“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.”
“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.”
“Something very similar—and, only slightly less surreal—is currently happening in the Republic of Croatia.”
“In other words, Ziedonis, knowingly or not, recognized that for a state to be free, its people must recognize a shared tradition and must be themselves free to build upon it.”
“It is not often that everyone in the country faces the same towering life-and-death challenge all at once, which is why we should drop the cheap partisan smears and start talking honestly about the greatest threat we have confronted in a generation.”
“Political ideas are too abstract. They are not enough to make people emotional about identity. Swiss identity has a cultural element.”
“Those doing things like reenacting a slave raid may have noble intentions, but they are sending the wrong message.”
“Whereas Piketty’s earlier book was often accused of ignoring the role that political doctrines played in naturalizing inequality, he has here devoted an entire text to that very subject.”
“The question worth asking is: Who stands to benefit from the continual fueling, participation, and organization of a war that threatens to destabilize Yemen irreversibly?”
“While feeding on an unclean beast alone may seem like a trivial act, it is arguably symbolic of mankind’s time-honored bastardization of the natural order.”
“Our system in United States is set up in a way that forces us to compromise. The Founders thought the great threat to a democracy is factionalism.”
“ The university is nothing less than the institutionalization of Socrates. So the end of philosophy in the university portends the subversion of democracy itself.”
“Herodotus, as we can begin to see, is a theorist of human action—and a theorist of justice. Justice, according to Herodotus, is the chief force of human action.”
“I have never been more depressed about the state of truth in the world.”
“However, as one watches the Founders find their way into the crosshairs of so many, perhaps the obvious needs to be restated.”
“His interrogators were telling him that we have gangs who could ‘stab your daughter or wife in London.’”
“Of course, virtue signaling from the Right regarding the protests has come in many forms other than writing.”
“Rather than cracking down on higher-income Americans, it is past time to liberate the other half.”
“This is a perfect example of why a global problem needs a single multilateral response, and not various contradictory unilateral responses.”
“On her ouster from The Daily Orange, the student journalist says: ‘It also affects me as student because all my peers have banded together and tried to cancel me.’”
“This, however, poses another problem because it presumes that mythical truth is somehow free from ideology.”
“In Mexico, the most effective influencers are either politicians or drug lords.”
“One of the defining features of the reactionary outlook is how thin its conception of life’s meaning is, and this, in turn, explains why reactionaries tend to be so anxious about it all falling apart…”
“This is why I was dismayed by a recent essay published at Arc Digital (on June 9th) by Akiva M. Cohen, entitled ‘Systemic Racism Is Real. We Need To Fight It, Not Deny It.’”
“And one example of this—among others—is how prominently he features in a particular tradition of philosophy: that of philosophical pessimism.”
“So, in the same way that a country with the word ‘democratic’ in its name tends to be anything but, Antifa appears overwhelmingly to be anti-fascist in name only.”
“Why is this important? Because grammar shows that Crenshaw’s distinction between identity politics and liberal universalism is artificial.”
“They reject ideas of the extreme, so that’s why there needs to be a delineation between what’s extreme and what’s not extreme.”
“Perhaps the strongest argument considered by Vitoria relied on what today we might call “humanitarian intervention.”
“But this discrepancy makes perfect sense if we consider the tone of racial discourse in the United States for half a second.”
“Peterson continued, ‘So the Soviets really implemented and perfected the idea of class and ethnicity based guilt, and it’s a very bad road to walk down, and it’s something that we’re very much engaged in at the moment.’”
“But that is no reason to allow Senator Hawley to misrepresent history in the service of a political narrative that will cause even greater damage to an international system that is already under immense strain.”
Listen to our conversation with the candidate to hear how his platform can tackle the greatest problems facing the United States today.
“My progressive friends and I are united in wanting to see an end to police brutality, even though we may differ when it comes to the means to bring that about.”
“There has been a huge transfer of wealth to the rich and gradual collapse of the middle class. That’s made a lot of people anxious.“
“The religion of Social Justice is redolent of the old paganism but without even the mortal transcendence of its pantheons.”
“Furthermore, one of the most—if not the most—crucial contributor to the Long Peace is the spread of democracy.”
“White-shaming is a political tactic aimed at invalidating the opinions and experiences of people of European descent. Premised on a belief in collective guilt, it judges white folks not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin.”
“The police issue here now is a local issue, and we will let them work it out. If I was a president now, I would say no, we not not need to do something.”
“Lee has already proven that he is one of the greatest film directors of all time; now is his time to prove that he is also a responsible influencer upon society at large.”
“Prominent proposals by left-wing parties such as democratizing the workplace or introducing universal public healthcare (in the United States), they argue, are best framed as positions that further the cause of freedom.”
“The history which preceded the magazine’s shutdown and resurgence involved a controversy sufficient for the Red and Blue to be ‘expelled from the Student Activities Council (SAC)’ and to have ‘archives…trashed by the University.’”
“Yet I see it more as yet another form of cultural imperialism. It takes an American victim to be brutalized in order for the whole world to come out and protest.”
“It probably also guarantees he will not be standing anytime soon, given that these are highly charged social issues which are deeply complex and are probably not going to be ‘fixed’ in the foreseeable future.”
“The last time a leading Danish politician was murdered was 1286. It’s not war with your foreign enemies [that matters]; it’s internally, in political stability.”
“When asked to describe Chigurh, the few people lucky enough to have encountered him and survived claimed he that ‘looked like anybody.’”
“Wouldn’t a simple statement of solidarity with the protestors and his personal commitment to help heal the nation be the right use of the General’s reputation and leadership?”
“If that is the result of George Floyd’s killing, he will have not only died in vain but, more, died as a critical girder supporting the enemy’s battlements.”
“And so, in an age of divisive politics, Nike had suddenly found a way to embrace and commodify protest; they would have a free marketing base like no other…”
“Racism and racial inequality are barriers for many non-whites, but viewing these disparities as a morality play between powerful whites and enraged minorities is a recipe for untold conflict.”
“Ambiguity, however, is the name of the game when it comes to defining racism, while Whiteness Studies is similarly plagued with ‘critical’ obfuscation.”
“My two cents is that respect for authority is neither a particularly conservative nor liberal trait. Rather, conservatives and liberals hold reverence for different categories of authority and the actors that operate within those spheres.”
“When criticizing this violent upheaval, will [conservatives] go for the low-hanging fruit and come up with absurd, cheap explanations for what is going on? Or, will they engage in serious reflection to prevent this from happening again?”
“Brown makes the bold choice of echoing conservative critics in scrutinizing left-wing variants of identity politics from a Nietzschean perspective; however, she takes a far more nuanced and less polemical approach.”
“I think people want to know the story behind things. And I think part of what they’re buying into is the story of our family on our ranch. And so it’s beautiful to be able to share that in some small way.”
“So, how do doctors, scientists, and everyday people traverse the COVID-19 landscape, where each passing day seems to provide new information and new “theories” about our current predicament?”
“What I left out of that piece are the many questions my immersion has raised whose answers, if I could find them, might help what I’ll call the reasonable unwoke better assess SJ/DEI claims. I would like to air those questions here.”
“Should individuals collectively decide to make radical changes to lower their carbon output, they—and the economy at large—will suffer. As a result, individuals won’t. And, their individual choices would not be enough, regardless.”
“We must remind those like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Susan Wojcicki that they should not silence ideas from the get-go because they fear that people are incapable of evaluating information for themselves.”
“I can only hope that in this election African American voters cast their ballots on the basis of what each candidate proposes—and not on the basis of what they think their racial essence ought to be. That is what real liberation is all about.”
“According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCDE), Mexico is the country within the organization that has the lowest levels of testing: at 0.4 tests per thousand inhabitants.”
“What has become ‘millennial socialism’ arguably got its start in 2011, with the founding of Jacobin, a proudly left-wing magazine that was trendy, readable, and erudite.”
“Basketball fans endlessly discuss whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of all time. The jury may still be out on that one, but in my book, off-court James is definitely the lesser man.”
“However, regardless of it being mathematically the same task, the politically-charged task’s results came out in a polarized fashion…”
“Thucydides subsequently goes on to say, ‘In other respects also Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness.’”
“The ‘viral’ aspect of the Coronavirus pandemic and the disproportionate effect on the aged similarly suggests a Jungian reading of systemic breakdown and a lurch towards either symbolic or literal death.”
“And, in the midst of it all, a Canadian psychologist told people to clean their rooms before trying to change the world and has not ceased to be excoriated for his efforts years later. History will be kinder to him than his opponents.”
“I do want to give Rubin the fairest shake I possibly can. As such, instead of commenting on the book generally, I will look at some of the book’s arguments in detail and break them down…”
“So, it may seem as if the recent failed expedition against Maduro is a major blunder. However, I would like to think that this is only the beginning, and that those Rambo wannabes may have actually sparked a greater desire for liberation among Venezuelans.”
“COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity for governments to build trust. According to a recent update of the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in government around the world spiked by 11 points between January and May 2020.”
“Should American tennis enthusiasts be deprived the opportunity of receiving a financial scholarship and the college athletic experience because coaches—and an increasing number of them from overseas—believe foreign players are their best chance to win matches?”
“By contrast, those on the Left tend to prefer more transparently social determinants, such as ethnic or economic background and push against anything which seems to ‘naturalize’ inequality by explaining it biologically.”
“It may hearten aggrieved fans of Jordan Peterson, whose status as representative of Jungian thought I took umbrage with in a previous article, that I recognize some value in this aspect of Peterson’s work from a psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic perspective.”
“…this and countless other scientific findings led the President of the American Sociological Association—in his 2005 presidential address—to call upon members to, ‘Prepare to defend against the genomic data juggernaut heading their way down the pike.’”
“Belarusian independence would become, however, a package of unfulfilled promises.
“If the global social discourse continues to be one where we ignore what does not directly affect us, then when the next global emergency occurs, governments will fail people again.”
“The authors have done well in providing the substance for a critique of Jordan Peterson, but they need someone to spice up their style, which is precisely what Jordan Peterson, himself, did in his own career.”
“It should be deeply disturbing for voters on the Left of the Democratic Party to vote for a candidate who, not only is likely to have sexually assaulted a woman—but who used a position of power to do it and get away with it for years.”
“Embodying much of the American spirit, baseball once again finds itself on the frontline, being utilized for political gains, with any rebuke of the MLB’s return likely to be chalked up as un-American or—worse still—shouted down as a commie act.”
“It’s by some cruel twist of fate that both the virus and climate change appear to be treatable by the deceleration of society.”
“Piketty wants to re-orient the political left away from cultural and educational issues, which dominate the mindset of the elitist ‘Brahmin left’ in his telling, and back to the economic concerns that were once the Left’s bread and butter”
“Bart Ehrman, ever loyal to his engaging style, approaches this topic in Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. As expected, he delivers the goods, covering religious texts from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the writings of Augustine.”
“One can see here that Peterson, while even less convinced of the equitable distribution of competences than Hobbes, clearly shares his view that life outside the confines of society would necessarily be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’”
“The pandemic, while it has undeniably worsened the outlook for many institutions, has only exacerbated and brought into sharper relief some of the extant forces threatening to pop the higher education bubble.”
“What I want is to praise Hunt because what he had done has been incredible—and to praise those whose truths Hunt was in a position to make go viral.”
“The problem here is that one man’s stable hierarchy and proud tradition is another’s tyrannical oppression and ideology.”
“A religion becomes mainstream simply because of its sheer demographic power—not because of the reasonableness of its beliefs and practices.”
“My sense is that most people—even people who truly abhor a lot of the stuff that I write—were supportive and were sort of horrified by the decision and by what happened.”
“With respect to McManus and Hamilton, who have admittedly produced a very interesting article, there are characterizations and theoretical points within their article that I feel need to be addressed.”
“Regrettably, in more recent times, anthropology (and the humanities in general) has placed excessive, imbalanced value on emic.”
“And I have a choice right now: Do I vote for Joe Biden, a white guy who locked black people up? Or do I vote for President Donald Trump, a white guy who happens to be a Republican, who let black people out of jail and gave them a second chance?”
“Similarly, University of Zurich researchers in 2015—using data from the time of the Great Recession—estimated that unemployment causes 45,000 suicides per year.”
“If the Left were to abstain from participating in this election en masse, the consequences would be deep.”
“But good or bad, the extent of discourse around Myth and Mayhem at Merion West would have been edifying for any author, and we are very pleased the book has generated such interest and strong feelings, even before its release.”
“I know of no law forbidding our vanquishing of COVID-19; the knowledge of how to do so is therefore discoverable, and our foe is extinguishable.”
“And here, perhaps lies the problem: the single tax’s indiscriminate generosity is its undoing. You cannot offer both sides what they want without dissolving the distinction between them.”
“Reports about do-not-resuscitate orders being contemplated by hospitals began overwhelming the airwaves until Dr. Deborah Birx directly and publicly disputed these claims.”
“The lack of backbone displayed by Western leaders when dealing with China is symbolic of the malaise that has been gripping Western culture for decades.”
“More recently, The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones has gone on an antiracism crusade by coming up with the 1619 Project.”
Antibody testing will soon clarify how many have contracted COVID-19, and its real mortality rate. Those results could determine who survives the political fallout.
“Peterson and Žižek, perhaps the best-known public intellectuals of the Right and Left respectively—are exponents of psychoanalysis: Peterson of its Jungian variety, and Žižek of its Lacanian one.”
“For the ‘Signaling When No One Is Watching,’ basically what we were interested in was motivated by previous research suggesting that people are strongly motivated to signal to others that they’re morally good.”
“Let’s leave aside the fact that Joe Biden has been publicly inactive since leaving office as Vice President in January, 2017, except for making over $15 million in speaking fees and publishing royalties.“
“However, reconceptualizing fundamental rights is a serious matter. As such, we must guard against measures such as these continuing to shape our civic life, politics, and economies—even long after this pandemic has passed.”
“I recently met up with an old friend, a staunch Marxist, at a traditional Viennese café to catch up and talk about our political differences. After hours of discussion, he admitted, ‘Well, ultimately, it’s a question of faith.’”
“What similarities we have are dwarfed, however, by an immense difference. At the beginning of April, Ana Paola—at the age of 13—was raped and killed in her home in Nogales, while I write this safely from between the covers.”
“Today, we are witnessing the medical equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Moon Mission.”
“At age 55, I was the oldest in my class of about 20 students, and most of my classmates were between the ages of 18 and 21.”
“The Economist noted: ‘Just as ideas about inequality have completed their march from the Academy to the frontlines of politics, researchers have begun to look again. And some are wondering whether inequality has risen as much as claimed—or, by some measures, at all.’”
“In telling their foundational story, the evangelists sought Rome’s favor by portraying Pilate and Roman authorities in a more benevolent light, thus representing Jews as the real culprits in Jesus’ death.”
“Notably, during these times of self-isolation, it should be a near-requirement to use our time to delve into certain subjects.”
“Since a vaccine is years away, natural herd immunity is the only remaining feasible route. But current governmental actions are directly preventing the development of widespread immunity, thus guaranteeing the prolongation of the pandemic.”
“Brooks argues that, far from this façade of ideological diversity, the IDW is built around a single and deep ideological commitment. This commitment is the preservation of presently established power hierarchies.”
“The decision to break time into past, present, and future reflects a tendency to see time as more or less analogous to space.“
“The view of Rand as a self-absorbed, even solipsistic, apologist for the greed of nefarious capitalists…was always a myopic misreading of Rand, at least if one pays close attention to her novels.”
“For all the battle scenes, violent sex, and rage that fills the poem, the most memorable scenes in the poem are moments of love—especially loving moments of embrace.”
“Thus, in respect to buildings and services, the landlord is selling his or her labour. Part of the rent he or she charges constitutes wages. So far so good, but what about the land component of real estate?”
“Both Tavana and Peterson have expressed support for capitalism and Western civilization without ever addressing the atrocities committed in their name.”
“With the lines between wrestling and politics decidedly blurred, we can neither take comfort in the guile of our leaders nor the well-meaning distraction of wrestling.”
“It is long past time that we abandon the transcendent appeal to rights as ways to settle more arguments, in part because—following Derek Parfit—it is far more constructive to ask why and which rights matter.”
“Both the Left and the Right are wrong that demographics are fundamental to the political future of America (or of any other society). Demographics are not destiny.”
“A governor declared that the disease was for rich people only and that it did not affect the poor. As such, how could we possibly expect Mexican citizens to react seriously to this pandemic when its government was behaving like this?”
We should support rent moratoriums—but not because landlords are ruthlessly exploiting a pandemic.
“The United States needs a reality check. Yes, race has been a major issue in the country’s history. But class matters, and we must never forget that.”
“For those of us who don’t want to go fully off-grid but concern ourselves with the expansion of the state, what might a pandemic response look like?”
“…where Peterson is fond of citing the brutal nature of chimpanzees as proof of nature’s pitiless character, we should recall that the Left can just as easily cite the relatively co-operative nature of bonobos.”
“Peterson comes across no better in Brooks’ telling. He acknowledges that much of the Canadian psychologist’s self-help is quite useful, and he even jokingly admits that many leftists could do with some tough love about cleaning their room.”
“Uderzo’s approach to postcolonial criticism was much more nuanced and effective. Perhaps it takes a simple comic book illustrator to accomplish the job that overly sophisticated scholars fail to do.”
