape, racism seems to be an indefatigable issue. I have noticed that those who advocate anti-racism, ironically, have a tendency to fight fire with fire—that is, racism with racism.”
“It is high time for media sources and critics to alike engage in serious introspection on their seemingly universal reticence—some might say outright resistance—to responsibly report and comment on gangs.”
“I told one of the other senators, ‘You’re a very pleasant, sweet person. But deep down, the public wants a son-of-a-gun. You’ve got to get stuff done.’”
“While Eastern Europeans were celebrating the arrival of democracy in 1989, Cuba went through one of its darkest episodes.”
“The ‘Spain Affair’ is not a foreign policy strategy, but a national strategy to achieve López Obrador’s political goals. At 7 am tomorrow, we are convinced a new controversy regarding Mexico’s foreign policy will arise. This is not over yet.”
“Most of all, I just want my constituents back home to know that I’m working for them, and that I’m not thinking about contributions from a big corporation when I’m in a committee hearing and questioning witnesses and when we’re voting on matters that are important to the working families in my dist
“The point of politics can, therefore, never be to try and make individuals act well. Indeed, for Hobbes the very idea that there is any good or evil beyond our subjective desires is vainglorious and foolish.”
“There’s not a single one of us who has not made mistakes in our lives, and we have a number of people who were in jails and prisons that made mistakes that they regret.”
“The problem with America as a maritime power in Asia is that, like the United Kingdom of yesteryear, the United States is not an Asian power.”
“It’s harder to demonize somebody if your kids are playing on the soccer field together, and you’re out there on a weekend afternoon.”
“For some, the possibilities for self-creation and emancipation promised by modernity were exhilarating. For others, it has proven to be a serious social problem.”
“We know a lot of cases of corrupt and fraudulent men, but we are not used to seeing female names associated with this type of behavior. One of the main reasons is because the percentage of women in leadership and influential positions is quite low.”
“Socialists frequently tell us that in their ideal system, private property of the common man is to be respected; only major industries are to be seized…Well, that is exactly what socialism did in Venezuela, and it has not been pretty.”
“There are more men named John running large companies than women.”
“It’s hard to point to me as an anti-gun person. I’ve got a gun safe full of them! Every year, when we have the competition for skeet, trap, and sporting clays, Democrats vs. Republicans, I always walk away with the trophy.”
“On campuses so far, I have been pleasantly surprised that I have been invited to talks that have been well-received and civil.”
“Neoliberal society and post-modern culture emerged together on the promise that they could provide greater economic prosperity and opportunities for self-development than any other social form.”
“I am, first and foremost, a public servant to my district—not a Democrat or anything else.“
“Because the youth of today are primarily taught that the point of life is simply to achieve satisfaction, they are prone to a kind of easy relativism which seeks to not judge between superior or inferior ways of life.”
“In the face of all of this evidence, let’s give Cortez another shot and ask one more question: why does it even matter if she was hypocritical? Aside from her being an elected official that people are supposed to trust, it’s because she made it matter.”
A few recent political speeches worthy of the history books.
Emre Kazim and Matt McManus discuss the differences between the British and American brands of conservatism and how they come to bear on current political debates, including “Brexit.”
“In our lifetimes, many populations in Europe will age and shrink drastically due to their lack of belief in the possibility of transcending death, a belief that undergirds culture.”
“My reputation is, ‘Every conservative’s favorite liberal.’ That’s because I don’t hate people because I disagree with them.”
“People who read us will gain a better perspective overall of the issues that we produce. Why wouldn’t we want to be as influential as possible?“
“With well over one million gang members criminally operating in the United States…Terms like ‘occupation’ come to mind.”
“Lain’s novel Bash Bash Revolution is not just a very funny work of science fiction (though it is). It is also very much a piece of engaged leftism; its irony and satire are never declaratory or moralistic…”
“The nail in a candidate’s political coffin, if not hammered in during their impromptu improv session, can also be found after the fact in what generally ends up being the ‘meatier’ section: the Q&A.”
“Similar to Peterson’s argument that happiness is not the sole purpose of life, Burke claims that the ‘pain’ the sublime instills in us is extremely helpful.”
“Just being a woman in politics has not necessarily meant supporting policies in favor of other women. For example, a deputy in Veracruz proposed establishing a 10pm curfew for women to avoid more femicides in her state.”
“I am a single college student with jobs but no set career. Unlike Newman, I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can say that I did not appreciate her representation of our sex.”
“However, [Peterson’s] general statements about God do, or would, find a home in Catholic and Orthodox theological dogma and tradition.”
“Another problem of Friedman’s analysis is the way that he, like many neoliberals, condemns government intervention, yet is nevertheless willing to take credit for all of the positive gains it has accrued.”
“The ideas of the Right are more powerful precisely because they are more primitive. Fraternity between differing religious, racial, and linguistic communities is of greater abstraction than fraternizing with one’s co-religionist and inter-linguistic community.”
“Around that time, there was the 2008 financial crisis. A lot of people in New York publishing were let go, and my contract with Macmillan seemed to be in jeopardy.”
“As such, quiet gratitude rather than arrogant pride is, I believe, the right attitude to take towards the idea of the nation.”
“What is it, then, that intellectuals should do? In order to answer this question, it is first necessary to return to a claim made earlier, namely that the telling of truth cannot be the responsibility of an intellectual because being an intellectual, in its very definition, is truth-telling.”
“This means conservatives are actually quite willing to engage in radical social change, but only if they feel that it is necessary to counter efforts by the Left to destroy these hierarchies.”
“Like Pelagius, Peterson thinks we can achieve salvation through our own efforts of will, without the grace of God. Like the aforementioned Gnostics, Peterson repeatedly argues that we each have a spark of the divine in us, so can manifest the divine here and now in our damned world of suffering.”
