Archive

Coming Soon: A Race to the Bottom

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.

The Discarded

Why I’m Running for Governor of California

I want to save California and America from the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Undoing Civilization: The Degeneracy of America’s Political Elites

“With Vice President Vance as President Trump’s heir apparent, it is difficult to envision a restoration of principled conservatism any time soon. Meanwhile, the country’s political class is plagued by general senescence and by kakistocracy among the younger politicians (think Congresswoman Alexandr

Fieldnotes: Annie Christain’s “The Vanguards of Holography” and Caroline Harper New’s “A History of Half-Birds”

“There is a sense of preparation through formal and informal erudition, meant to complicate what it means to write adequately about natural and human worlds, with fewer donnéees and more of a sense of a non-human cosmos, one of manatees and marsupials, in which each creature’s essence is not given t

The Non-Binary Runner Phenomenon

“However, for me, as a lifelong runner who has logged 10,000 miles on American roads in the past 10 years and who has competed in dozens of races from the 5K to the marathon since 2004, I disagree with Fedorowski. Adding a non-binary category to road racing is misguided and counterproductive.”

Strawberry Fields Forever: Amie Whittemore’s “Nest of Matches”

“Lilies/finch/flinches/nest/basil/hair/hat. I would swear before a jury that those are all legitimate off-rhymes, even if I were convicted of perjury for it. I wish that Shelley or Keats or Lorca or Miguel Hernández were alive so that I could pass this poem along to them.”

Cosmic Comic Kvetching in Anthony Immergluck’s “The Worried Well”

“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

Walking and Thinking

“Nevertheless, I am often struck by how many great thinkers have also been great walkers.”

Why We Should Still Read Orestes Brownson

“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.”

Germany’s Lingering Hegelianism

“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.”

What Progressives Need to Do

“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.”

Christianity and the West―Criticizing Lawrence Auster

“It was Christianity that became Europe’s unifying ideology and inspired figures from Charlemagne to Columbus.”

Midwestern Mice in Silk Kimonos: Yuki Tanaka’s “Chronicle of Drifting”

“[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

Redefining College: Adapting Higher Education for the 2020s

“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.”

Phantasmal Chaos

“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’.”

Getting to Better American Health Outcomes

“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.”

Language for Throat and Tongue: Elise Paschen’s “Blood Wolf Moon”

“[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.’”

When Student Disengagement Meets Worker Disengagement, and a Solution

“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 Myth of Neocon Anti-Nationalism

“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.”

The Speech of Herbs: Melissa Kwasny’s “The Cloud Path”

“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…”

Understanding Orwell on the Lesser Evil

“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.’”

Second Thoughts on Airline Deregulation

“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.”

Villa 351

“The news we got at first was dire,/the damage bad though not entire”

Letter: On “Our Life-World, Its Enemies, and the Enduring Power of Common Sense”

“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.”

Still in the Holler

“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.”

The Buster’s Hand: Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s “Rodeo”

“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…”

How Close Are We to Escaping Dying? The Current State of Cryonics

“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?”

What James Lindsay Gets Wrong about “Right-Wing Postliberalism”

“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.”

Jimmy Carter: A Man Ahead of His Time

“It should be noted, however, that President Carter was not only the Great Humanitarian. He was also the Great Deregulator.”

God’s in the Weeds: Daneen Bergland’s “The Goodbye Kit”

“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.”

Letter: Reflecting on “These People All Know Each Other”

“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?”

In Reply to Walter Block: Sticking with Democratic Socialism

“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.”

Our Life-World, Its Enemies, and the Enduring Power of Common Sense

“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.”

A Three-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

“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.”

Sand, Ash, or Mud: Valerie Witte’s “A Rupture in the Interiors”

“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.”

Vigilantism and the Sex Offender Registry

“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.”

Rejoinder to Ben Burgis: The Case for Laissez-Faire Capitalism

“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.”

Start Making Sense: “Say Hello to Metamodernism”

“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.”

Little Engines of Self: Joy Manesiotis’ “Revoke”

“It is a remarkable feat of poetics to create epic sense out of the most micro of human materials.”

The Case for Democratic Socialism

“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.”

On the Trump Coalition

“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.”

Itching for the Infinite

“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.”

Appreciating America’s Distinctly British Heritage

“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.”

At Home in the War

“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.”

Notes on Kitsch: Janice Harrington’s “Yard Show”

“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.”

Does America Have a New Natural Governing Party?

“These are not new principles. They defined the Republican Party for most of its history, a party that had always included a progressive element.”

Winds of the Great Shame

“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.”

How to Read Poetry

“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.”

Why Most Americans Didn’t Buy the Harris Campaign

“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 Dead Are Difficult: Jenny George’s “After Image”

“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.”

The Dueling Cases for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

A Merion West contributing writer and editor respectively make the case for each candidate for President of the United States.

The Discontents of Capitalism

“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?’”

Continue to Support the Mises Institute at 99%

“This is not the first time libertarians have disagreed with one another.”

Wrackable as Arguments: Anne-Marie Turza’s “Fugue with Bedbug”

“[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.”

Why We Should Still Read Charles Bukowski

“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.’”

Richard Dawkins Wins in the End

“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.”

The Origins of a Partisan

“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.”

Why Postmodernism Still Matters

“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.”

America’s Return to Industrial Policy

“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.”

Reading Samuel Moyn’s “Liberalism Against Itself” in an Election Year

“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.”

“No One Is Ever Really Just One Thing”: Laurel Nakanishi’s “Ashore”

“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 Paradox of Capitalism

“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?”

Darryl Cooper: Revisionist History and Misplaced Empathy

“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.”

Bruce Springsteen Turns 75

“It is just Springsteen and his sparse vocals seeming to sing out into the empty expanse of the American West and its sprawling landscapes where hope—at least until the final track—is nowhere to be found. One can feel it was recorded in winter.”

Making Sense of Germany’s Migration Deal with Kenya

“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

Mythos Americanos: Who Took the Grit out of Integrity?

“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.”

America’s Housing Dilemma: Building for a Future with Fewer People

“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.”

Scribe in Disguise: Amy Beeder’s “And So Wax Was Made and Also Honey”

“[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.”

Christopher Ruddy: Newsmax Is Eyeing an IPO

“We never relied only on advertising. I think one of the keys to our success is we had a very good and robust mixed revenue model. And that has [helped] us over a long period of time.”

Why Transhumanism Is Unrealistic and Immoral

“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.”

Fierce Lyric in Karla Kelsey’s “Blood Feather”

“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

Portrait of a Stubborn Ukrainian

“He was flanked by fields of dead sunflowers that could not be harvested because of the renewed Russian offensive.”

Eighty-Five Years of the Dark Knight

“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.”

Where an Anti-Aging Theory Goes Right (and Wrong)

“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.”

Reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” in Modern New York

“The change with After Virtue, however, is that in an important sense [MacIntyre] turns against modernity as a whole. He argues that the move to modernity involves the destruction of morality—that in modernity we no longer know what we’re talking about when we deploy moral language.”

The Hidden Obstacles of Parenting from Prison

“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.”

Ekphrasis and Eugene Datta’s “Water and Wave”

“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.”

Optimism vs. Reality in Longevity Science: Analyzing Zoltan Istvan’s Senescence Inference

“Although [Zoltan] Istvan’s general pessimism is understandable, the Senescence Inference takes the pessimism too far for a number of reasons.”

Burning Britain

“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.”

How To Write Lyric Poetry

“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.”

When We’re Overly Optimistic about the Pace of Life Extension Research 

“Sadly, biological humans are likely to be mortal for centuries more unless a dramatic increase in both resources and life extension scientists is marshaled.”

The Danger in NATO’s Slow Attrition Strategy in Ukraine

“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.”

Our Fractured Togetherness: The Political Realism of Lynn Nottage

“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.”

On the Idea of National Decline

“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.”

A Different Kind of Knowledge: Matthew Zapruder’s “I Love Hearing Your Dreams”

“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.”

The Triumph of Eros Over Thanatos: The Imperishable Beauty of “Holding the Man”

“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.“

The Taliban Dilemma: How to Engage with Those Whose Values We Oppose

“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?”

This is England? Thoughts on Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer

“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.”

Reckless Rhetoric and Its Consequences

“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.”

The French Election and Europe’s Post-Historical Collapse

“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.”

The Power of Chicken Soup for the Anti-Woke Soul: Nellie Bowles’s “Morning After the Revolution”

“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.”

Poems Without a Passport: Solmaz Sharif’s “Customs”

“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.”

Why I Stand by Relocation: A Rejoinder to Ben Burgis

“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…”

Was Chamberlain Actually More Strategic than Churchill, Roosevelt, and Biden?

“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.”

The End of Capitalism

“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

Jordan Peterson, Martin Heidegger, and the Inescapability of Stories

“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

Syllabic Fits of Speech: Cedar Sigos’ “All This Time”

“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

Wrangling Our Political Herds: Upholding Intellectual Standards, No Matter Who Gets Angry

“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.”

A Fresh Look at André Spears’ “From the Lost Land I-XII”

“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.”

Why Are Democratic Alliances so Sluggish? (And a Proposed Solution)

“The democratic form of government is persistently incompetent at preparing for its own defense, despite fair warnings.”

Historical Shadows: The Far-Right Surge in Germany and Austria

“For far too long, their concerns were ignored by center and left-wing parties, and so they turned elsewhere.”

In Reply to Walter Block: Relocation Must Be Off the Table

“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.”

Lynn Xu’s Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight

“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.”

Yes, to a Palestinian State—Just Not Inside or Right Next to Israel

“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.”

Aprinism: A Worldview

“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.’”

Putin’s Very Limited Tactical Nuclear Warfare Options

“Anticipating what a Russian nuclear attack would look like is an important first step in fashioning an appropriate response.”

When the Elites Declare War

“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.”

J.S. Mill: Equiliberal

“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.”