“In the time of a silent but dangerous virus, we need to rely upon the individual’s self-preservation instinct to save other lives.“
“The irony of this exchange is it has only reinforced my opinion that Peterson’s political rhetoric often has a stultifying impact on sincere intellectual debates.“
“These things seem all too familiar when thinking about a somewhat abstract entity with arguably outsized power over billions of people’s lives when—on a whim—it decides to violently go ‘up’ or ‘down.’”
“…one can go into business with the long-term goal of instituting a worker co-op. But the first and most fundamental aim is to supply the market with something consumers want, in as profitable a way as possible.”
“In yet another display of his famous vanity, Lord Byron once wrote: ‘How pale I look!—I should like, I think, to die of consumption…because then the women would all say, ‘see that poor Byron—how interesting he looks in dying!’”
“All of this culminated in the works of Nietzsche, who rejected the ontological and moral truths of monotheism, while retaining their stress on individualism.”
“Since there is no vaccine coming anytime soon, the only way to properly handle this pandemic at this time is to allow the population to develop natural immunity to it in a controlled manner that avoids overloading the healthcare system.”
“Although one empirical study indicates that whiteness may not be as invisible to white people as is assumed, DiAngelo is not widely off the mark about the psychological advantages of being white.”
“McManus and Hamilton have each written exceedingly unfair reviews of Jim Proser’s recent book Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization.”
“Written in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? echoed the bleak skepticism of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, in arguing that it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.”
“Margaret Thatcher was a self-described libertarian from that era. She did something quite different with the single tax problem; she altered the class structure of the country.”
“Stephen Hawking, the renowned British physicist, brilliantly summarized the main problems associated with AI: ‘Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.’”
“So, I finished my Ph.D. in 2017, and, at the time, Donald Trump had just been elected President of the United States. Like a lot of people, I was a bit perplexed and disturbed by what happened.”
“What follows are examples of topics where SJ/DEI activists have persuaded me, where they haven’t, and where they have led me to fresh, if heterodox, insights.”
“Recently, renowned essayist Thomas Chatterton Williams has taken some heat for mocking a prayer session headed by Vice President Mike Pence in the White House amid the coronavirus outbreak.”
“For them, the feelings of guilt over Europe’s past seemed to require inviting in the world to redeem Europe of its sins. Erdoğan is playing on this fear by referring to the Greeks as Nazis, attempting to destabilize the collective psyche of the European leadership.”
“However much Americans and their leaders may want to turn away from wars and atrocities geographically far away, sooner or later they will be impacted by them, usually in a jarring and harmful way.”
“Make no mistake; we are in a war, and wars tend to be easier to win when it is generally acknowledged that they are happening.”
“The conservative critiques of social justice are, therefore, wrong on two different fronts.”
“By inviting further exploration of a quotation’s origin, we might re-discover great and complicated thinkers, who, it turns out, have far more to offer than a single phrase.”
“Impotent bigness uses empty violence to lash out against the vulnerable to compensate for its own utter inability to change the world in any meaningful way. “
“I cannot fathom the extent of their pain, of course, but I know that if something were to happen to my mother or my friends, I would burn everything until justice were achieved.”
“I was surprised at the depth of their depravity in attacking this innocent academic. He also provoked quite a bit of outrage by refusing to be silenced by them—and thank God for that.”
“Italy, the first European country to close its links with China, also became the first nation in Europe in terms of the numbers infected. With this development came the tragic counterbalance of being transformed in one fell swoop from repellers to rejected.”
“Millennials occupy the rather strange position of being both an angry and apathetic generation.”
“More than 25 years after the Rwandan genocide, the United States’ current response—or lack thereof—to the state-sanctioned violence against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is chillingly similar.”
“One important aspect in controlling the coronavirus and saving patients’ lives will be the use of ventilators in hospitals. How are these produced? They sure as hell cannot be produced in Unabomber-style cabins.”
“The knowledge encoded in the profit/loss system that emerges in a free market cannot be recovered by a socialist Leviathan.”
“Human nature is to seek power; we’ve had that since the Stone Age. That’s just part of human behavior. But, as transhumanists, we seek to go beyond that kind of thing.”
“Charles Darwin himself was quite wary of the metaphysical or religious implications of his discoveries.”
“People do run the extra mile to leave something to their children, even if said children happen to be spoiled brats. Bernie fails to understand this.”
“As I have no skills to help with the virus, I would like to at least try to help in this small way instead. In any case, take precautions, stay calm, do not listen to dangerous idiots, keep yourself and your family safe, and good luck.”
“This does seem to be occurring in the academy, as the contemporary academic stars of critical theory such as Alain Badious and Slavoj Žižek tend to be hostile to the extreme skepticism of post-modern theory.”
“But, I still think that—in balance—the Internet has contributed far more to truth than to non-truth.”
“Today, we tend to hear more about how ‘health care is a human right’ with comparatively less talk about the economic or health impact universal health care might have on the nation.”
“Peterson himself described some of its symptomatic features in Maps of Meaning when he discusses how the breakdown of traditional mythopoetic traditions generated a sense of nihilistic uncertainty…”
“Ultimately, the Gregorian calendar had been rejected by Protestants, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims. The rejection was not because of a scientific claim but because of opposition to its origin.”
“Yes, China could do better in terms of public hygiene. But, moral panic over the foods the Chinese eat is more about cultural prejudices than anything else.”
“Just as Martin Luther King deserves praise for the ‘content of their character’ quote—Castro also deserves credit for his colorblind approach to race.”
“…for all of those who continue to maintain that Jordan Peterson is problematic because of something one of his followers somewhere did, keep in mind that—above all else—Jordan Peterson is a proponent of individuals taking responsibility for their own lives.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think it simply comes down to the location of a portrait. In recent years, social justice ideology has infiltrated many of our institutions, especially the universities and, particularly, in the humanities.”
“This explains the turn to nostalgic and resentment-driven politics to seek to elevate authority figures who will not only halt the flow of time but turn back the clock.”
“While he rails against the Democratic establishment as corrupt, the highest levels of his campaign are made up of Democratic Party insiders and staffers with controversial pasts.”
“Not only ought Gabriel Andrade resist implying there are parallels to be found by Peterson and Hitler, but he also should keep in mind how many lives have been positively changed thanks to his ideas.”
“…we have a new entry in the contest for the most craven wielding of social justice lingo in Canadian political history: Andrew Scheer exhorting the individuals aiding indigenous rail blockades to, ‘check their privilege.’”
“I will begin with the pros of Murray’s book before outlining my disagreements. First, it is well-written and well-organized. His prose crackles with wit and salt, with pointed examples often blending seamlessly with political commentary.”
“The latest of these Twitter controversies that I think warrants being addressed started with Professor Richard Dawkins expressing his opinion on the very delicate topic of eugenics.”
“I’m not a disciple of Dr. Peterson’s. But he has inspired and helped to heal me with his words, and I admire him most for the example that he’s set with his own life: the courage to stand up, with shoulders back and face the darkness.”
“In the current Canadian context, I think the protestors are justified in blocking railway tracks and highways to make their point.”
“He must not antagonize millionaires, but, rather, he must acknowledge that voluntarily giving away wealth is hard to do even while you know that inequality is a problem; and precisely for that reason, we need taxes.”
Jim Proser’s new biography on Jordan Peterson portrays him as a Christlike figure plagued by personal demons. Yet the real devil here is in the details.
“Looking at the highest income Americans by ethnicity, we likewise find a hodgepodge of people of many colors, with peoples largely from East and South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East at the top.”
“Veterans of the entertainment industry like Steve Bannon and the reality television star Donald Trump instinctively understood how to cater to the resentment of those who felt left behind by neoliberalism but were unwilling or unaware of left-wing alternatives.”
“Michael Heseltine was a minister under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was heavily involved in urban regeneration (i.e. had direct contact with the economics of infrastructure and land).”
“Orthodox Conservatism believes that the culture we have is held in trust—and that it is particular to us and our shared history; it is distinctive, not exclusive and is open to those who wish to join.”
“This is an art which no longer presumes to speak to or for the general public. Such an art “assails all previous art” and even “ridicules art itself.”
“After all, the disagreement between the authors of The Times piece and the author of the Jacobin piece is only even made possible by the fact that the Finnish system does not easily conform to either model.”
“I compare Peterson with Ayn Rand because—as I read this book—her name constantly came to my mind (she is mentioned only once in the book).”
“This ability to deliver scientific progress amid a sea of errors is more common in the history of science than one might expect.”
“Reading Pericles’ Funeral Oration as a standalone speech—independent of the whole work to which it belongs—makes us prone to falling for the seduction of tyranny which Thucydides so subtly investigates and rebukes in his work.”
“We have sold genuine socialism to a hitherto unimagined portion of the electorate: the young, the idealistic, and the middle class. We now need to sell it to the people it was designed for.”