“So claiming that the Nazi’s nationalism and imperialism were exceptional strikes me as untrue. Almost all of the modern nation-states held up as examples made exceptions of Westphalian principles for themselves, often invoking national glory or superiority as an excuse.”
“In the Democratic caucus, we elected more new women than men. Think of that statement!”
“I can tell you that many protesters who advocate for ‘Palestine’ would find themselves not so welcome in its territories. The outspoken feminists at the National Women’s Studies Association who endorse BDS and attack the Jewish state would not be so loud on the streets of Hebron.”
“It may sound trite to say so, but the national state is the worst way of arranging and governing human societies, apart from all the others.”
“Whether one buys into his system, the Left needs more thinkers with Unger’s courage and intellectual ambition.”
“In a sense, the Founding Fathers feared democracy because of the tendency of people to be carried away by their passion and easily led astray by demagogues, and I think that our modern polarization, augmented by social media, could well bring their worst fears to reality.”
No one usually looks to Venezuela for investment advice, but there is one thing the South American country can teach us.
“Strangely enough, for all its notoriety, the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ has few of the characteristics of a unified movement oriented around concrete goals.”
“I think reciprocity is a very important part of a friendship or, in fact, any type of relationship. I think having a balance where both of you are investing equal amounts of time and energy and love and attention into that relationship is really important.”
“Real change has to be made with how standardized testing companies operate, but at its core, the standardized test is an excellent resource for universities and shouldn’t be removed.”
“…Areo is bipartisan; it doesn’t take a side. I personally find that I agree with about 25% of the pieces I put out. The other 75%, I think they’re good, but I’m not convinced by their arguments ultimately.”
“You can’t take politics out of the judicial process because judges are human.”
“Will the First Step Act protect against the release of gang members?”
“Intra-sexual competitive behavior remains a major barrier to women’s full inclusion in the university workplace, and we would be wise to break it down.”
“Like any good satirist, McLeary directs a lot of his vitriol against the powers that be. He condemns the wealthy families and politicos that encouraged the country to give into its worst impulses, and then fled into space when the inevitable decline set in.”
“Changing the meanings of previously understood words is what ideologues do.”
“I had an old chief master sergeant tell me that when you first enter a job, you should keep your mouth shut for three months…So I have a lot to learn.”
“A technologically-advanced species with the capacity to destroy itself had better learn how to work together.”
“When Justice Ginsburg reviewed his case, her concurring opinion warned that the federal false statements statute arms government agents with authority to generate felonies.”
“Communities do not have ‘gang problems.’ America has a gang crisis.”
A look back at our editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West articles of 2018.
A look back at our editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West interviews of 2018.
“Burke’s place in the American conservative pantheon is peculiar if not paradoxical.”
“As has sometimes been noted, one can buy a castle in some parts of Europe for less than a modest condo in San Francisco.”
“Rather than emphasizing abstract duty like Kant—or God, as Kierkegaard did—Nussbaum maintains that we become who we are through the people we interact with and the projects we are capable of pursuing.”
“No one people, nation or culture has a monopoly on the shadows of human nature. Historians influenced by Zinn and the story he tells should try to remember this.”
“There appear then to be two kinds of people: those who presume history has ended and those who do not presume history has ended.”
“And this is the rub of Kant’s political critique of nationalist-type arguments. If the nationalist allows too much deviation from the shared identity of the nation, then his society risks becoming one of liberal individuals.”
“The mere fact that ‘girl’ scooters exist proves that girls tend to have different preferences than boys when making consumer decisions.”
What factors make Iowa in play for both Republicans and Democrats?
“We needn’t regard internationalism as a failed or misguided project, which the 20th century demonstrated was destined for the ash heap of history. Rather we should regard it as our first, clumsy, and tentative steps towards establishing a more complete global union.”
“Johnson understood that winning an election was much less important than winning a party. Elected offices came and went every couple of years; parties were institutions anchored in place by their coalitions and organizers.”
“For it is through political conflict that greater representation is born, more interests come to the table, and the expansion and development of liberty and order comes about.”
“In a democracy like ours, perception is reality, and the predictable outcome at Berkeley (and other places) was groupthink and radicalization because a fact-based discourse failed to materialize.”
“One of the basic concepts I had was that if there are some benefits to having some depression manic symptoms; the corollary is that there are some limitations to being normal and mentally healthy.”
“In many parts of the world, the anarchy came, and those like Pinker who insist otherwise should reflect on whether their claims really reflect reality, or whether they are simply bromides used by those thought-leaders who see the horror and turn away, looking to statistics as consolation against th
“I agree that without local news, communities suffer from a dearth of necessary information, but this bill opens up way more problems than it fixes.”
“Moreover, this also implies postmodern writers should be far more modest and careful when criticizing the virtues of science and reason, since it is not clear that they fully appreciate what it is that scientists actually do and believe.”
“If a speaker from the alt-right attracts listeners, it is useless to rush to block him. The better approach is to engage in deep thinking to determine why so many people are willing to follow these messages.”
“Through persistent and coordinated action by federal, state, and local authorities, together with the assistance of medical professionals and other leaders in our community, we can put a stop to the spread of opioids and their wake of destruction.”
“I hope that on Tuesday, Anderson Cooper—and all journalists wrestling with the same question—show up to the polls.”
“The political right has long been better at playing the Nietzschian game of values than the political left.”
“Putting Georgia gang membership calculations into chilling context, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia Bobby Christine imparted, ‘Think about that. At its height, ISIS probably didn’t have 35,000 members.’”