Chasing Immortality, Living on the Edge: A Review of “Transhuman Citizen,” the Biography of Zoltan Istvan

“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…”

You Actually Do Co-Parent with the Government, So Make It Co-Parent Better

“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.”

Kink or Worship or Both: Megan Fernandes’ “I Do Everything I’m Told”

“In invoking (and sometimes tweaking) cherished predecessors, this gently impious collection also helps refurbish form.”

Dr. Geeta Nayyar: Better Healthcare in a New Era of Technology

“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…”

Commodification in America: Old and New

“And yet, today, we continue to engage in various forms of commodifying the human person, even if they are less visibly brutal and bloody.”

On Not Responding to Email

“Henry David Thoreau, writing in 1854, remarked: ‘I never received more than one or two letters in my life…that were worth the postage.’ What would he make of the modern email inbox?”

Former Congressman Jody Hice: “Sacred Trust”

“Obviously elections are political in terms of who wins and loses, but the process should not be political.”

Review: “The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs” by David Runciman

“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

All University Protests Must Stop, Period

“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 Rhapsodic Fallacy” and Maurice Manning’s “Snakedoctor”

“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.”

Critiquing Stoicism

“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)…”

A Dangerous Partnership: the Managerial Revolution and the Immigration Revolution

“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.”

Jerry Seinfeld Understated the Death of Comedy

“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.”

College Protests and the Limits of Virtue

“That is, virtuous striving now is something that seeks to turn our social paradigm on its head.“

Nitazene: Scenes From Britain’s Struggle with a Powerful New Drug

“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.”

Too Many Excuses for Tyrants

“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.”

In Defense of the Bugmen

“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.”

Irregular Beats: The Surprising Politics of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg

“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.”

For Whom the Nobel Tolls: Tomas Tranströmer’s “The Blue House”

“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.”

Slavoj Žižek: “Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist”

“In all other religions, you have people who become atheists. Only in Christianity, God himself goes through this experience.”

What Happened to Columbia University?

“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.”

When Promoting Clean Energy, Patriotism Beats Moralizing

“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.”

Rescuing Religion from Atheism

“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.”

By the Known Rules of Ancient Liberty: A Review of Masha Karp’s “George Orwell and Russia”

“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.”

Reckoning with Medicine’s Unseemly Past

“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’?”

Lord Conrad Black: Insights from the Ancient World

“There is such a thing as progress. I am no Pollyanna, and human nature doesn’t change much, but there’s undoubtedly progress.”

The Creases Between Utterances: Jenny Xie’s “The Rupture Tense”

“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.”

Lessons from Machiavelli and Guicciardini for an Unstable World

“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.”

The Freedom to Be Religious as an Atheist

“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.”

People over Place: Reviewing “The Culture Transplant” by Garett Jones

“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.”

Sanctimony: A Political Vice from Which We Must Escape

“Watching this quasi-religious mentality migrate leftward and displace more rational, humanistic values has been painful.”

Review: “A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation” by Antón Barba-Kay

“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’s “Tap Out” and “Fixer”

“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.’”

The Jewish People Are Both Middle Eastern and European

“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.”

In Defense of TikTok

“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.”

The Age of Jihad

“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.”

What Jordan Peterson’s Conversation with Destiny Can Teach Us

“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.”

Not All Self-Immolations Are Made Equal

“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.”

A Possible Solution to the Standardized Testing Debate

“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.”

Mass Immigration and the American Nation

“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.”

Grappling with Liberalism

“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.”

America Has a Writing Problem. How Do We Solve It?

“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.”

On Arthur Sze’s “The Silk Dragon II”

“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.”

Texas and Florida Content Moderation Laws Would Open Pandora’s Box 

“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.”

What an International Environmentalist Movement Misunderstands

“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.”

Why I Don’t Rely on Hope

“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.”

What Thucydides Can Teach Us About Today’s Multi-Matrixed World

“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.”

Bianca Stone, What Is Otherwise Infinite

“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.”

Grant Havers: The Conservative Tradition in Canada

“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.”

The Politicians Who Almost Never Were

“Although these no doubt play a role, even a cursory glance at recent election results (not to mention those of the past) makes clear that variables beyond the control of the candidate are often determinative, as well as that the best man does not necessarily win.”

The Other Victims of the Surveillance State

“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.”

Social Justice Segregationism: Is Separate More Equal After All?

“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.”

The Sophistry of the New Right Activism

“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.”

Lisa Olstein’s Dream Apartment

“The Dream Apartment is no Barbie’s Dream House. It is rather an abode of opaque and backlit, sometimes hard-edged reverie.”

“Godmother of Consumer-Driven Healthcare”: An Interview with Regina Herzlinger

“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.”

Mihai Nadin: Disrupter of Science

“[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.”

Daniel A. Cox: Taking the Pulse of Gen Z

“One of the really significant differences in terms of how young people are being raised today and their formative and teens years and previous generations is how slowly they’re reaching major milestones, such as getting married [and] owning a home, the sort of signs of adulthood…”

On the Redundancy of the Terms “Right” and “Left”

“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…”

To Give Ukrainians Justice, Look to Nuremberg

“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.”

The New Killing Fields of Europe

“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.”

Taking a Second Look at Nikki Haley

“It is true that one of the most important rules in politics is that ‘You can’t lose your base,’ but it is also true that in order to win competitive elections, broadening one’s base is essential, and Ambassador Haley might be able to accomplish that.”

“The Great Awokening” and Christianity

“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 Age of Unnecessarily Complicated Academic Writing Is Over

“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.”

Young Voters Do Not Belong Inevitably to the Left

“However, outside of the contemporary United States and United Kingdom, a look at the composition of certain right-of-center political movements casts doubt on the reflexive association many hold between young people and voting for the Left.”

Collective Punishment for Gaza? No. Collateral Damage? Unfortunately, Yes 

“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.”

Slavoj Žižek: “Freedom: A Disease Without Cure”

“So you see why people are not satisfied: I don’t propose simple solutions. In my old age, I’m returning from Marx to Hegel.”

What Happened to the American Psychological Association?

“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.”

“Neoliberalism” Is a Delusion of Marxists

“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

A Warning From South Africa

“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

“Systemic Racism” Is the Biggest Conspiracy Theory of Them All

“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

Nothing to Answer for: The Fearless Art of Morrissey

“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.”

Young Americans Could Benefit From Conscription, Now More Than Ever

“Although it might not have been glamorous, my time in the military helped me through challenges that currently burden many young Americans.”

When They’ll Do Anything to Stop Him

“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

Taiwan and World War III

“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.”

Yes, January 6th Was an Insurrection

“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.”

Thomas Friedman Is at It Again

“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.”

It’s a Somber New Year for K-12 Schools

“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.”

Islam and the West: Culturally and Theologically Divided

“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.”

Against Michelle Wu’s Anti-Market Real Estate Proposal

“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?”

Woke Kids Are Speaking; Weak Adults Are Listening

“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

How KFC Gives Prisoners a Taste of Normal Life

“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.”

Richard Kemp: Israel’s Existential Campaign to Destroy Hamas

“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.”

The True Origin of Palestinian Suffering Was Not 1948

“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.”

Phyllis Chesler: Modern Feminism’s Failure to Condemn Hamas

“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.”

Beyond Profit: The Value of the Humanities

“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.’”

What Elon Musk and Bill Gates Might Have in Common

“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?”

How Scholars and Activists Have Reinvented Our Understanding of Racism

“In short, we have dogma, and from dogma, cognitive errors in reasoning inevitably ensue.”

Ireland Attempts to Silence Critics of Its Immigration Policies

“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.’”

The Legacy of Henry Kissinger

“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.”

Review: “In Defense of Civilization” by Michael R. J. Bonner

“Bonner has done a great service in reminding us what true civilization means, the cost of losing it, and how we can regain it.”

Geert Wilders: Yet Another Warning to the Center

“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.”

Wessie du Toit: When a Society Decenters Leisure

“Meaningful work is as important to life as leisure, I think. I just think that we’ve lost the balance.”

The Failure of Multiculturalism

“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.”

Excerpt: “Moral Courage: 19 Profiles of Investigative Journalists”

“To understand India’s slippery descent, one should read the reportage of Neha Dixit, a 37-year-old New Delhi-based freelance journalist.”

When a Different Standard of Morality Applies to the “Oppressed”

“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.”

The Press Mustn’t Ignore America’s Gang Problem

“There is a formula—unfortunately, I have noticed—when it comes to many in the reality-denying national press: Make a few accurate micro-points but use them to arrive at a conclusion that no reasonable person should believe.”

Excerpt: “Getting Elected Is the Easy Part”

“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.”

In Reply to Beckeld: What Is “the West” Nowadays?

“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

Coming to Terms with a Lifetime of Trauma While in Prison

“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.”

What One Must Understand about the New Israel War

“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.”

The Problems with Diversity Training

“This is an admirable aim, but there is just one big problem: Diversity training is not working.”

You Tread on My Dreams

“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.”

Why I Left the Democratic Party to Support Donald Trump

“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.”

Patrick Deneen: “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future”

“The so-called conservative movement of the 1980s was anything but conservative.”

What Karl Marx Can Teach Us about Abortion

“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?”

Excerpt: “Red Hands”

“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.”

Dr. Cheryl Green: What’s Ailing Young Women

“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.”

Reflections on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Vision of the American Dream

“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.”

Urgently Reconsidering the Doctrine of Multiculturalism

“As is sadly often the case, it is only when an issue becomes overwhelmingly acute or when it is too late to correct course, that those once derided as alarmists are dutifully acknowledged to have been correct all along.”

The Media’s Blood Libel of Israel

“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.”

How Jesse Singal Became the Symbol of Polarization on the Left

“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.”

Harvard Needs to Be Consistent on the Virtue of Free Speech

“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.”

Barbarians in Our Midst

“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.”

Black Lives Matter’s Shameful Response to the Attacks on Israel

“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…”

Mourning for Palestinians and Israelis—and the Possibility of Peace Ended

“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.”

As the Violence Escalates, We Mustn’t Forget the Role of Iran

“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.”