“Viewpoint diversity, when it treads on certain progressive articles of faith, is scorned, and the ideas considered within the bounds of respectable discourse on contentious issues is increasingly narrow.”
“By allowing this ball and chain of victimhood to stay attached to us (and having this mentality that everyone and everything is racist), we are doing ourselves and our ancestors no favors.”
“With the benefit of hindsight, we know that many lives could have been spared in bloody revolutions, if only these reformers were taken more seriously.”
“What makes Hochman’s essay far more interesting than the usual screed against academics and critical theory is his effort to locate the cause in the history of Western rationalism and ultimately nihilism.”
“Howard Schultz famously state that unions ‘have a role to play’ but are ‘not the answer.’ But, are they not? Thankfully, there is an empirical answer to this question.”
“In fact, I can think of three ideas that are so deep, so potentially useful, and so paradigm-shifting that widespread acceptance of even one of them would transform civilization for the better.”
And why is Iowa so important in presidential contests?
“It is hard for even those of us who disagree profoundly with Peterson’s diagnoses of society to fail to empathize with his common struggle to get through being human.”
“As a result, liberal arts education has been dragged down into the world that it previously resisted, subjugating honest intellectual inquiry to cheap ideological attachments and the profanities of political activity.”
“With the benefit of distance—writing from the other side of the Atlantic—Williams came to understand how poisonous the concept of race is in the United States.”
“Just as some married couples renew their vows, we, as a publication, will take a moment to do the same and explain why we’re still doing what we’re doing.”
“It is a lot harder to vilify a man for whom 10,000 people will make a pilgrimage for only the chance to see him. I can say—despite my complaints—that I am proud and honored to have been among them.”
“Some in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been manipulative enough to claim that activists protesting against settlements in the West Bank were akin to Nazi architects of genocide.”
“I’ve read Peterson’s Twelves Rules for Life, and it has some points that I agree with. But I don’t think he goes far enough.”
“As just another political theology—albeit an especially vulgar one—liberalism would, paradoxically, be put into contexts where it abandoned a commitment to rights for the sake of protecting itself.”
“What should concern us now, however, is an emergent threat: the risk of a ‘tyranny of the minority,’ powered further by artificial intelligence (AI).”
“Peterson is neither sacrosanct nor untouchable. He would agree with that statement himself.”
“I would also add that it is best to avoid the tendency toward what I would call know-betterism, where we take the role of a parental figure trying to guide our political opponents to the light.”
“While bettering the criminal justice system is always laudable, measures that benefit criminal gangs run afoul of every principle for which our government stands.”
“Those known as ‘the rabble,’ whom Zarathustra describes as fit only to be slaves, ultimately dwell within every human soul. It is that lowly thing in each of us which must be pitilessly overcome.”
“However, now—after seeing how he has been treated by Democrats since he was elected—he will have my vote in 2020.”
“So while I think it is important that the impeachment trial proceed, it is far more key for progressives to vest in political and social movements that target the underlying problems.”
“If the legal pro-lifer really wants to reduce the number of abortions, he or she has no choice but to argue for why abortion is wrong, why a culture in which abortion is frowned upon is superior…”
“But basing a campaign strategy on acceptable headline economic numbers while some parts of the nation are already in a recession is nothing short of tone deaf.”
“Peterson should also reconsider his antipathy towards Marx because—perhaps surprisingly—if properly read, Marx would come across more as Peterson’s ally, rather than the origin of everything that is wrong with modernity.”
“For the many activists and intellectuals on the Right, who identify with the ambiguously defined “Western civilization,” a nostalgic and selective association with Western civilization’s philosophical grandeur can be extremely appealing.”
“And that is why I will miss Roger Scruton, enemy of my beliefs that he was.”
“…it can be argued that the challenges emanating from this sequence of events have the potential to be turned into golden opportunities to clip the Islamic regime’s wings in the Middle East and beyond.”
“American cultural imperialism is not just about McDonald’s or Disney; America also exports identity politics.”
“Again, there seems to be no ideological bias against the concept of rights; views on the subject come from various distinct standpoints.”
“Despite this, Thomas has also long acknowledged the history of racial discrimination in the United States and has never accepted the popular conservative trope that the impact of racism is merely a historical issue in the present day.“
“Despite the majority of voters aged 18-39 resisting the smear campaigns and voting for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, Britain’s aging population overwhelmed the voice of its youth to take the landslide victory.”
“Nevertheless, The Rise of Jordan Peterson comes to me as a relief. Prior to Peterson, the position of the hip professor loved by college students (with all sorts of memes and merchandises using his image), was occupied by Slavoj Žižek.”
“In the event that one is not overly familiar with the past forty years of Iranian history, I will explain what I mean; Iran—over the past four decades—has perfected a playbook of deceit that is so effective that nearly anyone has the potential of falling for it.”
“As a fellow person with autism, I hope to make clear why educational support—and going to school—is so essential to the lives of people with autism.”
“One may criticize U.S. imperialism, yet, at the same time, it must be acknowledged that Iran is becoming an increasingly toxic influence in Latin America.”
“Such specious reasoning is so problematic that it may well produce more of the existential instability Ahmari is keen to reject, rather than placate it.”
“But, as I found myself stumbling in my response to my sister, a more elemental question arose: Can we read Moby Dick?”
“What is particularly insidious here is that not only is the victim a child, but, on top of that, it is a special needs child.”
“The ‘Greta phenomenon’ tells us far more about our cultural approach to childhood than about global warming.”
“I must admit that as for many others, the last ten years were neither a singular triumph nor an unmitigated disaster. There were joys and sadnesses, the melody of life soaring high and crashing low. No one finds heaven on earth.”
As is tradition at Merion West, here are the editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West interviews of 2019.
As is tradition at Merion West, here are the editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West articles of 2019.
“…if one truly believes that the better argument can and should win the day, more formidable ammunition will be needed on the part of the Intellectual Dark Web.”
“From its very beginnings, Christianity has been fond of buddy tales, i.e. stories in which two great defenders of the faith become close friends.”
“I would say the social aspects of making the film were really difficult for me because a lot of my network and friends and social circle is progressive, and, obviously, progressives are not a fan of [Peterson’s].”
“If historical debunking is waging a ‘War on Christmas,’ then we must fire our artillery because, indeed, the story of Christmas has no historical basis whatsoever.”
“The concept is called ‘reverse inference.’ It’s both neuroscience’s greatest ambition, and the origin of its most frustratingly breathless overstatements.”
“At present, each identity sees the other as its enemy and justifies its own excesses with the excesses of the other, but living in a diverse multi-ethnic democracy means tolerating a certain degree of difference.”
“…what I’ve noticed with Jordan is that his interactions with this polarization of the Left and the Right—it’s actually kind of hardened him. It’s made him a little bit more radical. It’s made him a little bit more hard-skinned.”
“In that manner, intelligence may have a genetic base, but, still, differences in intelligence observed among different groups may be environmental in origin.”
“As Matthew Goodwin has repeatedly written, it is easier for the Conservatives to move slightly left on economic issues than it is for Labour to move right on cultural issues.”
“In this spirit I would like to thank all the many individuals who have written or commented on my writing the last year, especially those who have offered sincere and interesting criticisms that have helped me develop my understanding of the world.”
“While both of Ngo’s claims are technically true, the proper context paints a widely different picture.”
“If Peterson manages to dispense good advice in spite of muddled philosophical and political reasoning, this attests to his psychological acuity. But it is does not magically redeem his intellectual output.”
“How could a movement predicated on free expression and identity-blind principles come to be associated with the Right and described as reactionary by smart progressive critics like Vox’s Ezra Klein?”
“Rapid innovations in communications technology and new media have made it so that any individual can access more knowledge at their fingertips than prior generations could have by traveling to the world’s most esteemed centers of learning.”
“Yeah, there’s not a lot of lying in Jordan. That’s part of what I was trying to say with the fact that he doesn’t do small talk. If he wants to talk to you, he’ll talk to you. And sometimes the first thing he’ll ask you is something kind of serious.”
“Running a profitable enterprise is not the same thing as Smaug guarding a pile of gold.”
“But again, this aside, Jordan Peterson’s lessons of personal responsibility and taking charge of one’s life are actually helping people, which brings me to my friend, Fred.”
“As a student pointed out during a lecture on this subject, this Hayekian market is probably closer to the Open Source movement in software development than to what is commonly invoked with the words ‘free market.’”
“Hawley talks again and again about the importance of community and criticizes those on both sides of the political aisle who pay fealty to an individualism that puts the self-creating individual at the summit of what constitutes the good.“
“To deny the billionaires of today the aspiration to earn as much as they do (let alone the right), we deny the possibility for everyone else to earn it tomorrow.”