“People are going to use, so let’s teach them how to use and limit the use correctly. This limits the damage and harm they can do to themselves until they reach a path of recovery.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and the West lost their common foreign enemy. Would the sense of rivalry that characterized these tensions abroad then turn inwards, once no common enemy remained?
While post-modern conservatism is not doomed to failure due to some immanent dialectical process, it is utterly unable to rectify the social and political problems of the day.
“The debate about gender and the market can’t be won with a single sentence—or with a single disputed statistic like the 80% figure. It is a nuanced discussion.”
“Unless there are certain universal mores, then a preference for the national values of the United Kingdom over those of Iran seem purely aesthetic, not moral.”
“As Ross Douthat says, you may have hated the religious Right but wait until you see the post-religious Right.”
Instead of worrying about “manspreading” or subtle displays of sexism, feminists in the West need to focus on major problems affecting women in the world, like being shot going to school or female genital mutilation.
“Any bill that’s passed by 100% Republicans and no Democrats or 100% Democrats and no Republicans is not the best piece of legislation that could have been forged.”
“Proponents of identity politics tended to push for these historically marginalized groups, in all their intersectional complexity, to have a greater say in the cultural and political dynamics of the day.”
“For those of us nerdy enough to frequent the annals of the U.S. Census, it was a jarring thing to hear that Puerto Rico is 70 percent white, according to its own inhabitants!”
“I believe the Left has a great deal that is can learn from these arguments. For too long we have left problems of meaning to the Right, while largely focusing on issues of material equality and political participation.”
“Peterson is aligned with the alt-right not because he is a card-carrying member but because both he and the alt-right are nostalgic for previous paradigms. They yearn for the America of yesteryear—the same time period Trump and his supporters envision when they call to ‘Make America Great Again.’”
“David Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, embodies the opposite view to that of the EU. Auschwitz was possible because there was one nation not in existence: Israel.”
“While the task of critique is always important, it is not sufficient if the expectation is simply that deconstructing regimes of marginalization will immanently lead to the emergence of some vaguely conceived egalitarian society.”
“We are constantly told to free ourselves from our traumas and pain, but what if we just accepted them?”
“I was multitasking, and as one person came up to ask a question, I almost hit send on a $20,000 transaction. It was a scary moment, because if it happened there is no way to cancel it, and you have to say, ‘Listen, good friend, can you send it back to me?’”
“There is no debate about whether social media might fuel genocidal violence. It already has. The question is how best to meet our moral responsibility.”
“I have taken a pledge not to accept any corporate tax money. One of the first and most important reasons I took that pledge is because I think that the influence of ‘Big Pharma’ is far too great in our legislative body in Washington.”
“Most Americans would be astonished to discover that, despite the devastating size, scope, and magnitude of gang crime, no federal statutory framework specifically designed to prosecute gangs exists.”
“In America, nearly half of all violent crimes are gang-related.”
“It is easier to imagine Emperor Palpatine of the Sith falling than to imagine a politician effectively challenging the power of Wall Street.”
“I suggest that the ebbing of polarization has already been occurring. We’re just not aware of it because of what’s presented to us in the media. If you look at the polling numbers, Democrats and Republicans are minorities; the plurality of Americans identify as independents.”
“If the present seems increasingly like nothing more than a depressing prelude to a dark and unchanging future, it is unsurprising that individuals may look to past for answers to their personal problems.”
The final exchange in the debate between Professor Ricardo Duchesne and Professor Matt McManus over the book Canada in Decay and Canadian immigration policies.
“It is the appealing but ultimately confusing conflation of textualism with Constitutional conservatism, of facts and norms, which gives textualism its ideological power.”
This article is more personal. I have some experience with Peterson’s description of suffering, and I believe that what he says is right.
“The last four or five years I was in the Senate, there was simply no Democrat more conservative than any Republican and no Republican more liberal than any Democrat. And that’s just wrong. It’s unnatural.”
“Rarely do media reports focus on the political leanings of prosecutors, investigators, or witnesses. It is, however, often a highly relevant consideration in cases where selective prosecution claims are made.”
“After my most recent piece on Jordan Peterson, a string of correspondents contacted me with further questions and comments about my opinions about the controversial Canadian Professor (not words one usually sees strung together).”
“One wonders what Socrates, that foul destroyer of Western civilization, might say about appealing to book sales and public opinion as an argument for the correctness of one’s views.”
“How do we explain, then, the fact that the liberal nations that fought Nazism, Australia, Canada, and the United States, had immigration policies aimed at preserving their ethnic heritage? Should we call European nations with liberal constitutions racist if their populations vote for immigration re
“Neoliberal economic policies have deepened the anxiety of many rural conservatives, who felt they were gradually being ‘replaced’ or outdated by an economic system which no longer prioritized the resource, industrial, and agricultural sectors.”
“The left, in all its myriad forms, is unified by a utopian vision and end goal. Meanwhile, ‘the right’ has no such vision and is made of many disparate groups who do not share end goals beyond a general opposition to the left.”
It was Wordsworth who wrote in the language of the common man, thereby giving a microphone to those on the edges of society. Are the rappers of today following in his footsteps?
“Even if you continue to disagree on 90% of the issues, if you have a little bit of trust, understanding, and empathy, you might find common ground on that 10% or wherever you do have some agreement.”
“I very much understand why Jordan Peterson might appeal to many who feel attracted to the kinds of questions he is asking. My problem is with the specific answers he gives at a political level.”
“Since the days of his childhood, Corbyn has been able to engage in his socialist and New Left fantasies, insulated from the catastrophic consequences when they are put into practice.”
“Wouldn’t the French-speaking Quebecois have more in common with, say, francophone Roman Catholics from Haiti who happen to be black? To avoid this conclusion, Duchesne shows a truly ugly side by just biting the bullet and claiming that skin color and race matters.”