War in Israel, War in the West

“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.”

Iran Invades Israel Through Hamas

“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 Collapse of the Kabul Foreign Aid Bazaar

“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.”

From Town Bloody Hall to 2023: A Tale of Two Debates on Women’s Liberation

“Avoiding these truly current, red hot issues, the women speak past each other.”

Understanding Americans’ Rampant Dissatisfaction with Healthcare

“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.”

Incurious: George and the Postcolonialists

“Schwartz-DuPre is dedicated to putting an end to the idea that Curious George is nothing more than an amusing story.”

On the Incoherence of “Decolonizing” the Academy

“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.”

With Action, Gran Turismo Crosses the Finish Line. With Drama, Not So Much

“On the basis of viscerality alone, Gran Turismo is worth the price of admission for the two-hour cruise along.”

Samuel G. Freedman: What a Young Hubert Humphrey Can Teach Us

“Humphrey’s insurgency at the convention basically lashed Truman to the mast of [Humphrey’s] own civil rights agenda. And desegregating the armed forces was arguably the single most important civil rights cause of that moment in time.”

Un Carro Triste: A Melancholic Car

“We must take the language/by surprise;/seal its every utterance/with a kiss or tear…”

Matt Johnson: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left”

“There really hasn’t been anybody like him since he passed…This is why there are these long compilations of ‘Hitchslaps’ on YouTube. It’s why most of the tributes to him focus on his rhetorical prowess—and just his brilliance on the debate stage.”

A Practical Approach to Career Education for K-12 Students

“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.”

Paul Gottfried: Understanding the Rich History of Paleoconservatism

The Russo-Ukrainian War: A Very Simple Conflict

“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.”

What Socrates Can Teach Us about Political Discourse

“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.’”

Checking in on “Woke Europe”

“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.”

Aliens and America’s Crisis in Meaning

“What gives? Why are people so eager to believe wild tales despite a lack of hard, clear evidence?”

Mark Goldblatt and the Art of Persuasion

“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?”

The Atheist Movement Has One Job

“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.”

Doing the Woke

“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.”

Plato and the Pursuit of Justice

“Those who do not make justice the central concern for Plato are not talking about Plato at all.”

Could AI Become Angry at Humans for Causing Environmental Destruction?

“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.”

Clay Routledge: Breaking Ground in Psychology, Outside of the Academy

“Regulating your own emotions is something most people are capable of doing…It doesn’t require you constantly expressing [a problem], thinking about it, [and] sharing it with everyone…There’s something about not fixating too much on your own problems and really dwelling on them but, instead, doing s

Why “Longtermism” Needs Anti-Aging Science to Succeed

“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.”

Is the “Convenience Economy” Worth the Pain It Can Inflict?

“We live in a world where every conceivable product or service is instantly accessible.”

On Wimbledon Champion Vic Seixas Reaching the Century Mark

“As he reaches the century mark, Elias Victor Seixas Jr. deserves our respect and gratitude for leading a long and extraordinary life.”

Stop Fearing the Best-Case Scenario with Artificial Intelligence

“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.”

Letter to the Editor: In Defense of Rereading

“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.”

Shawne Merriman: From the NFL to “Xtreme Fighting”

“One thing I’ve learned [from] being in combat sports is that it’s internationally watched everywhere, in every country.”

Should You Read the Same Book Twice?

“Amid this exchange about the importance of recentering the essential literature of our history, I posed to Mac Donald a question that has been on my mind since my days as a student at The Haverford School: Should one make a habit of reading the same book twice?”

Excerpt: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left”

“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.”

Heidegger and Nazism: The Philosophy of Being and the Politics of National Socialism

“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’

Black War Cinema and the Representation Paradox

“For all of their insistence on cultural revolution, progressives are not yet ready to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

Lawrence M. Krauss: The Fundamental Questions of Science

“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.”

The Ever Tenuous Coalition That Is the Left

“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.”

Waller Newell: The Characteristics of Tyranny

“We will be nothing like the way we are now. It will be like a night and day transformation. And it always does require violence because, as you said, that class or race enemy that stands in the way of future bliss simply has to be gotten rid of.”

Confessions of a Beautiful Soul

“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.”

Review: “Crassus: The First Tycoon” by Peter Stothard

“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.”

The Many Casualties of Hazing

“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.”

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar: Iraq, 20 Years After the Fall of Baghdad

“There is a lot of hope. Every time I go there and meet with the new generation, I think that they definitely want for their country to be a successful one. And that’s the conversation in Iraq. Most people have now forgotten about the war.”

How Do They Still Have Jobs?

“By any normal definition of the role of a Cabinet member, Secretary Mayorkas would have either resigned voluntarily or have had his resignation requested by the President.”

How Ideological Addiction Drives Extremism and Undermines Civil Discourse

“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.”

Democrats’ Endless Anti-Institutionalism

“However, it has now become clear that once in power, Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, have largely sought to remove any impediment to realizing their agenda regardless of how time-honored or important a given tradition might be.”

Excerpt: “Heal Your Daughter”

“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

Review: “Uncommon Wrath” by Josiah Osgood

“[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.”

Death Is Not Inevitable: Sitting Down with Zoltan Istvan

“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.”

The Stale Defeatism of the “Chomsky/Carlin Thesis”

“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.”

On Literary Science and the Bounds of Knowledge

“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.”

Gen Z and a New Relationship to Work

“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 Domestic Realists Chart an Agenda to Go Beyond Education’s Culture Wars

“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.“

Tabia Lee: What Happened at De Anza College

“There [are] ways to teach about the past that are humanistic; that are agency-focused; and that are focused on generative things rather than destructive things—rather than dismantling things and tearing things down with no plan forward of what happens after the destruction.”

Do They Really Believe in Eugenics?

“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.”

Review: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left” by Matt Johnson

“[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.”

Review: “The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On ‘Liberal’ as an Adjective” by Michael Walzer

“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.”

Elon Musk’s Bad Take on Longevity

“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.”

A Once Unnecessary Reminder: Criticism Produces Good Works

“My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending…”

Prelude to War: Lessons from the Second Spanish Republic

“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.”

A Government Is More Than Capable of Addressing Multiple Crises At Once

“So, to be clear, I largely favor reducing the power of the very federal government being discussed in this piece, but that is quite different from arguing that, at its current scope and scale, it is somehow incapable of addressing multiple priorities at once.”

Would Socrates Be Anti-Woke? A Stoic Critique of Identity Politics

“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.”

John Cribb: What We Can Learn from Abraham Lincoln

“All of the sudden, I was on the phone with Mike Pence… ‘I just finished Old Abe last night, and I had to track you down and tell you how much I loved it, and it’s the best book about Lincoln I’ve ever read.’ And, for ten minutes, he just wanted to talk about Lincoln.”

Review: Spencer Klavan’s “How To Save The West”

“Being a classicist and student of Greek philosophy, Klavan turns to his education to solve these philosophical dilemmas.”

Boris Johnson’s Most Fundamental Failure: Immigration

“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.’”

Review: Waller Newell’s “Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger”

“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

Internet Censorship: Democrats, Remember You Could Be Out of Power One Day

“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

A Happy Retirement: A High Bar for High Achievers

“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?”

Who Will Fix a Broken Internet Landscape Before It’s Too Late?

“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.”

Marxism Has Been No Deliverer from Ethnic Strife

“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.”

How a “National Divorce” Could Actually Unite Americans

“Far from giving up on the American project, national divorce aims to renew and deepen our ability to live in harmony together.”

Review: Carl Trueman’s “Strange New World”

“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.”

From Tanks to Think Tanks

“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 Reply to Robert Jensen: The Folly of the Nazi Comparison

“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.”

Lance Morrow: “The Noise of Typewriters”

“You could read my book…as a kind of homage to the magazine.”

Review: Bowen Blair’s “A Force for Nature”

“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.”

Republicans Should Stop Pandering about Charter Schools

“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.”

How Enmity Imperils Liberal Democracy

“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.”

Arguments Against School Choice Presume We Have Options

“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?”

Stop Pretending All Cultures Are the Same

“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.”

The Value in Reading Byung-Chul Han

“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.”

The Case for Retiring “Confederate Heroes Day”

“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.”

Multiculturalism Is Madness

“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.”

Free Speech: An Eternal Struggle

“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.”

Philadelphia Schools Have Replaced Critical Thinking with “Criticality”

“Like so many school districts in a post-George Floyd America, Philadelphia’s is rushing to embrace anti-racism.”

Understanding Why Netanyahu Won

“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.”

We Are All Socialists

“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.’”

What Is a Human?

“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.”

Work Is About Knowledge That Pays and Relationships That Are Priceless

“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).”

The Boredom of War

“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.”

Mary Harrington: On a Philosophy of Limits

“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.”

Abortion and the Mythic Mother

“They do not realize good mothering comes from fearlessness. Few things promote more fear than being deprived of control of one’s own body.”

On the Inevitability of Racism

“As psychoanalysis long ago has perspicaciously demonstrated, prejudice is universal to human nature and is evolutionarily informed.”

COVID-19 and the Banality of Evil

“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.”

Russia Will Pursue Desperate Strategies After It Exhausts Its Missile Supply

“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.”

The First Metaverse Nation

“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.”

Review: Maurice Glasman’s “Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good”

“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.’”

William Jacobson: What Happened to Campus?

“I’m not optimistic at all that campuses can be reformed. They certainly cannot be reformed from within…Academia is gone. It is a monoculture. It is a hermetically sealed bubble.”

No, Let’s Not: Perpetrators of Pandemic Authoritarianism Cannot Be Forgiven

“It must become embarrassing to admit one ever supported uninformed and nonconsensual participation in a medical experiment or mass house arrest and coerced isolation.”

Fetterman v. Oz (And a Love Letter to a Conflicted Pennsylvania)

“Not everything stays the same, and, in many cases, it probably should not.”

George Psalmanazar and the Extreme Art of Imposture

“Many of us also like impostors because, deep down, we understand that to exist only matter-of-factly, without fiction, would be intolerable.”