“Apparently, there is a significant difference between a woman who decides to show her breasts in a glittery outfit or a see-through dress—and someone who does it in the name of a social cause.”
“Miller is a bit naïve here. He does not seem to notice that, as a general rule, polyamory eventually becomes polygyny.”
“What it means is that when we begin to coordinate our lives according to an ideological worldview, it begins to generate a social world that can look a lot like the image presented by the ideology.”
“Actually, the two things that ex-Muslims let go of—the very last two things that they let go of—are eating pork and anti-Semitism. It’s because both of these things are so ingrained in us from such a young age.”
“Aeschylus’ tragedy represents the most elemental aspects of our human condition: all human flourishing comes with a cost.”
“American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind has determined six fundamental human values: fairness, liberty, hierarchy, care, loyalty, and sanctity. But utilitarian thinkers have reduced people’s values to just care and equality.”
“John Rawls, surely the most relevant philosopher of justice in the 20th Century, was aware of this problem and notoriously asked if the family should be abolished, with no clear answers.”
“What I was not prepared for was the tsunami of just hate and pushback and disdain that would come from people I thought were my people: people that believed in enlightenment values, Western values, and liberal values.”
“Finally, even a thinker as cynical and sharp as Michel Foucault invoked the language of rights to discuss the ‘right to intervene’ to liberate suffering individuals from the imposition of tyrannical sovereignty.”
“The patterns of behavior that characterize a broad part of the autistic spectrum are indirectly viewed as a hindrance towards the 21st-century diversity and inclusion goals.”
“Peterson consistently invokes the Schopenhauerian-Nietzschean trope that the most important thing is to strengthen the self against the suffering of the world. The stronger one becomes, the greater and more worthy of respect and emulation by those around him.”
“Old leftists fully wish to hold Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Salvini and co., to account for their post-truthism. Meanwhile the younger leftist is likely to be ‘post-truth’ themselves.”
“And, at the regional level, Mexico should pursue stronger cooperation with the United States regarding control of arm trafficking, such as Operation ‘Frozen,’ which attempts ‘to freeze the illegal movement of guns between the two countries.’”
“Diverse as they may be, these four authors are united by a desire to confront Peterson on his own terms—that is, to eschew tawdry criticism and ad hominem attacks and instead to get to the nucleus of his thought.“
“A State that hopes to mingle in the bedroom is one step closer to totalitarianism, and that is why sex redistribution is a horrifying prospect. But, while not enforcing it, the State, and most importantly, leaders of civil society (most crucially, intellectuals), should send the message that monoga
“But the more interesting argument Nietzsche puts forward is that resentment was at the base of many of the West’s egalitarian philosophies.”
“Robinson’s article is both interesting and useful because it summarizes neatly and cogently almost every argument that those on the Left might make against Shapiro. However, it also begins to lay out a broad notion of why critiques of Shapiro usually fail.”
“At the time when postcolonialist scholars were saying these silly things (starting in the latter half of the 20th Century), some philosophers of science were also developing some strange ideas.”
“Had Obama intervened strongly enough in 2013, Syria could have been his Bosnia, a long-running humanitarian disaster that a U.S. president halted after initially dragging his feet.”
“In this short essay, I will argue that there were three factors, which contributed to the emergence of post-modern culture.”
“This past Mother’s Day, in a survey of over 3,000 mothers who had tattoos, 51% of them said if they had to choose between removing a bad tattoo and receiving a new piece of jewelry (of equal value) as a gift, they would choose tattoo removal.”
“And Pope Francis himself is wrong for, once again, being a populist and refusing to call a spade a spade; he wants support from the Left and thus defends Pachamama, but he also wants support from the Right and thus condemns idolatry.”
“By contrast, Kirk insists that progressives are the real fools in thinking that unbridled reason alone can provide us with an adequate sense of meaning in the world.”
“The dividing line in the culture war is not individualism vs. collectivism but, rather, peace vs. aggression. What are you willing to do to peaceful people, if they group in ways that you dislike?”
“Compared to the other classical political philosophers, Augustine stands apart from not articulating a preferred political order or what the ideal order would be. And that is the point.”
“Despite the absurd views of evangelical pastors, college diversity officers, and Latin American leftist nationalists, Halloween is unstoppable, and this is for the good of humanity.”
“But when addressing a problem of justice, popularity is neither the sole nor the primary factor for adjudication.”
“In fact, many of the generals who participated in the 1936 rebellion used the 1934 rebellion as an excuse: if the Left was not willing to give recognition to a legitimately constituted government, then now the Right was not under the obligation to do so, either.”
“[W]hile you see the products and services provided for you by the government, you are forever blind to the benefits that would have been provided by those same resources had the government not confiscated them…”
“…nor could [Houellebecq] have emerged from the hundreds of wallet-siphoning creative writing MFA programs, whose grasp on the American literary world has sanitized literature to an unreadable degree.”
“Through rallying anti-war movements and opposing any Western intervention (including humanitarian missions), many Western socialist intellectuals have, in fact, turned themselves into foot soldiers for authoritarian and undemocratic regimes.”
“We should be aspiring to establish a far more egalitarian society in accordance with principles of fairness. But this cannot come at the expense of respecting alternative doctrines which have a right to political expression.”
“Mill is pointing to a driver, perhaps the chief driver of inequality in our economic system. The ‘capital’ that young people today are unable to accumulate is, in fact, land (i.e. location) value.”
“The United States has no other option but to, as Niall Ferguson phrases it, cease to be an empire-in-denial, and come to terms with the fact that, for now, the world needs a global policeman, and the United States is the one country that can play that role.”
“In a media environment where heady intellectuals spray the air with heady jargon, it is a joy just to have people who keep the spirit of human aspiration alive through art and creative representation.”
“Matt McManus analyzes conspiracy mongering in the United States by focusing on President Donald Trump and Dinesh D’Souza (a right-wing nut), but he neglects to mention Oliver Stone or Louis Farrakhan, conspiracy theorists who sing to the tune of the Left.”
“McManus draws a historical trajectory that sees conservatives responding to the challenges of socialism, communism, and fascism by hardening Burke’s pragmatic project into an ideology: what we now call neoliberalism.”
“More importantly to Cajal, however, is that theorists care more about telling a good story than giving it to us straight. When the current state of knowledge is disorganized and uninteresting, according to Cajal, that’s exactly what we should be saying.”
“It does not take an expert logician to deduce that if climate catastrophe were really upon us, we would also observe people giving extreme warnings, and it could even be the case that they still would not support, for example, nuclear power.”
“Although the line seems quite clear as to when right-wing ideas have gone too far, the same clarity just isn’t there for when left-wing ideas go bad.”
“While this may be a fair criticism of socialist intellectuals, it isn’t obvious to me that all socialists were as myopically economistic as Honneth suggests.”
“Unfortunately, in so blithely dismissing individualism, DiAngelo hinges her theory so heavily on collective, rather than individual, identity and experience that it dies on the sword of a logical fallacy.”
“That they are tragedies also reveals Shakespeare’s pessimistic outlook on politics. Politics is a tragic necessity. But it comes with a cost. Namely, the forsaking of love.”
Vladimir Putin may be President of the Russian Federation, but, for all the talk about the various events since he came to power, perhaps the most significant change to have taken place under Putin’s tenure is the elevation in power of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“That was one of the things the campaign was good at: trying to get as much controversy as possible by provoking conflicts. It’s not an honorable way to go through campaigning, but it worked. Better than you could say for Tim Ryan.”
“In his book, Žižek analyzes why Kant and his progeny have been struggling philosophically in recent years, while offering a partial defense of their views.”
“As Jim Geraghty writes, rather than importing our values, China is exporting its repression into our societies on the back of mass industrial theft and espionage.”
“Given the endless current debates on immigration-related topics, the ‘$1 Per Day Issue’ issue has, at times, arguably been lost amid other questions that are frequently raised about our current immigration policies.”
“Two hundred years later, Venezuelans speak of natives as a national asset—and sometimes even a touristic attraction—that enhances their national pride, very much like oil fields, beauty queens, Miguel Cabrera, or Angel Falls.”
“Žižek observes that while many thought this kind of politician was an anachronistic oddity in mid-2000’s neoliberal societies, Berlusconi may actually have been an archetype of the future.”
“Give Them An Argument, at times, reads like an instruction pamphlet on how to use logic to defeat our political opponents, a social democratic version of Sun Tzu’s Art Of War, and, in that sense, Burgis might have more in common with his overzealous conservative opponents that he might realize.”
“McManus…is much closer to the analytic tradition represented by authors such as John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum. Yet, his work is much richer thanks to his engagement with Marxist class analysis and post-structuralist philosophy…”
“It seems, unfortunately, today that there are far too few who are willing to defend Columbia University’s heritage, which so many now take for granted. “
“There have been several assaults on this conceit before in the Western world; the philosopher Slavoj Žižek directs our attention to three in particular.”