Bernadette Scarduzio, who lives with a rare neurological disease, argues that medical marijuana has helped normalize her life and has the potential to help reduce opiate overuse in the disabled community.
“With that mindset, no wonder we feel bitter, absurd, and helpless. Even though we are living in great times, it is hard to see it.”
“The right has clearly learned how to deploy the language of values, while recognizing that we have entered an era where blatantly contradictory positions can be a strength rather than a weakness.”
“You can’t be a Neo-Nazi and be happy in life. It’s 100% impossible to be those two things at the same time.”
“In fact, one of my best training grounds was being a basketball referee. That taught me how to make tough decisions under tough circumstances where you already knew you were going to make half the people mad most of the time.”
“The world is not becoming meaningless; it is becoming so saturated with symbolism that meaning itself no longer means anything.“
“So unless you are Seymour Hersh, who has The New York Times backing him, or some young activists or aspiring journalist who’s willing to work an issue, [thorny issues such as these medical experiments] can fall through the floorboards.”
“We try to take away the value judgments because economics is not designed to make a value judgment—that’s not the tools that we have in this discipline.”
“The vast majority of political parties in Brazil have no ideology whatsoever. They are crony parties who trade political and economic favors, and they do so with those who offer more, regardless of principles or values.”
“I have no desire to be president for example. But in that one aspect, I’m motivated or inspired to have my character better reflect [Lincoln’s] character. Not bring him down to my level but bring my character up to his level.”
“Those who proclaim their concern for the poor in the abstract nearly always find that they hate what the poor believe in when confronted with it.”
Families with money are using doctors and psychologists to get their kids a leg up, at the expense of those playing by the rules.
“There won’t always be a happy marriage between impactful environmentalism and progressive values. For environmental groups to weather the political storm, they’ll have to be able to tap sources of support from outside the left.”
“My point, and the point of the post-modern philosophers, was to demonstrate that even a simple word like apple can beget numerous interpretations, let alone words like justice, equality and so on.”
Henry George takes aim at today’s popularization of so-called “Classical Liberalism,” a movement that fails to appreciate that, for true conservatives, economic priorities are always subservient to ensuring social order.
“Signs point to another yes vote from Manchin. Yet, for all this posturing, voting out of fear of losing an election is not any more morally commendable than being whipped.”
“While we should note the absurdity of simultaneously blaming global elites and destitute refugees for the collapse of tradition and order, we also recognize that this confluence is the transference of a real but unsignified fear.”
The American Left needs to spend less time hitting the pavements criticizing government and institutions outright. Instead, they must do the less glamorous: study the policies that best help working people and then go to the polls and vote that way.
“As Mayor Koch used to say: ‘If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.’”
“In Congress, no matter how strongly I agree with somebody on some issues, I’m going to strongly disagree on others. But, it is this stance that has enabled the ACLU to work in odd bedfellow coalitions to advance our agenda.”
“[Feminism today sometimes] sees the world as a zero-sum struggle between Venus and Mars. But most women want equality, not war. Men aren’t their adversaries. They are their brothers, sons, husbands, and friends. We are in this together.”
“So is Deneen right? Has liberalism failed? I think in the long run nothing wrought by the hand of man lasts forever. This includes political ideologies. We have a tendency to naturalize the world as it is and assume that things can never change.”
Last year, The Intercept published an article following the dollars, tracing a link between campaign contributions by big agriculture and laws meant to silence animal rights activists. But what’s happened since?
“Trump’s visit saw him declare Britain to be in chaos (it is), that the current Brexit wasn’t what people voted for (it isn’t, and never would be), and that Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister.”
“This is especially true in large urban areas. Forces beyond our control compel us to focus on the now “yolo?” and live fragmented lives of needs and satisfaction. In these contexts, we focus on being like animals rather than selves, and become increasingly homogenous and indistinguishable.”
Now a year has passed from that day at St. John’s, and all Kreuzburg can think about is running and the effect it’s had on his life.
“We are not just material objects in a value-free universe. Kant makes the radical and highly innovative argument that autonomy of the individual is the enabling condition of moral philosophy.”
“As Harry Frankfurt of On Bullshit indicated, a liar is someone who still has some tangential sense of what the truth is. They are aware of what is true and choose to dishonestly present the opposite. This is not true of Mr. Trump and his acolytes.”
“…Politicians are regular people who should not be expected to be more moral in their political lives than their economic lives. If we have this assumption that people in politics are no better than people in markets, this leads to a lot less confidence that political solutions will be any better th
“When we look back on honor cultures like the Mafia…They embrace values that are precisely what are lacking in our lives—like that fierce, passionate loyalty that Sonny has. He’s not thinking about his own self-interest. He’s thinking about the fact that that guy beat up his sister, and he needs to
“This means that fact-checking is the fake solution to the real problem of fake news. It helps debunk the simple hoaxes, but it only adds undeserved gravitas to fake political narratives and metanarratives.”
A photograph Ron Haviv took at age 23 would be cited by George H.W. Bush when the President called for the American invasion of Panama. Since then, Mr. Haviv has traveled from conflict to conflict zone, producing photographs of some of the late-twentieth century’s most difficult periods of violence.
“Despite the stellar success of ordinary people lifting themselves out of poverty through production and access to a stable market, the income inequality narrative has come to dominate our current public policy discourse, especially in the United States.”
“[People] want to give back, they want to help out, and the mistake is in presuming that the most effective and transparent way of helping is to do the work ourselves—to get on a plane to see and participate in it being done.”