The Complexity Paradox

“We are great at handling complexity until things get really, really complex.”

Review: James I. Porter’s “Homer: The Very Idea”

“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.’”

Putin’s Nuclear Threats Show that Jacinda Adern is Wrong About Nuclear Weapons

“[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.”

Iran’s Uprising: Precursor to a New Revolution

“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.”

Why I Support Australian Republicanism

“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.”

No Easy Answers: Facing Ecological Crises Honestly

“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.”

The NatCons v. Ukraine

“At least Hazony recognizes that the democratic world should defend Ukraine. Other nationalists do not agree.”

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb: The Activist Class Takes Aim at Medicine

“It’s career ending, really…Anybody who tries to [speak out] will be shunned.”

Jordan Peterson’s “A Conservative Manifesto” Is Not Conservative

“It is instead Hayekian liberalism delivered with a Calvinist grimness.”

Review: Slavoj Žižek’s “Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed”

“Combining inanity with compelling anecdote, idiocy with sensible instruction, Žižek addresses himself to the ‘mess we’re in.’”

Heather Mac Donald: Medicine Under Fire

“Scientific conferences are being determined based on sex and race. It’s going to slow down medical progress, and it is also going to put physicians in the ER and the operating room who are not the top qualified.”

The Joy of the Knife: On Autoimmune Responses in Politics

“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.”

The Second Elizabeth, a Life Appreciated

“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

Canada and the Many Problems with Euthanasia

“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.”

No Longer Running: An Interview with Felicia Heath

“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

The Queen: 1926-2022

“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.”

Review: “People Love Dead Jews” by Dara Horn

“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.”

Moving Clockwise around Easton County

“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.”

Review: Philip Freeman’s “Hannibal”

“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.”

Friendships as Pathways to Upward Income Mobility

“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.”

Salman Rushdie: The Antithesis to Moral Cowardice

“Leading by example, Rushdie refuses to be intimidated into silence.”

Interview: Brad Lips, CEO of Atlas Network

“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.”

Review: Eden Collinsworth’s “What the Ermine Saw”

“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.”

British Conservatism Is Doomed

“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.”

Holmesburg: Calling for an Apology from the City of Philadelphia

“My father’s skin is in those pharmaceutical companies.”

When It Comes to Iran, Say “No” to Appeasement

“Without an enemy to demonize, the Islamic Republic would have to answer for its many and grave failures.”

Review: Riley Black’s “The Last Days of the Dinosaurs”

“This is a story about the meek inheriting the Earth.”

Yoram Hazony: National Conservatism in a Midterm Year

“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…”

Review: Matthew Continetti’s “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism”

“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

Excerpt: Jason Pack’s “Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder”

“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

Review: China Miéville’s “A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto”

“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

Peter Buxtun, the Hero of Tuskegee, 50 Years On

“In later interviews, Buxtun would shrug off the accolades he later received for his whistleblowing. ‘I don’t want to be embarrassed by an oversupply of compliments. I am who I am,’ he would tell bioethicist Carl Elliott in 2017.”

NBC New York’s Jen Maxfield: Telling the Rest of the Story

“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.”

Stephen Hicks: Challenges in Contemporary Education

“The ten out of a thousand entrepreneurial ideas that are amazing—we’ll find out what those are. And they will be the ones that dominate [in] the next generation.”

Review: Barry Strauss’s “The War That Made the Roman Empire”

“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…”

Why Is This Not Enough?

“Jackson was out walking on his property in Kansas one spring day and called Jensen with a simple question: ‘Why is this not enough?’”

The Acute Danger of Iran’s Belligerence

“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.”

Being Critical of Enlightenment Triumphalism Isn’t Always Wrong

“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.”

If the Horseshoe Fits: Illiberalism Across the Political Spectrum

“While far-right ideologues make no secret of their illiberalism, their counterparts on the Left tend to cloak theirs in the language of equality.”

Will Marshall: Where Are the Moderates?

“I don’t see a full, vigorous pivot by this President (and this White House) back toward the themes and approaches that Joe Biden articulated in his 2020 presidential race.”

The Oversimplification of the American Founding

“Devotion to reading non-politicized history and putting it into context is necessary and something to which we should diligently commit.”

On Finland’s Memorandum with Turkey

“Finns should decide their own fate. Their pact with Turkey signals the opposite.”

The Quarrel within American Conservatism

“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.”

Limits in a World That Erases Them

“There is a paradox to life that an acceptance of limits, borders, and boundaries can be the most liberating thing of all.”

Young Americans for Liberty: An Interview with CEO Lauren Daugherty

“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.”

What Type of Religion Is Wokeness?

“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.”

The Greatness of Ronald Reagan

“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.”

Review: “Conservatism: A Rediscovery” by Yoram Hazony

“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.”

A Decent Level for All: Economic Justice and Universal Basic Income

“Instituting UBI could help us to transcend traditional distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor that have shaped poverty policy for far too long.”

Review: “Obedience is Freedom” by Jacob Phillips

“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.”

Cancel Culture and the Tolerance of the Natural Aristocracy

“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.”

Why We’ll Always Be Talking about George Orwell

“It is a shame, though, that whenever Orwell reappears it is almost always in the context of his dystopian political novel.”

On Cultural Poverty

“Similarly, we should understand the notion of greater cultural wealth in connection with greater cultural equality.”

Like in Ukraine, We Must Recognize Iranians’ Right to Resistance

“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.”

The Great American School Tragedy: The Coronavirus and Students

“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.”

Let Them Fight: The Case for Leaving Syria

“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.”

Review: “Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel” by Domenico Losurdo

“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.”

Narrative Ethics: A Modest Proposal

“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.”

Karl Marx’s Theory of Primitive Accumulation Is Wrong

“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.”

On “The Diversity Paradox”

“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.”

Why the Left Is Accepting Finnish NATO Membership

“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.”

Review: “Saving Yellowstone” by Megan Kate Nelson

“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.”

Review: “Don’t Burn This Country” by Dave Rubin

“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.”

When Anti-Israel Bias Finds Its Way into Coverage Choices

“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.”

To Win Wars, Cut the U.S. Defense Budget

“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.”

“Father Stu”: A Story of Hardship and Redemption

“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.”

Harris Poll’s Will Johnson: Why Polling Still Matters

“At the end of the day, it’s a pretty simple business that we’re in: We want to understand culture, we want to understand consumers’ thinking, and we’re just trying to answer why’s.”

The Term Woke Is Losing Its Punch

“It was a linguistic indication that revolutionary consciousness had made ‘the long march through the institutions.’”

The Pandemic Is a Chaos Narrative 

“Chaos narratives, however, defy our narrative expectations. There is no order, sense, or logical chronology but, instead, suffering without an apparent purpose or meaning.”

Woke Culture Isn’t Nihilistic

“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.”

Do David Brooks and the New Right Share Common Threads?

“The general public—and not the elite—is, in fact, the primary obstacle to the New Right’s political project.”

Why Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China Are Cozy Bedfellows

“Why is there this close bond? Why does China do nothing in response to President Putin’s bloodlust?”

The Many Problems with Race Reparations in the United States (Part Two)

“The analyses attempting to quantify reparations, cited above, will likely encounter strong and ongoing resistance, if only based on the price tag alone.”

Rediscovering “Third Place” Friendships in a Post-Pandemic World

“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.”

The Irresistible Passion of Peter Paul Rubens

“Rubens is my favorite artist, in part, because his paintings capture the totality of the human condition in its fleshy, pathological, and metaphysical realities.”

Review: Michael Millerman’s “Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida, Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political”

“However, its veneration of far-right thinking (sometimes qualified but always in the most intellectualized vein) undermines its claims to genuine seriousness.”

Yemen and the Weaponization of Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid

“A country on the brink well before war arrived, Yemen’s humanitarian crisis has been labeled the worst of our generation.”

Review: Bruce Clark’s “Athens: City of Wisdom”

“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.”

The Many Problems with Race Reparations in the United States

“What accounts for the gap between scholars and activists who advocate reparations and broad public resistance to the idea?”

The Pandemic and the Scientific Gnostics 

“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.’”

Nuclear Iran—Why the Islamic Republic Is Not the Actor We Think It Is

“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.”

Blame Putin, Sure, But Also Blame Biden

“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.”

A Better Way to Promote Equality of Opportunity Through Education

“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.”

​​A Millennial Technologist’s View on Jaron Lanier’s “Who Owns the Future?”

“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.”

Fifty Years of “The Godfather”

It has been 50 years since The Godfather was widely released in the United States on March 24, 1972.

A Response to Cathy Young: Let’s Be More Dispassionate When Discussing Ukraine

“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.”

Neither Putin Nor Russia Are “Based”

“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.”

Drivel’s Advocate: Why Nonsense Is Necessary

“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.”

Gods and Beasts: An Aristotelian View of the “Corona-Years”

“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

Kids and the Coronavirus: Unintended Consequences Two Years Later

“So, we have been living in two pandemics, but only one has dominated our public health discussions.”

Review: Roosevelt Montás’s “Rescuing Socrates”

“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.”

Children of Men: Are Birth Rates Declining Due to Anti-natalism or Economics?

“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.”

Ukraine and “The Fog of War”

“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.”

Ukraine: Reality Bites

“Now, we face a second reminder of reality. First plague, now war has come to Europe, the biggest since 1945.”

Stephen Hicks: Lessons from the Canadian Trucker Protest

“Every generation, we need to learn and relearn how thin the line can be between having a basically liberal society and a basically authoritarian society.”

Dwight Evans: The VICTIM Act and Combating Crime

“No one is exempt from being a victim of some sort of crime. And it’s very appropriate that I use that title [of victim] in terms of the VICTIM Act.”

Bring Back “Bums”…and Then Kick the Bums Out

“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.”

Dante’s Divine Valentine

“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.”

Right-Liberalism Won’t Cut It

“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.”