“The resistance displayed towards these important thinkers is most regrettable, and for all the Complacent Men quick to criticize them, doing so makes you no closer to achieving your ever so desired—and elusive—’happiness.’”
“If you have to take your kids and you have to go into a parking lot of a library in order to do homework, that is not something that they want to have to deal with.”
“It is not overwhelmingly different than when I, as a gay man, criticize the gay community for taking things too far by, for instance, bringing both borderline and actual nudity to public Pride Parades, especially in places where children are often present.”
“In 2016, fleeing Venezuela’s socialism, I took a teaching job in Majuro, the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.”
“Lendvai believes that we should never underestimate the role that ‘personalities’ play in politics.”
“First of all, I think we should make [the census] a fun process, where people, families engage in it [together], particularly in hard to count districts and communities.”
“The paradox of believing in conspiracy theories is that—despite the distrust and paranoia reflected in them—adherents often deeply desire a sense of order in the world.“
“While material prosperity should be a priority, it shouldn’t be the only priority. Simply possessing the latest consumer goods won’t provide a meaningful life that comes from a sense of dignity, purpose and responsibility rooted in community.”
“[Some of my students] couldn’t do all three: commute, work, and schoolwork. So, I saw the affordability problem growing and growing in that setting, but I hear it also from my constituents in every higher education setting.”
“Sadly, Snowden suffered from a syndrome that is too typical among activists in the West: in their zeal for criticism of their own country or civilization, they end up favoring other countries or civilizations that are far worse.”
“The totalitarian movements offered the promise of not just belonging, but total belonging. The individual would be swallowed into the movement, becoming a single homogenous mass with one’s fellows.”
“For Ortega y Gasset, the elite has nothing to do with class or any other kind sociocultural factors. The elite are simply those who make great demands of themselves.”
“There are white gangs, Asian gangs, black gangs, Hispanic gangs, and gangs of all nationalities. To focus only on illegal immigrant gang members, as many conservatives do, is to take the easy way out.”
“In the case of our current crisis of meaning, it was only in the 19th century that sensitive figures truly began to grasp the profound changes which had transformed societies.”
“Comedy is one of the world’s oldest arts because it appeals to our common, imperfect humanity: we all have flaws, and the best thing we can do about such a tragedy is to laugh about it.”
“Our justice system—and accompanying moral philosophies—wouldn’t dream of punishing people for the crimes of others, so why should our public policy?”
“The outcome of Andrew Yang’s UBI would be higher rents and, most likely, a property bubble.”
“Unfortunately, the Liberal party in power turned out to be as much a political creature as ever.”
“Since women are banned from stadiums in Iran, a girl there was arrested for dressing as a boy in order to attend a soccer match. While awaiting trial, she incinerated herself to death.”
“America is an experiment in democracy like none other. I do believe in American exceptionalism. They spoke about many things, but one of the things that they spoke about was the fact that we should never be overly reliant on political parties.”
“So confident were many in the apparent neutrality and sensibility of the third way approach that the difference between Conservatives and Labor, much like the Republicans and the Democrats, started to look merely cosmetic.”
“Plato’s Republic is not, primarily, asking the question ‘what is justice?’ as much as it is asking what kind of city do we live in? Before we can address any political issue we must first know whether we are living under a regime of tyranny or liberty.”
“In many ways, it was far better to see Christendom shrunk down to a few genuine believers than to see it ballooned and enforced into a parody of itself”
“For these reasons, I think it is not unreasonable to identify this nature-nurture or nature-history spectrum as the basic guiding principle behind the left-right spectrum.”
“I wanted to take this opportunity to consider some of the ways philosophy has been used and misused in contemporary political debates to justify a broad range of positions.”
In the words of German poet Henrich Heine: “There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.”
“For that reason, I hold that Wallerstein’s ideas are very questionable, but his work is still worthy of consideration.”
“The state must respect the freedom and autonomy of those fleeing violence by accepting them within its boundaries and offering them hospitality, which makes for a precursor to modern refugee law.”
“As with the opposition to GMOs and nuclear power, Morales’ free pass sadly proves that most environmentalist groups are not really about the environment. They are more about identity politics and, more importantly, about the hipness of being feel-good activists.”
“Like [how] the Southern District of New York became the hub for financial crimes, the Northern District of Georgia has become a hub for online financial crimes and cybersecurity because it all runs through our network.”
“Even those who agree that rights exist struggle to locate where they come from, what counts as a genuine right, and how to realize them.”
“Instead of the gods being our deliverance, the family is the instrument of salvation and the bulwark against tyranny in his surviving plays.”
“But, fortunately, there is an antidote to Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist wave and its underlying mindsets: it is the hard work and dedication that Jordan Peterson so importantly describes.”
“As a young black man from Southern California watching the systemic problems ailing my community, I believe that repairing our community must come from within, and the impetus is upon us to repair our culture before it’s too late.”
“And things like rural broadband, having quality health care, just a good quality of life, good ability to get a great education—whether it’s going into a technical field college or university setting. We had a lot of different options for folks, and we’re slowly moving the needle.”
“Now, pink glitter seems to be the spark of a new revolution in Mexico against gender violence.”
“But this just shows that Žižek is right in that there is no such thing as seeing the world as it really is. There is always something that mediates perception.”
“Many critics point out that this one dimensional approach to education helps produce citizens who are selfish, disinterested in politics, and unprepared for dealing with moral complexities, which are not reducible to cost-benefit analysis.”
“Euripides’ gods are the gods of Hesiod given a new, cunning, and manipulative makeover. Furthermore, they are depicted as clear threats to the human social order.“
“Today, it is science fiction that often carried the torch of the utopian aspiration.”
“But Aeschylus’ cosmos goes beyond Homer’s in presenting Reason, Persuasion, as an integral aspect of the cosmos that was otherwise absent in Homer.”
“The typical socialist often had very little concrete experience with the actual conditions facing those they purported to care about. They were often middle class, well educated, and highly resentful of the rich.”
“The most committed liberal would believe that perfection is unattainable, while the socialist would contend that it is not only possible but necessary.”
“Tolstoy was not naïve in thinking that social and political reform would end all forms of evil in human life. Like Dostoevsky, he was very well aware that much wickedness flowed from the pride and vanity of men like Napoleon or the Russian tsars.”
“The Romanticism of the 19th century was a direct response to not only the materialist underpinnings of the Enlightenment but also the increasingly monetary-centric worldview that subsumed all human relations.”
“The Left cannot get enough of sociological explanations for all sorts of violence. It is never about individual responsibility; it is always about social structures.”
“When he went to the VA to get help, they told him that their next mental health appointment was in 3 months—even though he was thinking of committing suicide that very night. That’s unacceptable.”
“Modern society has always had a secret love affair with the criminal.”
“Although many of us may still be encouraged at family dinner tables to pursue stable and lucrative careers in high-paying industries, such as finance, consulting, and medicine, perhaps the curriculum of a general education can help some find their true interests.”
“To DeSimone and his acolytes, two cold-blooded murderers were freed. To our system of justice, two persons, their innocence always in question, were unfairly tried and convicted.”
“Perhaps Williamson’s own ability to overcome those obstacles has led him to underestimate how formidable a challenge they can pose, a clear example of upward mobility hardening the hearts of the precious few it bestows itself upon.”
“With this standard, if the private diaries or WhatsApp conversations of people were opened, prisons the world over would be swamped with inmates, and companies would fire half of its staff on a daily basis.”
“The basic thought is that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
“Almost one hundred years after his death, Villa’s image enjoys the allure of a romantic Robin Hood in Latin American imagination.”
“I knew the consequences of looking into public corruption. You’re not going to make many friends, and you’re certainly going to make many enemies.”
“That’s where I think it’s a real difference, that you actually have somebody running that can actually win a Republican district nearly 2 to 1 without spending a dime on a campaign.”
“Much to my dismay, conservative media journalists have conflated political stances against illegal immigration with criminal gang activity.”
“We need to go back to what the Founding Fathers and Mothers had in mind: a citizen-legislator—somebody that comes here, tries to get results, and then goes home and lets the next person try.”
“If history is any guide, subsidies (not just in sports, but in all spheres of economic life) do not usually work.”
“People do not truly want an end to suffering in all cases…They need challenges in order to feel the thrill of victory, guilt over their actions to have a chance at redemption, and the possibility of rejection and hatred to feel any deep form of love.”
“Given Pinder’s distaste for academia, I don’t imagine he would be fond of this kind of Platonic utopia.”
“These are the facts and historical context that any fair-minded and rational critic should consider before lambasting the majority of Brits who chose to forgo membership in the European Union.”
“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms are much more like churches or clubs than they are like a public plaza, regardless of their size.”