“…after you’ve been away for 25 or 30 years, the likelihood of your having a family is pretty slim. A lot of people’s parents die while they’re in prison. Women don’t have the same support network as men do in prison which I think people find surprising.”
“As with all matters legislative, right now our partisan polarization stands in the way. But hope springs eternal that our better angels, and our ability to compromise—on this and other matters, will eventually return.”
“The last four or five years I was in the Senate, there was simply no Democrat more conservative than any Republican and no Republican more liberal than any Democrat. And that’s just wrong. It’s unnatural.”
Milton Friedman’s argument that corporations refrain from engaging themselves in social and political issues is compelling. But his argument likely doesn’t apply in today’s world, a world where “social consciousness” actually drives business.
“If we value our heritage, conservative intellectuals like Peterson need to stop pandering to their followers, and instead start motivating them to be more reflective about the culpability of complex social forces.”
“True patriotism is the guy, man or woman, who shows up at the post office every day to be a postal clerk… I dislike and disapprove of those people who wrap themselves in the flag claiming to be patriots when they’ve…done nothing to help move this country forward.”
“As newscasters reported in painstaking detail about the intricacies of a politician’s body language or outfit, 3.2 million Americans lost health insurance in 2017. Only 39 percent of Americans can afford a $1k emergency. And 41 million Americans are hungry.”
“There are more wedge issues that divert our attention from the real issues. That’s what I found during my time in the Senate…But the Republicans wanted to send their Republican candidates out to campaign about gay marriage and abortion and flag burning. It’s all about control of the Senate.”
“Students are commonly told that Jesus was amenable to socialism because he favored the sharing of wealth. But in fact, he taught personal responsibility, voluntary charity, and doing good from the heart, not from someone else’s wallet.”
“The unceasing accusations of bias are no longer used to promote dialogue and bridge interpretive frameworks. Instead, they are used to seal ourselves off inside bubbles that allow us to preserve the integrity of our world view, free from contamination by the views of others.”
“The practice of politics is always a form of violence, whether literal or figurative, as different groups of friends and enemies attempt to overcome one another and seize control of the state.”
“Rather than going for the stories that are most easily obtained, which are also often the ones people want to leak, you ask yourself what is going to be permanent.”
“Writers should be judged first by the quality of the content of their prose, not their identity. If we forget this, then the world of literature will be much poorer, and with the loss of this source of consolation, so will we all.”
“It was critically important to me then, and it’s still critically important to me now that I do not take advantage of the subject of any photograph…for my benefits or for my agenda. We saw some really tough things, and it could have become gratuitous.”
“The negative ads we’ve kind of moved into, starting in the nineties, have gotten worse and worse. You never see businesses do attack ads, right? If Coke did an attack ad against Pepsi, Pepsi would have to attack Coke…. You could suppress down an entire product category.”
“When it comes down to it, most of us realize the cake a Christian baker refuses to bake for a gay couple isn’t just a cake—it stands for so much more.”
Thinking about opening a barber shop, what do you do? If your answer was something other than, “Find out how to obtain the state’s permission,” you’re in for a surprise.
“My suspicion is that many of Peterson’s readers feel an affinity to the advice he offers and so don’t look to question his political commitments that deeply. This is problematic because it leads to deep inconsistencies in doctrine that, if applied as stated, would lead to a rather unusual politics.
“When you think about what we have here—FedEx, UPS, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club—you’ve got all these places that have networks that can be used to do distribution…I truly see the private sector as part of the first responder network.”
“What prepares men for totalitarian domination…is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.”
“To tell you the truth, I am drawn to these dangerous events even though they scare the hell out of me. I am sure a shrink would have a field day with that…I guess there is an adrenaline rush in trying to capture images under dangerous situations and making it out alive.”
“People working at the local level are indeed the people who understand how to make the federal government more responsive…”
“Why does Peterson get this so wrong? He simply doesn’t care to present a more complex narrative that would problematize his cute and hyperbolic story about the left.”
“But instead, universities have been captured by a destructive ideology of victimhood that insists that to be a female or a minority on an American college campus is to be the target of endless, nonstop oppression.”
“Let’s say somebody is solidly in favor of abortion rights. She feels very strongly. Okay? But how can she learn to persuade anyone on the issue if she never even hears the other side of the argument?”
“You cited the race between Romney and Obama and that the Independents seemed to choose one or the other. My question for the political scientists would be: ‘Who was the Independent in that race?’”
The problem for originalists is that there is little truth or historical validity to their argument, which amounts to just a feel-good story of the Constitution’s natural legitimacy.
“As a person of Indian heritage, I’m willing to lower my odds in November’s game of chance if it makes the admissions process, as a whole, more inclusive.”
Everywhere is becoming like Israel in the need to take security measures that encroach further and further into daily life. One would not be surprised if Israelis did not feel a sense of schadenfreude; after all, those who criticized Israel as a police state now indulge in the same practices.
“The Bush period and the approaches we took then, in many respects, are directly related to an era of American politics that came and went.”
The attempt to conflate Marxism and post-modernism under the label of “cultural Marxism” is, at the very least, highly problematic.
“It’s what Irving Babbitt meant when he wrote that happiness is to be found in work if at all. Or why John Adams would write that he was happiest on days he felt most purposeful.”
“People behave themselves for one of two reasons: love of God, or fear of punishment. There’s not much that politicians can do about the former, but the latter is in our wheelhouse.”
“I really don’t see the Republican Party standing for a real free market or getting the government out of our lives on the domestic front. I don’t see them…proposing winding down the welfare state.”
“My point was always, ‘Look, this is the hook.’ Piracy is the hook, if you want to get people interested in Somalia’s problems and the region’s problems; you’re not going to get them to read a World Food Programme treatise.”