Dr. Fauci and Our Pandemic of Distrust

“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

What Whoopi Goldberg Got Wrong about the Holocaust—and Why It Matters

“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.’”

No to Money for Hostages

“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.”

If the Pendulum Doesn’t Swing Back

“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.”

Review: Arnold Weinstein’s “The Lives of Literature”

“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.”

Equinox

“Yet the cold does not rest there.”

Pat McCrory: How to Get a Handle on the Crime Surge

“My wife and I used to go vacation in San Francisco. We don’t anymore…This is what’s headed toward the rest of the nation.”

The Relevance of Tolkien’s Unfinished Work “The New Shadow”

“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.”

James Lindsay: “Counter Wokecraft” and Responses to Institutional Takeover

“You have to have a steel spine in your liberalism. ‘What kind of government did you create, sir?’ ‘We created a republic, if [you] can keep it.’ The ‘if you can keep it’ part requires a steel spine.”

In Reply to “Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream”

“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.”

The Great American Disconnect

“A disconnect ensues: Even as the American public has indeed polarized, our elected representatives have fled to the extremes to an even greater degree.”

Finland, Russia, and the NATO Question: An Interview with Risto Penttilä

” I think that we are, as always, pragmatic idealists.”

Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream

“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.”

Peter Boghossian: On the Purpose of Education

“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.”

Remembering Sir Roger Scruton, Two Years On

“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.”

When It Comes to Medical Aid-in-Dying, We Must Protect the Vulnerable

“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.”

Magatte Wade: The Power of Free Markets for Africa

“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.”

Against David Brooksism

“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.’”

The Failed Attempt to Rescue Marx’s Labor Theory of Value

“Without the notion of socially necessary labor time, nothing in Marx’s value form or overall theory of exploitation makes sense.”

The Power of Facing: A Review of “Christopher Hitchens” by Ben Burgis

“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.’”

Who Will Guard the Guardians: Dilemmas of Policing

“Policing needs to be seen as a profession to whose ranks people of every class might plausibly aspire.”

Frank Vogl: Understanding the Kleptocrats and Their Enablers

“Too often, people think of corruption as something that happens somewhere else: in Russia, in authoritarian regimes.”

What Karl Marx Got Wrong About Value

“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.”

Editor’s Choice: The Best Interviews of 2021

Here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.

Why I Oppose the JCPOA

“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.”

Editor’s Choice: The Best Articles of 2021

“As is tradition at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite Merion West articles of this past year.”

Video: Merion West Co-Founders Speak at Alma Mater

Henri Mattila and Erich Prince tell the story of Merion West.

The Material Roots of Wokeness

“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.”

Sean Spicer: The Steele Dossier and “Radical Nation”

“I got the call on January 10th [2017] from CNN and then BuzzFeed about them running with this hoax. I pointed out at the time that it was wrong. I could demonstrably prove it was wrong. And yet, they stuck by it…”

From Libertarianism to National Conservatism

“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.”

Keeping Wounds Green

“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.”

Excerpt: “Setting the Bar”

“I pedal away with an all-too-familiar question bouncing around my head: ‘What are we doing to these kids?’”

Excerpt: “Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency”

“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.”

Is Ovid Still Worth Reading?

“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.”

The Queens on the Throne of Kings

“Presiding over a declining empire is more arduous than presiding over one that is rising.”

America “Un-tied”

“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.”

Anne Kim: The AP Exam and the Standardized Testing Debate

“I think the downside of going test-optional, the downside of ignoring what assessments tell you, means that you might end up ignoring the underlying structural problems and never fixing the inequities.”

“Is Nothing Sacred?”

“And this is exacerbated by a situatedness in a contemporary culture that has removed the sort of guardrails that would tell a would-be troublemaker that to defile something like a grave or a tribute to those lost in a mass casualty terrorist attack is unacceptable…”

Libya, Syria, and the Future of Intervention

“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.”

My Generation Is Afraid to Live

“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.”

A Question for Frances Haugen: Who Decides?

“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?”

What Punk Rock Has Taught Me about the Radical Left

“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.”

“Heroism” and the “World Soul” at Jena

“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: A Man Possessed

“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.”

The Mirage of Media Objectivity

“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.”

It’s Time to Move Away from Outward Markers of Jewish Belonging 

“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.”

Review: “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”

“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.”

Toward a Politics of Reconciliation: John Sayles’s “Lone Star,” after 25 Years

“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.”

Andrew Sullivan Invites Us All Out Onto the Limb

“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.”

On the Eve of His Comeback, James Bond Resonates for a Reason

“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.”

If Anything Is Sacred, the Human Body Is Not It

“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.”

Flyover Blues: The Enduring Relevance of F. Scott Fitzgerald 

“One hundred years after Fitzgerald’s great novels, we are living in the same world as Nick Carraway, Amory Blaine, and Jay Gatsby.”

Review: “The Memeing of Mark Fisher”

“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…”

“A Certain Terror”: A White Male Perspective on Being an Ally

“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?”

The Political Import of Jonathan Rauch’s “The Constitution of Knowledge”

“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.”

she asked me to get her a green card

“Although I would have liked to have taken a photograph, my camera was full, and they’d already walked away toward a shop with a sign advertising Calzones.”

A Culture War Worth the Fight

“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…”

Why We Should Love Democracy, with a Few Caveats

“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.”

What Motivates Retail Cryptocurrency Investors?

“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.”

The Psychology of Critical Social Justice

“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.”

Afghanistan and the West’s Failure

“Whether America likes it or not, the unipolar moment, Pax Americana, is over.”

Can Australians Trust the Americans after Kabul?

“As a result of this debacle, it now seems reasonable to question whether Washington is competent enough to assure Australia’s security.”

Fixing California’s Housing Crisis: An Interview with Nolan Gray

“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.”

It’s Time for a Two-State Solution…for America

“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?”

Politics: Not an End in Itself

“As such, politics has eclipsed its primary purpose—namely, to provide the means by which people can seek out and, in turn, live good lives, lives that have nothing to do with politics.”

City of Thugs

“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.”

Hiding the Ball on Critical Race Theory

“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.”

Excerpt: “The End of the End of History”

“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.”

Tunisia and Egypt: Two Tests for Biden and Democracy

“The Biden administration has not yet decided whether to call Saied’s power grab a coup.”

How Things End

“As Joshua Foa Dienstag reminds us, the essential tragedy of being human (or being anything, for that matter) stems from the passage of time.”

Letter to the Editor: In Reply to “Buy Out the Settlers”

“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?”

The Eviction Ban: A Case Study in Congressional Dysfunction

“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.”

Unleashing the Hounds Upon America

“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?”

The Burden of Choice 

“But, if I have learned anything, it is that choice is best when it is counterweighted by a serious moral framework.”

Ranked-Choice Voting: Technocracy Run Amok

“20 years of RCV in San Francisco has neither moderated the city’s politics nor produced any novel outcomes worth replicating.”

Withdrawal Symptoms

“Dear doves and hawks and other feathered brethren: It is already over.”

When Tolerance Goes Too Far

“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.”

Kay Hymowitz: The Devaluation of Higher Education

“This brings in the status issue again, doesn’t it? Because there are so many careers that people just wouldn’t consider because how would they tell their friends?”

Propaganda Art

“Yet now the Enlightenment too, like ancient thought before, finds its enduring legacy threatened by a fundamentalist competitor.”

Edward J. Watts: Dissecting the Rhetoric of Decline

“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.”

UFOs, Zombies, and Our Cyborg Futures

“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.”

From Revolting Masses to Revolting Elites

“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.’”

Review: Robin DiAngelo’s “Nice Racism”

“One thing that sets Nice Racism apart from her other books is the depth of its cynicism.”

Kai Whiting: Clearing up Misconceptions about Stoicism

“The other fans that have a dangerously inaccurate idea about what it means to be Stoic are the ‘Broics.’”

Liberal Democracy Lives on the Page, Not the Screen

“Here, I would like to reflect on the optimal mechanisms for sustaining the rational mindset that undergirds liberal democracy.”

Are Cities Heading for a Fiscal Crunch?

“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. “

In Reply to Tomasz Witkowski: To Foster a Culture of Common Sense

“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.”

The Power of Stories to Tear Us Apart

“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.’”

Why Porn? Why This Porn? Why So Little Concern?

“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.”

The Press and Violence against Asian-Americans 

“It seems as though they will do anything to avoid actually backing approaches that would begin to remedy these problems, all of which start with taking a harder-line on those who routinely commit violent crimes.”

A Rocking Chair with a Fan? Parallels with Psychotherapy

“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.”

Patriotism: The Supreme Political Virtue

“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.”

Review: Louis Menand’s “The Free World”

“In many ways, the book also reads as a eulogy to a liberal, liberalizing, and internationalist America.”

The Two-faces of Classical Music: Criticism Good, Bad, and Ugly

“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.”

In Support of Snobbery

“The work of totalitarianism takes a lot of muscle, but most of it is done by just one: the wooden tongue.”

Gov. Brian Kemp: How to Stand up to Corporate Pressure

“We lost the All-Star Game, but I think we won the battle because that fight has moved to other states now because we are on the right side of this issue, and we push back so hard.”

An Open Letter to The Rumpus

“…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.’”

Review: Chris Bail’s “Breaking the Social Media Prism”

“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.”

Sohrab Ahmari and Michael Brendan Dougherty on Reclaiming Faith, Family, and Nation

“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.”

The Greatest of the Forgotten Conservative Thinkers

“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.”

Mary Harrington: Family Formation in the 2020s

“The long-term problem there is that if your feminism becomes associated with anti-natalism, sooner or later it’s going to trigger a backlash, and that backlash is not going to look very nice for women.”

Biden’s Tax Policies Would Hamstring Economic Recovery and Social Mobility

“The recovery itself is likely to be the largest job creator this decade.”

Sir Roger Scruton’s Wagner

“Scruton loved Wagner. The two were a match made in heaven, or hell, depending on your perspective and appreciation of irony.”