“So, all those people that tweet #notmyariel are probably arguing that if Black Panther necessarily has to be black, Ariel necessarily has to be white.”
“Hence, NATO should devise a strategy to address President Trump’s visions about the alliance in order to maintain (as much as possible) its stability.”
“Edmund Burke’s arguments against the French Revolutionaries resonate because he understood the revolutionaries’ position quite well.”
“While BTB is the most visible approach to signal support for reintegration, it is perhaps not the most effective way to bring about substantial criminal justice reform and truly help ex-felons build a new life.”
“If individuals are able to become authors of their lives in a substantive way, we can say they have lived a dignified life.”
“Famously, Nietzsche despised Paul for distorting Jesus’ original message and bringing forth an obsession with sin. The result, in Nietzsche’s view, is Christianity’s unhealthy emphasis on guilt and renunciation.”
“In a few hundred pages of personal anecdotes, lessons from history, and psychological expertise, Jordan Peterson offers strategies for the individual to rise and face life’s hardships, and to find meaning in the fight for personal betterment.”
“If capitalism doesn’t work for us all, it doesn’t work at all.”
“The framing of these arguments, I believe, is largely misguided. Right and Left are, after all, moral and political positions and not scientific ones.”
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, because you don’t understand, I’m not your typical Democrat.”
“They slid a note, children with a note under the door and said, ‘How can we help you?’”
“Each day, I read an almost endless array of pro-socialist and anti-capitalist articles in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and web sites. Then I ask myself: ‘How could so many bright, well-informed authors be so apparently unaware of the actual realities concerning the history of socialism?’”
“Those who deal in political aesthetics have long noted that Burke’s aesthetics is the core ground of his outlook.”
“Importantly, he notes that it was initially the Conservative party that embraced European integration and the Labour Party which vehemently opposed it.”
“Insomuch as the historical figure of Bolívar still has considerable influence in contemporary Latin American politics, some demythologizing and criticism is in order.”
“A functioning federal gang prosecution law patterned after Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act would provide a direct legal outlet for FBI’s ‘increased focus’ on gangs.”
“Any civilization or culture is itself a vast dynamic interpretation or, we could even say, a vast dynamic work of art.”
“Perhaps it would be a great Christmas present for the depressed Leftist in one’s life?”
“It makes sense to frame the issue as being about free speech, however, because it is likely seen as a much more worthwhile cause.”
“Private companies like Facebook and Twitter are the focal points of more political debate now than any physical space controlled by the government.”
“Pulling from history, economic data, and even psychology, Dr. Cowen explains why the anti-business sentiment is mistaken, how it originated, and what we should do about it.”
“These transformations in understandings of sacrifice culminate in what today we think of as our ‘liberation’ from centuries of naïveté and superstition.”
“This may sound as if Mexico were evil and did not want to help others, but this is not the case. If we become a safe third country, we would be biting off more than we can chew by condemning migrants to hellish conditions—mainly due to organized crime and lack of resources—and becoming the U.S. bac
“His purpose seems to be diverting attention from these real concerns, by projecting a revolutionary image of a kind Pope who preaches a loving God, far removed from the deity who destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with sulphur.”
“I have no differences when people produce outcomes.”
“Democratic legitimacy should not be a partisan issue; we, as Canadians, should all be taking this opportunity to discern how to make the country a more inclusive and participatory place.”
“The larger issues with H.B. 481, such as the constitutionality of the timeframe for an abortion, the extent to which the law imposes an undue burden on a mother, or the attribution of personhood to an unborn fetus, have regrettably been conflated with false claims about mothers receiving abortions
“There’s nothing wrong with working for minimum wage, just as there’s nothing wrong with being unable to touch your toes— but if you wish to make more money, you must gain valuable skills, experience, and perhaps start stretching.”
“What constitutes a sufficiently high level of education and intelligence to participate in politics is unclear, and advocates of these elitist positions are suspiciously prone to announcing the cut-off point lies with individuals roughly as capable and qualified as themselves.”
“But like his philosophical cousins before him, Godzilla cannot exist because the ideas upon which he is based are incorrect. He cannot exist because pessimism is false.”
“Maduro claims communication with Chávez via birds, but let us recall that George W. Bush once said that God told him to invade Iraq.”
“And some talk is floating around right now about merit-based immigration. Individuals like my parents would have been at the bottom, the end of the line, and would perhaps never have had an opportunity, and yet they helped build the agriculture sector.”
“While it may seem strange to some to see people on the Right express skepticism—and even disdain—for the free market, it is increasingly common.”
“Doing that mental exercise of seeing if you could rephrase somebody else’s argument in your own words—that alone might be one of the single most useful things that you can do to reason better and to respond to people’s arguments better.”
“So I’m going to answer your question, but I want to preface it by saying most people do not vote on policies. They think they do, but they don’t. Even smart, educated people who think they do even more so don’t.”
“TechCrunch uses the word ‘hate’ so many times—and so without any obvious meaning, that it strikes me as likely a form of attempted Pavlovian conditioning.”
“When I’m speaking of a good society, I’m not necessarily speaking of a good society in the 21st century. I’m speaking of a kind of good society that we have a blueprint to make, that is, in turn, written in our genes.”
“It is not hard to infer that Locke may have been concerned that universal suffrage would result in concerted efforts to establish a more egalitarian society.”
“Nobody can say with confidence exactly what a court will do. What is visible from our analysis is that it is likely not a slam dunk either way.”
“Yet, Christianity is a more complicated religion, because in its traditions, fact and fiction intermingle, and it is not always easy to determine which is which.”
“Once one actually delves into the positions put forward by many of members of the Intellectual Dark Web, it becomes clear they are just as fallible as their intellectual opponents.”
“If it is possible to have symbols and narratives that bind an imagined community of 300 million people or of one billion, it should be equally possible to imagine a community of seven billion and to construct a coherent narrative around it and create appropriate symbolisms.”
“One thing is for sure in Washington is, no matter how tight or tough times are, veterans are a class to themselves; they are an issue to themselves. Partisanship rarely ever creeps into the VA.”
“Every January, toddlers hold signs with messages that they cannot possibly understand. But children also hold signs they might passively understand, and teenagers hold signs they probably understand, if only imperfectly.”
“Georgism dissolves socialism; it is pro-worker and pro-capital at the same time. This is impossible for the socialist who believes to his core that labor can only win if capital loses.”
“Postcolonial and post-modern scholarship criticize science as a Western construct with no real legitimate claim to truth or objectivity, thus paving the way for Hindu nationalists to come up with their wild theories.”
“So Buttegieg, in what that reveals of him, is that he’s a classic puppet of the military industrial complex.”
“While I do not always agree with Harvey’s appraisals of Marx’s arguments, there is no better secondary source to learn what that argument happens to be.”
“This exposes a basic problem of the conservative idealization of the Western tradition; it relies on an artificial, if not arbitrary construction that only makes sense in retrospect.”
“Photojournalism—and photography in general—is based on a trusting relationship: the relationship between the photographer and the subject. And, in order to really get several layers deep, the photographer needs to reveal their sensitive side.”
“That ‘conservatives’ today celebrate the book speaks volumes of the leftward drift of conservatism and the confused state of existence conservatism is in.”
Do some classical liberals and libertarians have more in common ideologically with the alt-right than they’d like to believe?
“It is, for the most part, a taboo, presumably because of how morally outrageous it seems—and because no sensible person wants to go down as proposing assassinations.”
“Various Democratic District Attorneys in Georgia have recreated what the civil rights laws defeated, choosing political expedience over personhood.”
“We need a philosophy of problem-solving, not problem-avoidance. And yes, while stalling techniques are useful, their primary function is to give us more time to create active solutions, not avoid them all together.”
“Nietzsche has little unqualified good to say about individual modern philosophers—save one: Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Is “The Mirror Test” a new tool by which to evaluate philosophies?
“Shapiro’s book is a well-written and, at times, moving defense of Western Civilization.”
“Maistre is a fascinating thinker not so much due to the quality of his arguments themselves but instead what they represent and anticipate.”
“If we are willing to be mildly skeptical of a historian who wrote about an emperor removed by one century, then we should also be skeptical of psychiatrists who are too eager to diagnose Mr. Trump with some mental disorder.”
An investigation of how Jordan Peterson engages with the idea of “equality.”
“While the mass man is the product of his history, the mass man recognizes no necessary connection or debt to his past. He is ‘the spoiled child of human history’ with a, ‘radical ingratitude to all that has made possible the ease of his existence.’”
“Notice how Maistre does not consider the actions of the people valid because they committed a crime against the nation by undermining its sovereign.”
“Because we tend only to see the final product of an intellectual endeavor, it is easy to forget that even titans such as Archimedes cannot know the final answer before they get their hands dirty with the problem at hand.”