“It is my conviction that we are going through the greatest technological and economic shift in human history, and our political class is completely asleep at the switch.”
A woman, who had a Pennsylvania carry permit, gets arrested in New Jersey, not knowing that they don’t issue carry permits—and certainly not to out-of-state residents.
“I think it’s awful. It’s shocking what people are willing to accept just because everyone else in their community goes along.”
“But the columns that stick with us most of all rarely touch on the polls or the name-calling. Instead, they might be retired Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Bill Lyon’s ‘viewpoints’ columns, which chronicle the dissolution of his memory as he suffers from Alzheimer’s.”
Professor Caplan thinks students are wise to the true value of a degree, which could help to explain why almost no student ever audits a class and why students spend only about 14 hours per week studying, down from 24 hours per week in 1961.
“I changed my major from theater to film because, in many of my auditions, I was typecast as a drug dealer or a murderer, and that changed my perception of what people thought a black man was.”
The cost of a Senate seat, after all, averaged $10,476,451 during the 2012 elections. With that steep of cost, can we expect anything other than politicians sometimes having to speak out of both sides of their mouths?
“I’m a Vietnam era veteran myself. The stigma of suicide today is only a fraction of what it was back then…Times are changing, and we are trying to meet those changes to get people taken care of in a timely way.”
Israel deserves criticism like any state, but its castigation on the Left (and elsewhere) goes way beyond that. Israel is now the world’s demonic Jew, subject to the calumnies and libels Jews have faced throughout history.
One pundit said that “data died” after the 2016 presidential election. Gallup’s editor-in-chief doesn’t think so.
“I want to tickle a certain part of your brain, a thinking person’s part of your brain. We don’t really like giving answers on our podcasts. I ask questions.”
In the UK recently, there has been concern over the growth in private and unregistered faith schools.
“By and large, as people mature and learn about how the real world works, they tend to become more pro-liberty. I know a lot more former socialists than I know former libertarians.”
We may need to tap into music, sports, video games and even some street talents to reach some students.
According to a Pew report, millennials, more than any other generation, are both averse to organized religion and distrustful of other people.
In a one-on-one interview with Merion West, Georgia Congressman Jody Hice explains how his background as a Christian pastor informs his worldview, his bill to address the taxpayer burden of former presidents’ pensions, and a possible solution to easing division in a polarized America.
“Normally you have separation of powers, and you have supervision, but with special prosecutors you don’t have very much supervision. That’s the great danger.”
In an attempt to fix the stigma, my field started overpathologizing normality in an unconscious attempt to make everybody feel more empathy towards people who are mentally ill.
In our society, whatever is important is what we don’t let children do. They can’t buy property, take out loans, consent to medical procedures (with the glaring exception of abortion), or rent a car.
The Republican Party has been quick to turn against Senator Rand Paul, the only remaining principled conservative left in the Senate. Is this it for the Grand Old Party?
The American Civil War Museum president S. Waite Rawls discusses how both 1860 and 2016 witnessed fractured political parties, anti-immigrant sentiments, and clear divides in voting patterns between different geographical factions of Americans.
My father was a blue collar worker. He was about to buy his first car: a Cadillac. Instead, he gave me the money to go to the school.
Lauren Southern’s unjust arrest is a threat to freedom of speech and philosophy. This is an example of how the UK Border Force’s efforts to keep citizens safe are misguided.
On how Americans talk about their political opponents: “I am delighted by our continued polarization and the fact that each side is unable to communicate with the other.”
The HUD Secretary’s outrageous spending on tableware is causing an uproar because of how relatable it is — not its cost.
Steve Simpson’s guide on how not to defend free speech.
Most college students claiming to be libertarians are actually just traditional conservatives misidentifying themselves. It’s because universities still take libertarian arguments seriously.
The Winter Olympics encourage a healthy feeling of patriotism that does not unleash the tiger of unthinking nationalism.
On the current trend towards drug liberalization: “Everybody I know who functions at a high level in society is fairly reliable and trustworthy. My husband is an oncologist, and I can tell you that hardworking cancer doctors don’t spend their free time getting high.”
“These players are heroes to many young black boys. Sadly, now they see their heroes disrespecting the flag and our country. It’s a terrible message to send.”
In many ways, libertarians can rest happily knowing that their ideas are winning, even if their candidates are not.
The election of transgender politicians to public office can effectively mobilize transgender individuals to become more politically active and engaged in the political process.
“Far from being a detriment to democracy, resistance to a dictator-lite like President Trump is essential to saving it.”
Concerning the Ontarian minimum wage, the lesser of two bad ideas is still a bad idea.
Criminal street gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions, yet the mainstream media gives almost no attention to the issue.
Conservative students display the very immaturity they accuse liberal students of. Duke University conservatives, the same people frequently advocating on behalf of “free speech,” demand a professor be punished for using language they find offensive.
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron argues that prohibition is among the worst policies for curbing “irrational” drug use.
Honest criticism of current drug policy should not justify a culture of permissiveness about drug abuse.
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report discusses the left’s opposition to free speech, polarization, third party candidates, and finding common ground in an interview with Merion West.
“I came to this country from another country, and I struggled. I used to dream about coming to this country as a child, and I probably love this country more than many people who were born here.”
Conservatism has a long history at one of America’s oldest, most prestigious colleges.
For the Koch brothers, an ideal government would support gay marriage, freedom of speech, balancing the budget, and capitalism.
The parade of world leaders through the streets of central Paris made a mockery of the dead cartoonists; some of those who linked arms did all they could to suppress freedom of expression in their own countries.
Unite America is on a mission to bring the moderates back to government.
President Trump may be wrong on many things, but he is absolutely correct about reforming the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. Here’s why.