In a Future Driven by Artificial Intelligence, “Career Adjacency” Offers Humans Agency  

“However trendy this new semantic shift, the word is more relevant than ever: “Career adjacency” is now the future of human work.”

Buy Out the Settlers

“The United States can offer a very innovative solution to a seemingly intractable conflict: Pay Israel to withdraw its settlers.”

The Cult of Democracy

“The bigger the election’s participation, the bigger the mandate, and so universal suffrage elections have grown into unwieldy, ugly beasts.”

Beware of False Humanists

“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 Two-faces of Classical Music: the Bureaucratic Tyranny of Music Schools

“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.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Immigration, Islam, and Christopher Hitchens

“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.”

How the “New Atheists” Deradicalized Me

“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…”

Stoicism Offers an Antidote to Cancel Culture

“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.”

To Prevent Politics and Reality from Breaking Up, Keep It Local

“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.”

Review: Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman’s “Backsliding”

“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.”

A Brit’s Friendly Advice to American Conservatives

“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.”

Time To Get Vaccinated…Against Propaganda

“To these people, lockdown has been a raging success. To everybody else, it has been an unmitigated disaster.”

Lessons from Labour’s 2021 Election Defeat

“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.”

George Orwell’s Vision for a Socialist Britain: What Did He Actually Want?

“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.”

George W. Bush’s “Out of Many, One”: A Message of Gratitude

“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.”

Is Inflation Finally Going to Be a Problem?

“Finally, the mere expectation of inflation can actually bring it to pass.”

What “Star Wars” Taught Me about War, Liberty, and Human Nature

“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.”

Open Carry in the Time of the Pandemic

“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.”

Antje Ellermann: What Drives a Country’s Openness to Immigration

“Interest group pressure typically opens up immigration.”

James Burnham: Foreseeing Our Managerial Domination (Part II)

“Ultimately, in order to thwart the managerial system, the American conservative movement needs to co-opt the managerial system.”

Virgil’s War and Peace

“Two millennia later, we are still warring over the meaning of Virgil’s Aeneid.”

The Facebook Oversight Board: How to Make It Actually Work

“Accordingly, we believe that Facebook could streamline its appeals process by following the guidelines suggested above.”

Independent Wealth: a Prerequisite for Speaking Up?

“This point deserves all the more consideration today, at a time in recent history that has become uniquely critical of concentrated wealth, both of the inherited and earned variety.”

A Big, Bad Word

“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.”

Review: John Boehner’s “On the House”

“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.”

James Burnham: Foreseeing Our Managerial Domination

“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: the First Western Man

“Odysseus is the first recognizably Western man.”

A Brief History of Nothing (Part IV): Wars of the Spirit

“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.”

Elena Thérèse-Rose: Making Catholicism Shareable (Especially on the Web)

“Secondly, I’d say good advice is to gain familiarity with the saints and to perhaps gain some friends among the saints because often they are the best examples.”

Review: Jamal Greene’s “How Rights Went Wrong”

“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.”

Why We’ve Committed Ourselves to Fighting Online Censorship

“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.”

DEI: a Trojan Horse for Critical Social Justice in Science

“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.”

Preparing for the Work Only Humans Can Do

“Merisotis has written extensively about higher education and the future of work, but Human Work is a departure from much of his past writing.”

Penn’s Imprisoned Black “Guinea Pigs” Deserve an Apology and Reparations

“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.”

Growing Up with the Intellectual Dark Web

“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.”

Is the National Debt Finally Going to Be a Problem?

“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.”

In Every Time and Every Place: the Political Nuance of “Legend of Galactic Heroes”

“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.”

Where Race and Language Meet

“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.”

Buried Treasure

“Dad never searched for buried treasure again. He instead bought lottery tickets, entered contests online, and invested in a million dinar after Iraq fell…”

Understanding the Mind of a Rioter

“This tendency to equate nuanced thinking and nonviolence with a lack of political conviction is typical of radicals.”

When They Say Abortion and Capital Punishment Are One and the Same

“One cannot help but wonder if this is little more than a tactic adopted by supporters of abortion to seek to discredit pro-life activists by implying that their entire worldview rests on a contradiction.”

How “Ms .45” and Zoë Lund Paved Abel Ferrara’s Way

“In the end, these are movies about redemption and what it means to be redeemed, whatever the struggle in getting there.”

Everybody’s Getting the Filibuster—and the Senate—All Wrong

“But let us be clear: It is not fair to claim that the filibuster is a ‘relic of Jim Crow,’ either.”

Rialpolitik: The New Iranian Dealmakers

“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.”

The Civic Moment

“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.”

Knowing Which “Hill to Die On”

“Idealists, in order to change the systems in which they exist, must usually remain in that system.”

Age Quod Agis

“From Saint Ignatius, this short phrase’s message is straightforward yet powerful: Do what you are doing.”

Joe Biden: the New Face for Much of the Same on Immigration

“Democrats have long gotten away with murder this way, shaking migrant hands in public view while mercilessly oppressing them out of sight.”

When We’ve Stopped Reading

“By sheer accident, one man in this stupefied future learns how to read.”

Review: Michael Shnayerson’s “Bugsy Siegel”

“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.”

Is Joe Biden the Future of Liberalism? Let’s Hope So

“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…”

The Politicization of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”

“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.”

Third Wave

“The statistics were/like our scores—and we wanted/to lead the boards…”

Flexible Government Is Good Government

“When to allow discretion on the part of public servants is not an easy question to answer.”

Is Gen Z Really So Different?

“Coming of age in the 1990s, the state of the world seemed every bit as dire to me as it does to many ‘Zoomers.’”

Local Decision-Makers and Keeping Kids Active During the Pandemic

“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.”

Europe’s Descent into Wokeness

“In Austria, for example, police have shot a dozen people since 2008; none of them were black.”

Let’s Make the Founders Less Unique

“If our halls of power are rife with mini Aaron Burrs, what does that say about us?”

Is Jordan Peterson Doomed by Liberalism Itself?

“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…”

Confessions of a High School English Teacher

“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.”

Robby Soave and What a Libertarian Is to Do

“Soave’s new book, Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future, will be published on September 28th…”

It’s Time for the Draft, with a Twist

“‘They say the great equalizer is death, but bootcamp is a close second.’”

Dawn in Pennsylvania

“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.”

Why James Bond Is a Positive Role Model for Young Americans

“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?”

Review: Jan Swafford’s “Mozart: The Reign of Love”

“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.”

Who Qualifies for a Second Chance?

“Can their good works ever balance out any of the harm they have caused?”

Germany’s Been Down the Road to Serfdom; Now, China Is Doing the Same

“Like 20th century Germany, the PRC’s embrace of socialism, nationalism, and the worst elements of collectivism have resulted in unspeakable horrors.”

Conservatives Are Getting Lost in “Ideas”

“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.”

Nicholas Kristof Discusses “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope”

“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.”

When John F. Kennedy Saved the World (Part II)

“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 Capitol and Democracy Both Qualify as “Sacred”

“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.”

Robert Orlando: Bending Genre in Filmmaking

“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.”

A Brief History of Nothing (Part III): From Dada, to Dachau, to Davos

“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.”

Review: “The Klondike Bake-Oven Deaths”

“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.”

James Madison, Greg Weiner, and What to Do about the Filibuster

“Patience ‘is the central constitutional virtue—and it is, by all signs, a lost one.’”

What Ortega y Gasset and Orwell Both Foresaw

“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.”

When John F. Kennedy Saved the World

“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.”

Taking an Oath upon the Constitution, Rather than the Bible

“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.”

The Moral Philosophy of Plutarch

“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.”

When Reading about Abraham Lincoln, in 2021

“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.”

David French Talks “Divided We Fall”

“Well, the first paragraph basically says it all. It begins with ‘The continued unity of the United States of America cannot be guaranteed.’”

The Necessity of Acceptance

“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.”

Lefties Have More Fun

“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.”

An Alternative Take on Cancel Culture

“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.”

Wes Jackson: How to Respect One’s Tools

“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.”

When Conservative Christians Invoke Nietzsche

“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.”

What Latvia Understands That America Doesn’t

“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.”

How to Harness Tribalism to Unify Americans

“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.”

On the American Economy Being “Rigged”

“The evidence is overwhelming; the American economy is rigged in favor of the government-business elite and has become more so over time.”

Cutting Through Identities: to Alter the Body or to Heal the Mind?

“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.”

My Experience Being Cancelled, Twice

“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.”

The Inhumanity of Disease

“Worst of all, it isolates us.”

The Foe We Need Is the Foe We Have

“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.”

Forgiving All Debt Is a Step in the Wrong Direction

“In financial markets, the basic unit of cost is risk.”

The Term Limit Catastrophe: Ted Cruz’s Massive “Brain Drain”

“In the nation’s capital, power will always remain; the only question is who has it.”

A Fatal Convergence: What Led to the Storming of the U.S. Capitol 

“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.”

Review: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s “Cynical Theories”

“…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.”

Review: Nicholas McDowell’s “Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton”

“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.”

Immanuel Kant: a Conservative Philosopher as Much as a Liberal One

“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.”

When Discussing Loan Forgiveness, There’s More Than Just Student Debt

“Relief that starts and stops with student loans is merely distracting from larger issues.”

Jonathan Church: Getting to the Bottom of the Robin DiAngelo Craze

“I go through a whole analysis of that and why—statistically speaking—you’re basically making a very broad statement about white people in general based on one observation in one Jeopardy! episode.”

Why I Don’t Celebrate Black History Month

“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.”

Finding Value in Diversity Training: the Case of Microaggressions

“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.”

What Is the Intellectual’s Duty to Society?

“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.’”

Journalism Deserves Better Than Mehdi Hasan

“Without a doubt, journalism of this nature is as irresponsible as it is biased.”

Kant: the Greatest Liberal Philosopher?

“So what, then, makes someone a liberal? In this piece, I am going to argue that the philosophy of Immanuel Kant provides some clues.”

Social Media and the Fraught Question of Regulation

“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.”

Contra Bridget Phetasy, We Should Not Abandon Partisan Politics

“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.”

Francis Fukuyama: Making Identity Politics Work

“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.”

Twitter Bans: a Portal into “the Synthetic State”

“Thus, corporate policy at Google, Apple, Amazon, et al. becomes a second set of laws by which Americans must live.”

In Response to a Worthy Critic

“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!”

How to Honor the Legacy of Michael Brooks

“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.”

Letter to the Editor: A Much-Needed Reality Check

“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.”

Ray Haynes: Why Republicans Should Support the Popular Vote

“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.”

“After Trump”

“In what ways can we further immunize our governing institutions from the political malaise of today and tomorrow?”

A Brief History of Nothing (Part II): Something for Nothing

“We presumed to be no longer worshipping anything, but were we not actually worshipping Nothing?”

Desperately Seeking Consistency

“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.”

Transgender Rites: How Trans Activism Manipulates Public Opinion

“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.”

Our First Year without Roger Scruton

“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.”

Mr. President, Please Consider Following John Adams’s Example

“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.”

The Woke Mob vs. the Trump Mob: the Real Double Standard

“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.”

Don’t Cancel the Classics—We Need Them More Than Ever

“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.”

What Ails Us?

“The loss of faith in America, its promises, and its constitutional and democratic ideals augurs not only American decline, but American collapse.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Post-Modern Philosopher?

“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.”

Kevin Williamson: How to Improve the Lot of Those Left Behind

“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.”

Alfie Bown: Where Politics and Gaming Meet

“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.”

Thomas Ricks: Politics, as Seen from Aristotle to Trump

“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.”

The Trump Putsch

“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.”

The Historic Unifying Potential of the U.S. Constitution

“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.”

Book Announcement: “The Emergence of Post-Modernity”

“This is one of the reasons for the remarkable loneliness and alienation from others many have detected in the post-modern landscape.”

From Pornography to Agriculture: Challenging Hierarchy

“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.”

Yoram Hazony’s “NatConTalk”: Enlarging the Conservative Conversation

“NatConTalk is a recent entrant into the conservative conversation, or what remains of such under the hegemony of social media, our contemporary digital coliseum.”

Fitter and Happier? Work after the Coronavirus

“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.”

Editor’s Choice: the Best Interviews of 2020

As has become something of a tradition each year at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.

H. R. McMaster: How He Sees China, and the World

“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.”

David Gurfein: Advocating on Behalf of Accused American Service Members

“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.”

Walter Lippmann and the Dilemma of Democracy

“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.”

A Janus-faced America

“Yet, despite the extremes we have confronted this year, there might be a way of turning away from this ‘great divide.’”

Editor’s Choice: the Best Articles of 2020

“As is tradition at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite Merion West articles of this past year.”

General Patton’s Silent Night

“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.”

An Experiment in (Lefty) Roleplaying?

“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.”

An Enchanted Christmas with John Wesley

“Wesley’s hymns remind us of all that is good in the world and all that is true about the human condition.”

Bill Vitek: In Pursuit of Better Agriculture (and a Better Society)

“The way we farm and the way we think are connected—that’s our premise.”

Kristof and WuDunn’s “Tightrope”: an Essential Book

“Whether one agrees with none, some, or all of their policy prescriptions, Tightrope approaches the status of a must-read.“

Rep.-elect Carolyn Bourdeaux: Why She Ran, and Hope for the Future

“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.”

Slavoj Žižek, Leszek Kołakowski, and the Ontological Gap

“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.”

Escaping Tumblr

“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.”

A Brief History of Nothing

“Historically, human beings worshipped gods or God; modern secular man worships Nothing.”

Blowing Up “The Big White Ghetto”

“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…”

Beware the Interpreter: “Hillbilly Elegy” as a Prime Example

“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.”

Four Ways Freedom Has Been Understood

“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.”

The Irrationality of Rationalism

“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.”

Ten Novels for Understanding the Modern British Identity

“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…”

Can a Constitution of Genius Work for a Nation of Imbeciles?

“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.’”

Gad Saad’s “The Parasitic Mind”: A Reasonable Premise Gone Awry

“At the time the aforementioned Heterodox Academy report was published, firings of conservatives had doubled, yet left-leaning professor firings had spiked by 950%.”

Mayor Justin Elicker: Lessons from New Haven, CT

“It’s clear that so many cities are going through a lot of the same challenges that New Haven is facing right now.”

Review: H.R. McMaster’s “Battlegrounds”

“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.”

America Was Founded in “Brotherly Love”—Not Slavery

“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.”

Christian Conservatism and Neo-Gnosticism: A Reply to Nick Opyrchal

“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.”

Grant McCracken: Why We Need to Bring Back Honor

“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.’”

Casting Spells: The Enduring Allure of Leftist Mysticism

“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.”

America: An Appreciation

“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.”

Preview: “A Critical Legal Conception of Liberalism and Liberal Rights”

“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.”

The Center Must Hold

“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?”

The Monstrosity of Gnosticism

“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.”

In Reply to Tim Wise: America’s Past on Race Should Not Be Oversimplified

“The toxic consequences of drawing a crude line between America’s past and the state of our modern institutions cannot be understated.”

Does Understanding the American Project Begin with William Penn?

“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…”

Congressman-elect Burgess Owens on Issues to Tackle in Office

“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.”

Jordan Peterson Biographer on Why People Hate Him So Much

“One can readily see why someone who has committed any part of his life to fighting ‘white privilege’ today would resent Peterson personally.”

Is the American Economy Significantly Different than Europeans Think?

“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?”

What Is a Cult, Anyway?

“The word ‘cult’ is tossed around quite frequently in media, but few can offer a precise definition.”

Review: Carlos Lozada’s “What Were We Thinking”

“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.”

How Democrats Can Win Back Cuban and Venezuelan Voters

“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.”

Letter to an American Agonist

“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.”

Finding Hope When All Seems Lost

“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.”

I Voted for Trump, and I’m Not a Racist

“But I had never voted in a presidential election until this year. So why did I vote in 2020?”

Review: Ted Cruz’s “One Vote Away”

“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.”

What the Winning Conservative Coalition Looks Like

“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.”

Meritocratic Tyranny: Big, If True

“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.”

Ibram Kendi’s Thesis Could Use a Lot More Rigor (Part II)

“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.”

A Soviet Immigrant Reminds Americans What They’ve Forgotten

“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.”

Žižek and Milbank: The Monstrosity of Christ?

“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.”

Review: Clint Margrave’s “Lying Bastard”

“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.”

“Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children”

“By becoming so concerned about the plight of children, we have become child-like ourselves.”

We’re Divided. But Will We Fall?

“French dedicates his book to James Madison, saying, ‘May we remember that you were right.’”

How Biden Did It

“The Economist’s less-than-ringing endorsement of the former Vice President—resignedly titled, ‘Why it has to be Biden’—typifies the sentiment.”

Ibram Kendi’s Thesis Could Use a Lot More Rigor

“For Kendi, it is policy first and racism second. Debatable? That is a racist question. Maybe a presentist interpretation of history? Also racist.”

Is the West “at War with Islam”?

“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.”

America: Strained But Strong

“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.”

To Resist Participating in the Great Lie

“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.’”

“A Cry from the Far Middle”: Lots of Laughs, And a Few Important Insights

“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.”

What the Gospel Story Can Tell Us about Identity Politics

“From this vantage point, it would be difficult to imagine a more intersectional person than Jesus.”

To My Fellow Catholics, Just Before Election Day

“We must face the reality that the prevalence of abortion is a manifestation of our distressed sociality and corrupted sense of mutual responsibility.”

Rep. Denver Riggleman: Reflecting on His Two Years in D.C.

“And I’ll have to say this: This was the worst job I ever had, but it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

A “November Surprise”? History Shows That’s Possible

“The following examples remind us that no presidential race is over until the votes are counted.”

How Online Meme Culture Fails the Left

“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…”

Stop Saying Biden Is “A Lot like Trump” on China

“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.”

Jordan Peterson and the Return of Solzhenitsyn

“The world was on this brink of this fiery hell when Jordan Peterson read Solzhenitsyn and began to turn from despair toward hope.”

Appreciating the Legacy of James Randi

“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.”

What Struck Me Watching the Final Presidential Debate

“Our public discourse must turn away from retrospective litigation and verbal crossfire and, instead, shift towards real politics…”

Paging Mr. Moynihan

“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.”

On Donald Trump, the Person

“Throughout my writings on post-modern conservatism, I have generally avoided discussing President Donald Trump’s personality.”

Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: a Discussion with Merlin Schaeffer

“Policies that try to tackle diversity problems make it always salient in people’s minds. And that can backfire, even if well-meant.”

Patrick Deneen: Grappling with the Failures of Liberalism

“This conquest of the engines of social formation is, as Patrick Deneen argues, why liberalism is failing.”

That Day

“Ten years ago I received a call from my father, Mario Vargas Llosa, telling me that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

America at the End of History

“The universal end-state society, Kojève argued, was the society in which any individual could attain what he desired with ease and without opposition…”

The Problems with Porn

“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.”

Boredom: a Double-Edged Sword, for Individuals and Society

“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.”

Pharmakon V: Culture Wars—Trickle-Down Economics vs. Trickle-Down Morality

“Without this circumspection, advocacy appears heavy-handed, tone-deaf, mistimed, and ultimately self-defeating, to the detriment of the downtrodden.”

A Korean Dyad

“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.”

Van Morrison’s “Dangerous” Songs

“But, furthermore, there is virtue in urging society to introspection over blind obedience to narratives.”

How to Be a Non-Racist

“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.”

The Politicization of Psychiatry

“Given the numerous historical antecedents, it is likely that—probably sooner rather than later—politics would get in the way of such clinical assessments.“

In Praise of Trump’s “Platinum Plan” for Black Americans

“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.”

Self-Determination and Philip K. Dick’s “Ubik”

“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.”

Gangs Drive Surging Homicide Rates

“Gang violence is not ‘gun violence.’”