I was twelve years old, and a man on the street was already verbally harassing me. He looked at me as if I were a juicy steak instead of an innocent child.
“Rising tides lift all boats, whether they’re white, black, brown, yellow, immigrant, or any other American.”
Although it may be a pastime to bash the two-party system, it is probably better than any of the alternatives.
Tobacco use is the leading single cause of preventable death worldwide.
“I know that you can’t completely run government like a company, but you can bring in business principles and processes.”
“I don’t spend my weekends at $1,000 cocktail parties with powerful people. I spend my weekends with my family going shooting on our farm and doing things that everyday, ordinary Americans do.”
While many condemn President Trump’s alleged use of such vulgar language, some question the validity of said reports. Others agree with the President’s sentiment.
People should support labor policies such as paid time off based on nothing but concern for their own health and well-being.
A “Never Trumper” has a change of heart.
“The law in a democracy is never potent in a vacuum. It must work in concert with the people.”
“I want to create a culture in Georgia as Lieutenant Governor that rewards good policy over good politics.”
“Engaging with domestic politics is crucial to our collective response to global environmental change and other social justice issues.”
Most of Western media, leftist politicians, and feminist organizations have been largely silent on the recent protests in Iran. Sadly, this was to be expected.
“This field is still considered by most to be something that is not really science, something that is not really possible, and we really have to change that.”
“It’s been proven that the more centrists there are in Congress, the more bills get passed and are enacted into law.”
As my family swore an oath to pledge allegiance to the United States, a year later I was swearing allegiance to the Republic of Finland.
Even liberals acknowledge that some individuals unfairly exploit welfare programs.
The final point is this, and it is something that the “resistance” needs to hear. You are not heroes.
Job-matching sites Internships.com and WayUp have a new competitor.
A new Republican proposal would allow young people to choose a reprieve on student debt in exchange for delaying the age when they can collect social security.
A look back on our editor’s choices for their favorite Merion West articles of 2017.
Our human nature, something that is capable of cruelty or goodness, is something we all have in common, whether able or disabled.
Did you know the Nixon Administration prepared a speech that would have been delivered if Apollo 11 had ended in disaster?
We have a healthcare system that does not believe that the normal human lifespan can or should be extended.
This is a president who openly and personally attacks the leaders and employees of the agencies in the Intelligence Community. In turn, some of them respond by attacking him, and on it goes.
Must ISIS be treated differently from the terrorist organizations of the past?
While the U.S. Capitol grapples with sexual harassment allegations, less than a mile away, thousands of travelers take for granted the wall-size posters of lingerie-clad models at the Victoria’s Secret in Union Station.
This is the President, after all, who did everything that the modern Left supposedly despises; this is the man who sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in Iraq.
Aaron Spring, the Fordham student asked to leave a university coffee shop for wearing a “Make America Great Again Hat” answers whether businesses should be allowed to discriminate against people they disagree with politically and whether he would consider returning to the coffee shop.
“When people say things like “Trump is the Ayn Rand presidency,” that’s nonsense. She’s influenced the political right, but there’s a big gap between Objectivism and what many conservatives believe.”
A final positive consequence of polarization is that it slows down the government.
From the Abscam days to the present, political corruption in America appears to be all but inescapable. It is a societal problem in need of correction. However, it must be solved on an individual level.
As it currently stands, university campuses across the Western world are being eaten from the inside out – this is just an undeniable reality.
Political repression is commonplace across the developing world. To maintain power, authoritarian rulers intimidate and imprison their competitors. Comparing Donald Trump to someone like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is inaccurate and unwarranted.
While the idea has attracted fervent support from across the political spectrum, practical constraints keep it from being anything other than a utopian pipe dream.
The Iran Hostage Crisis introduced America to political Islam and helped usher in a new era of conservatism, but the lasting legacy of the ordeal remains linked to a fictitious scheme and human fallibility.
Some enthusiasts speculate that eliminating immigration restrictions could double global GDP.
Opinion: This frog is the banner of the forgotten young male, with no place in the world.
White supremacists have a mindset that America is a land of finite opportunity, and gains by others come at the expense of their own. But they are wrong.
Ailes is dead. Weinstein is in rehab. Yet, the culture they thrived in remains intact.
Yes, it is acceptable to legislate morality. But simply passing a law is not the end of the story.
My relatives in Ukraine live in a perpetual state of fear of war with Russia, a country that has oppressed Jews, Ukrainians, and defenders of freedom alike for centuries.
Libertarians should pride themselves as harboring the most consistent political philosophy.
The Constitution is still relevant today. We should expose more people to it, so they can make up their minds how they want it to be applied, rather than addressing government with minimal knowledge of how it works.
Might ending DACA be a first step toward immigration reform?
For Christian Trump voters, the decision must be at least a little awkward, as faith leaders across the country came out strongly against the decision to rescind DACA protections.
Why white supremacy and white nationalism are different.
Religious conservatives have made a political alliance with Republicans but are losing their influence.
Why a vocational education might be worth it
Single payer healthcare could prove to be disastrous for California.
Conservatives are as much of a threat to free speech as radical progressives.
As an increasing number of universities take a stand against alt-right figures, perhaps it’s the wrong approach.
James Damore’s memo is far from what the mainstream media has made it out to be. That said, alternative media sources are not necessarily right about it either.
Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans.
If the private market decides to flee racism and terrorism, everyone will be better off.
They hope to attach to Antifa the same stigma as is attached to fascism.
Progressives often blame difference of outcome on “institutional racism.” However, it’s always up to the individual.
While charity is often considered the highest virtue, donating used clothes has the power to destroy the economies of developing nations.