What Ever Happened to Answering the Question?

“These were not typical evasions regarding policies; they were evasions regarding principles.”

Ten Books Every Progressive Should Read to Understand the Right

“One question I am often asked by engaged leftists is what texts are most helpful for understanding the political right.”

Assuaging Conservatives’ Fears about a Biden Presidency

“The former option is President Trump; the latter is politics.”

Patrick Deneen: A Primer

“Or is man—like some argue of Odysseus—a restless seeker of new places, people, and experiences?”

Members of Congress Should Live Together, But Not in Dorms

“…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…”

A Vision for Human Flourishing

“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.”

The Crowding out of a Humanities Education

“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.”

A Few Reflections on the Death of Breonna Taylor

“Yes, racism does exist. Yes, Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy. However, Breonna Taylor’s tragic death is not rooted in racism.”

Changing My Mind on Universal Basic Income

“With 14 million Americans suddenly plunged into indefinite unemployment, has UBI become more popular? It seems like the answer is yes and no.”

Book Review: Steven Higashide’s “Better Buses, Better Cites”

“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.”

Herbert Marcuse and Dismissing Conservative Views

“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…”

When Identity Politics Meets the Punk Scene

“But to me, an observer with intimate knowledge of punk’s radical history, much of today’s woke rhetoric feels like a throwback.”

Tax Evasion and the Catholic Church’s Plank in Its Eye

“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.”

“The American People”—a Phrase Worth Discarding

“…there are perhaps a few other aspects of the phrase that ought to make it first on the chopping block when considering which expressions really out to be expunged immediately from our national discourse.”

Don’t Blame Free Speech for Extremism

“Free speech does not enable extremism. Quite the contrary: It is the primary means to challenge wrongheaded attitudes, ideologies, and belief systems.”

Book Review: “Canceling Comedians While the World Burns”

“Now, in what is sure to be a more controversial move, Burgis is turning his analytical skills towards criticizing the political left.”

“Gone with the Wind” Isn’t Going Anywhere

“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).”

Power Over Principles: the Dual Dangers of Trumpism and Anti-Racism

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.

A Better Way to Understand the Intellectual Dark Web

“In a different world where the culture war never happened, I might have seen myself as their ally in some areas.”

George Orwell: from Hell to Salvation

“Leaving behind a bucolic past, the engine of modernity has nature on the run as it speeds towards an uncertain future.”

Science: Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea

“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.”

The Grift That Keeps on Grifting: the Troubling Issue on Campus

“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…”

“Systemic Racism”: a Popular Illusion 

“These slavery and race theorists are correct about the existence of the stain but wrong about it being indelible.”

Rep. Susan Wild’s Bipartisan Initiative for Pandemic-related Child Care

“For Rep. Wild, this bill might also provide a foundation for downstream economic normalization; if child care is more accessible, the argument goes, then it becomes less burdensome for parents to return to work, seek out new potential employment, or continue their own education.”

Do Americans Vote Too Much?

The United States does not have low voter turnout; Americans actually are asked to vote too much, and this hurts our democracy.

Identity Politics and the Death of Moral Imagination

“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.”

Bob Woodward and “Citizen Trump”

“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.”

Searching for Common Meaning in the Age of Polarization 

“It is not between Red and Blue states; it is a battle about whether there is meaning outside of politics.”

When the Press Is Just as Guilty of “Election Interference”

“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.”

Preview: “A Critical Legal Examination of Liberalism and Liberal Rights”

“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…”

The Oedipus Complex of a Nation in Flux

“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.”

Will Witt: What It Means to Be a Young Conservative

“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 and “Meditations” on Trump

“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.”

In Gratitude for the Executive Order on Critical Race Theory

“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.”

The Case for Civic Nationalism

“If carefully constructed, civic nationalism in the United States can take both conservative and progressive forms.”

Interview with Ruud Koopmans: Understanding Muslim Immigration to Europe

“[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.”

“Holding the Powerful Accountable”—Empty Words?

“The holding the powerful accountable phrase resonates as it does—and, presumably, is chosen by the news media’s back-patters—because it is, indeed, precisely what a news media should be doing.”

Pharmakon IV: Secret Family Recipe

“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.”

The Problems with Cultural Christianity

“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 Ideological Takeover of British Psychotherapy 

“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.”

How Looting Destroyed Venezuela: a Cautionary Tale

“And one particular author, Vicky Osterweil, has shamelessly written a book entitled In Defense of Looting.”

Why Europe Is Weak on Iran

“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.”

For This Black Woman, the GOP Feels Like Home

“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.”

Review: Roger Scruton’s “On Human Nature”

“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.”

Don’t Run Away, Conservatives

“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.”

Looking Beyond Easy Explanations for Divorce

“Maybe there is something in our environment that makes staying together so hard.”

Interview: Robert Orlando on His Film “Citizen Trump”

“Once the stage is the thing, ideas don’t matter as much as performance.”

Kayleigh McEnany: a Tough Act to Follow

“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.”

Clarifying My Comments on Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian

“The picture of science that they defend, however, is what merits the most attention.“

Augustine of Hippo: Patron Saint of Political Criticism

“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.”

A.B. Stoddard on the Current Moment in Politics—and What Is to Come

“Doing things like eliminating the filibuster is just going to put us on the path to more gridlock and anarchy at this point.”

When the Media Is Far from Being an “Arbiter of Truth”

“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.”

[Give the Man a Name]

“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.”

What Is Unity, Anyways?

“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.”

Interview: Rep. Susan Wild on How Congress Can Respond to the Pandemic

“The problem is, though, we can’t rely on volunteerism, donations, and gifts for much longer because—quite frankly—most of these places are getting pretty tapped out.”

Anti-Racism Is Weird

“Weird is the only word available to describe the implicit rules, rituals, and taboos that surround the issue.”

On Robert Orlando’s “Citizen Trump”

“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.”

Pharmakon III: Parable of the Talents

“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.”

“It’s the Economy, Stupid”: What Marx Can Teach Us about the Pandemic

“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.”

Why the Left Can’t Agree on Anything

“The irony is that this is in stark contrast to how our rivals on the political right often portray the Left.”

On the “Sokal Squared” Trio

“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.”

On Tucker Carlson and Sycophants

“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.”

Partisan Identity and the Death of Representative Governance

“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.”

White Jesus and the “Other” Jesus: When Activists Come for Gods

“A civilization that worships at such altars is one that no longer believes in itself, that considers itself irredeemably guilty, sinful or evil…”

The Singular Courage of Tucker Carlson

“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…”

The Places Where Patrick Deneen and the Left Can Agree

“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.”

Why Cancel Culture Won’t Last

“This is the thing about moral panics—while threatening, they can be illuminating.”

The Case for Free Vaccines

“In the meantime, perhaps given their impressive track record, free-to-consumer vaccines are something we can all get behind.”

Blackface: When Nuance Meets Taboo

“One of the first lessons my students of undergraduate literary studies learn about text analysis is to distinguish between internal and external communication.”

How Ben Shapiro Might Consider Locke More Carefully

“Locke’s theoretical arguments prefigured another thinker who had a lot to say about labor and property: Karl Marx.”

Pharmakon II: Sold to the Corporate Libertarian

“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…”

Creating an Ethos of Individualism in China

“Although China exhibits authoritarian characteristics, this, by no means, presupposes that liberty is incompatible with its people’s worldview.”

Freedom Requires Courage

“But now, being made ‘uncomfortable’ or being associated with unpopular company is sufficient reason to abandon principle.”

How We Can Finally Put the Reparations Question Behind Us

“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.”

Innocence, Guilt, and Living with a Disability

“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.”

Psychologist Dr. Katherine Kinzler: the Role of Speech in Polarized Times

“In polarized times, think of the other person as an individual and not member of the other group.”

To Be a Caring Conservative

“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.”

Interview: Rep. Jody Hice on “Defund the Police” and Big Tech Censorship

“But there is no question that we’ve got some major issues, and free speech is so dependent these days on these big tech companies, so they have to be very careful that free speech is protected. And, of course, there’s a pattern now that shows otherwise…”

A Tribute to Michael Brooks

“It is truly hard to believe that he is gone and that this burgeoning collaboration and friendship will never get the chance to grow.”

Review: Ronald Beiner’s “Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right”

“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.”

Leave Lincoln’s Statues Alone but Engage with His Legacy More Critically

“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.’”

How Sam Harris Changed My Opinion of Jordan Peterson

“This is why Peterson genuinely believes in Dostoevsky’s eminent saying in The Brothers Karamazov: ‘Without God all things are permitted.’”

What “The Merchant of Venice” Has to Say about Justice

“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.”

Lacy Johnson, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Challenger: Her Record Speaks for Itself

“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.”

Jorge Luis Borges and the Philosophy of Memory

“For this reason, Borges’ short story reveals that the human mind is intelligent precisely because it does not recollect too much.”

We Need Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Now More Than Ever

“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.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell: Reflecting on the Impeachment of President Trump

“Maybe there are some lessons learned, so this never happens again.”

The Harper’s Letter: When the Boring Becomes Incendiary

“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.

The Land of Lost Content

“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.’”

A Reply to Elizabeth Powers: “Woke” Activists and Deconstruction

“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.”

James Lindsay: How Critical Studies Led to Today’s Turmoil

“This is an attempt at a social, cultural, and political revolution.”

Synecdoche, New York and Synecdoche, Croatia

“Something very similar—and, only slightly less surreal—is currently happening in the Republic of Croatia.”

Pharmakon I: Post-Mortem

“The country is no longer predominantly rural but urban, and the frontier mindset has been largely superseded by a cosmopolitan one.”

The Unimaginative Hysteria of Umair Haque

“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.”

The Pernicious Influence of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Sophistry

“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 Authentic Conservative vs. the Reactionary Conservative

“The reactionary outlook is, consequently, hostile to the commitment to moral equality that authentic conservatives, liberals, and progressives share.”

Nathan J. Robinson’s Curious Critique

“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…”