Opinion: A change in perspective is necessary if we wish to get a handle on America’s healthcare problems.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all … let us strive to achieve a just and a lasting peace among ourselves.”—Abraham Lincoln
Despite the Republican Party’s tremendous electoral success, pseudo-conservatives have chosen to ignore basic economics in favor of their constituents.
Image via DVIDSHUB Foreign aid has lifted millions of people out of poverty and tremendously improved diplomatic relations around the world.
This idolatry of racial origin as definitive of a person’s worth runs directly counter to the foundational principles of the American Right.
Businessmen, career politicians, and lawyers are incapable of effectively representing the interests of all Americans.
If Americans can rally behind these common sense health care reforms, we can finally fix our broken system.
Public perception of the mainstream media is so low that President Trump’s petty fights with CNN might actually be helping him.
Despite the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare, there is still hope for market-based healthcare reform.
People should be judged based on the content of their character, not their identity traits.
President Trump’s RAISE Act is far from the disaster the mainstream media has made it out to be.
Transhumanist and libertarian, Zoltan Istvan, discusses his vision for the state of California and why he believes he should be its governor.
Statistics combined with context will tell a different story than your college professor might have you believe.
In Iceland, every single baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome is aborted.
Are accusations of anti-Semitism against the British left justified? Yes and No.
Instead of blaming problems on centuries-old events, encourage young people to work hard.
It’s not bigotry. It’s just business.
We can legislate morality. We do it all the time.
Like most government regulations, it’s unnecessary and counterproductive.
Shiva Ayyadurai has decided to challenge Elizabeth Warren for her Senate seat. He makes his case in this Merion West interview.
Despite its critics, money in politics is a good thing. Campaign ads, especially negative ones, help voters make better-informed decisions.
Can a new thought experiment involving hypothetically joining the National Guard shed light on the abortion debate?
Former Congressman Bob Barr’s take on our current intelligence climate.
Can we do anything about the horrific human rights violations in North Korea?
Missouri Senate candidate and libertarian activist Austin Petersen joins Merion West to discuss trade, immigration and his decision to run for Senate as a Republican.
Journalism is supposed to be about reporting facts not writing misleading stories about those one disagrees with politically.
Look no further than events in Europe to see how far Russia will go to upset the democratic process in other nations.
The House and Senate were always intended to serve different functions.
What does the Supreme Court have to say about suing nations hostile to the United States?
Is it time for the United States to walk away from the United Nations’ anti-firearm agenda?
Would you force Muslim bakers to make cakes trashing the Koran or a black baker to make a cake promoting white supremacy?
Critics of gun rights seem to forget that guns are not, first and foremost, for hunting or preventing a burglary but rather to ensure that governments don’t get out of control.
What did the Republicans actually do when they “killed” Dodd-Frank?
Is the ATF trying to ensure that no marijuana “user” can purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer?
To loosely quote Babe Ruth from the movie The Sandlot, “Heroes get remembered, but screenshots never die.”
The biggest victims of a minimum wage hike are always young people. In Canada, 58.4% of workers earning minimum wage are in the 15-24 age demographic. And besides, if you don’t want a minimum wage, build skills that are worth more to employers.
Centrist Democrat Jason Altmire (D-Pa) outlines his vision for a less polarized future in which moderate voters participate more in primaries to ensure that fewer hardliners make it to Congress.
As scary as terrorism is, a war on civil liberties in the name of catching terrorists is not the answer.
“I think you have to separate conservatism from reactions to the Left. I don’t think they’re quite the same thing. Conservatism is starting to get more popular because of reaction to the Left.”
Sexual assault is indeed a problem in India, but is rape actually more common in India than in the West? Social pressures, however, are a big factor in whether or not rapes are reported.
Both the United States and Israel refuse to say the words “Armenian Genocide.” Is this because they doubt whether the killings constitute a “genocide” or because of deference to Turkey, a crucial ally in the Middle East?
Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga), in this Merion West op-ed, discusses how the federal government is increasingly claiming the right to search people’s laptops and smart phones.
Conservatism and comedy don’t usually go together. Tim Young is challenging that notion.
Is there a better explanation than the traditional answer of bedrock? Some experts claim the origin of the gap in the skyline actually is more related to demographics and discrimination.
Has the federal government not yet overstepped its boundaries when it uses radiation to strip-search its citizens each time they fly and frisks them as they go to football games?
A Prime Minister of Singapore famously said: “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” Is this true in America?
People often want to help others in the abstract but never quite get around to it. Can we use photography to encourage them to start helping?
MIT atmospheric science professor Richard Lindzen suggests that many claims regarding climate change are exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist.
Green Party Presidential candidate William Kreml describes the evolution of the 2010 Citizens United ruling.
This new Indian political party is all about the free market.
Critics may be correct to call nepotism on Jared Kushner. But the same must also be said for Hillary Clinton. If she hadn’t been married to the President, no one would know who she is.
If you ask someone for his favorite president, odds are he’ll tell you Lincoln or FDR. These are reasonable answer of course. But American history is interesting and complicated, and we should make an effort to look beyond the obvious.
It’s amazing how unwilling people are to reconsider their beliefs, even in light of persuasive new evidence to the contrary. Here’s one answer of why.
If liberals actually care about making poor people better off, then there is no better system for accomplishing this than the free market. Life expectancy in capitalist countries is much higher than in socialist or communist ones.
Fans are tired of celebrities assuming they can’t make informed political decisions for themselves.
Vijay Chokalingam, the author of Almost Black – How I Posed as Black to Get into Medical School and brother of comedian Mindy Kaling, sits for an interview with Merion West to discuss affirmative action.
We ought to harness the unique features of bitcoin to serve us more completely than traditional currencies have done in the past.
The writings of Hans Riess at Merion West.