“This is not about defending Ronald Sullivan or any one individual; it is about affirming the right for lawyers to defend their clients without facing condemnation in their personal and professional lives.”
“Many features of this region have stood out—but few more prominently than the generosity of its people. They are devoted to their churches; they volunteer their time; they give to charity; they start charities; they adopt children.”
“I know several Latin American brothers and sisters who have fled their country. Some were born in the era of Chavismo and have not known anything new, until now.”
“We turned to technology as a substitute for our inability to deal with the persistent riddles of existence and the lack of meaning in our life in a post-God era.”
“A republic that moves too close to an oligarchy would require democratization.”
“As monstrous as the Blackwater plan may seem, we must not lose sight of the fact that Maduro is the only real employer of mercenaries in Venezuela, and that his 19th century heroes were doing the same thing.”
“Simply invoking ‘realism’ or ‘common sense’ doesn’t add up to anything resembling an argument.”
“To blame American imperialism, as some do, is to dismiss Maduro’s responsibility and to close our eyes to another socialist catastrophe.”
“Analyzing the relationship is important because, as we all know, oftentimes law is not a medium for justice. Rather it is one that operates to repress, marginalize, and even tyrannize under the right circumstances.”
“In the end, whether it is rich businesspeople donating their money for the reconstruction of a national monument or ‘average Joe’s’ trying to help others in need, foreign aid is, and always will be, flawed.”
“It’s time to rethink our trade relationship with China, and so far, President Trump has taken the appropriate measures to set it right.”
“To dismiss topics that are being discussed by college students is a terrible political strategy. The left has professionalized gathering new supporters with questionable narratives—and classical liberals remain inert. We need to change that.”
“How alien this experience of total control is to our everyday existence in the chaotic, inexplicable universe. For just this reason, we fashion ideologies to live out our fantasies of control.”
“In the matter of politics, our society has become a consumer of emotions, constructed values, and ambiguous promises.”
“The risk in our increasingly polarized and tribally divided times is that these societies —ours among them—are thrashing around in a sea of hopeless liquid modernity and risk coming apart in a storm of violence.”
“But there are times in every polemicist’s career when he must take a genuine stab at intellectual respectability, put away sloganeering and manic hyperbole and see not through the dark lens of partisanship, but grasp the complex world as it truly is.”
“In my district, I wasn’t just Tom Davis—I was ‘Mr. Woodrow Wilson Bridge.’ I was the guy who closed Morton and got 3,000 acres donated to the county. Those were the kinds of tangible efforts where people may not like my party, but they saw some redeeming qualities in me to keep me around.”
“Peterson’s importance is his powerful and influential insistence that religion is not arbitrary or malevolent—that in every developed form we encounter it, religious stories are archetypal of the human condition in a way nothing else can or ever will be.”
“Despite these contrasts, one of the striking things about the debate was how frequently Zizek and Peterson seemed to agree with one another.”
“In my opening statement I said, ‘In thirty years of public service, I never had a scandal.’ The murmur of boos in the audience—I guess they saw that as a dig at the other candidates.”
“These factors seem to have a demonstrable impact on our behavior, and yet are morally irrelevant in the sense that they should not matter to what a morally virtuous person would do. What should we make of results like these?”
“Ultimately, it seems to me that the Notre Dame fire may indeed prove that that particular place of worship is not the abode of God.”
“The 1994 tragedy proved that the concept of sovereignty must have limits, and that major powers do have a duty to intervene to alleviate humanitarian crises, such as genocides.”
“The destruction of Notre Dame has shaken our complacent belief in the permanence of things and the ability for our culture to last without care and cultivation. It reveals and reminds us that life is a fragile thing, and even the strongest bastions dedicated to the eternal can still be brought down
“The argument that people should value ideals beyond the pursuit of their self-interest and subjective opinion was an elitist way of looking at things, and De Tocqueville’s Americans would have none of it.”
“[Werner Catel] called for the continuation of the Nazi program of involuntary euthanasia, saying, “…We are not talking about humans here, but rather beings that were merely procreated by humans and that will never themselves become humans endowed with reason or a soul.”
“In the contemporary political landscape, racism seems to be an indefatigable issue. I have noticed that those who advocate anti-racism, ironically, have a tendency to fight fire with fire—that is, racism with racism.”
“It is high time for media sources and critics to alike engage in serious introspection on their seemingly universal reticence—some might say outright resistance—to responsibly report and comment on gangs.”
“I told one of the other senators, ‘You’re a very pleasant, sweet person. But deep down, the public wants a son-of-a-gun. You’ve got to get stuff done.’”
“While Eastern Europeans were celebrating the arrival of democracy in 1989, Cuba went through one of its darkest episodes.”
“The ‘Spain Affair’ is not a foreign policy strategy, but a national strategy to achieve López Obrador’s political goals. At 7 am tomorrow, we are convinced a new controversy regarding Mexico’s foreign policy will arise. This is not over yet.”
“Most of all, I just want my constituents back home to know that I’m working for them, and that I’m not thinking about contributions from a big corporation when I’m in a committee hearing and questioning witnesses and when we’re voting on matters that are important to the working families in my dist
“The point of politics can, therefore, never be to try and make individuals act well. Indeed, for Hobbes the very idea that there is any good or evil beyond our subjective desires is vainglorious and foolish.”
“There’s not a single one of us who has not made mistakes in our lives, and we have a number of people who were in jails and prisons that made mistakes that they regret.”
“The problem with America as a maritime power in Asia is that, like the United Kingdom of yesteryear, the United States is not an Asian power.”
“It’s harder to demonize somebody if your kids are playing on the soccer field together, and you’re out there on a weekend afternoon.”
“For some, the possibilities for self-creation and emancipation promised by modernity were exhilarating. For others, it has proven to be a serious social problem.”
“We know a lot of cases of corrupt and fraudulent men, but we are not used to seeing female names associated with this type of behavior. One of the main reasons is because the percentage of women in leadership and influential positions is quite low.”
“Socialists frequently tell us that in their ideal system, private property of the common man is to be respected; only major industries are to be seized…Well, that is exactly what socialism did in Venezuela, and it has not been pretty.”
“There are more men named John running large companies than women.”
“It’s hard to point to me as an anti-gun person. I’ve got a gun safe full of them! Every year, when we have the competition for skeet, trap, and sporting clays, Democrats vs. Republicans, I always walk away with the trophy.”
“On campuses so far, I have been pleasantly surprised that I have been invited to talks that have been well-received and civil.”
“Neoliberal society and post-modern culture emerged together on the promise that they could provide greater economic prosperity and opportunities for self-development than any other social form.”
“I am, first and foremost, a public servant to my district—not a Democrat or anything else.“
“Because the youth of today are primarily taught that the point of life is simply to achieve satisfaction, they are prone to a kind of easy relativism which seeks to not judge between superior or inferior ways of life.”
“In the face of all of this evidence, let’s give Cortez another shot and ask one more question: why does it even matter if she was hypocritical? Aside from her being an elected official that people are supposed to trust, it’s because she made it matter.”
A few recent political speeches worthy of the history books.
Emre Kazim and Matt McManus discuss the differences between the British and American brands of conservatism and how they come to bear on current political debates, including “Brexit.”
“In our lifetimes, many populations in Europe will age and shrink drastically due to their lack of belief in the possibility of transcending death, a belief that undergirds culture.”
“My reputation is, ‘Every conservative’s favorite liberal.’ That’s because I don’t hate people because I disagree with them.”
“People who read us will gain a better perspective overall of the issues that we produce. Why wouldn’t we want to be as influential as possible?“
“With well over one million gang members criminally operating in the United States…Terms like ‘occupation’ come to mind.”
“Lain’s novel Bash Bash Revolution is not just a very funny work of science fiction (though it is). It is also very much a piece of engaged leftism; its irony and satire are never declaratory or moralistic…”
“The nail in a candidate’s political coffin, if not hammered in during their impromptu improv session, can also be found after the fact in what generally ends up being the ‘meatier’ section: the Q&A.”
“Similar to Peterson’s argument that happiness is not the sole purpose of life, Burke claims that the ‘pain’ the sublime instills in us is extremely helpful.”
“Just being a woman in politics has not necessarily meant supporting policies in favor of other women. For example, a deputy in Veracruz proposed establishing a 10pm curfew for women to avoid more femicides in her state.”
“I am a single college student with jobs but no set career. Unlike Newman, I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can say that I did not appreciate her representation of our sex.”
“However, [Peterson’s] general statements about God do, or would, find a home in Catholic and Orthodox theological dogma and tradition.”
“Another problem of Friedman’s analysis is the way that he, like many neoliberals, condemns government intervention, yet is nevertheless willing to take credit for all of the positive gains it has accrued.”
“The ideas of the Right are more powerful precisely because they are more primitive. Fraternity between differing religious, racial, and linguistic communities is of greater abstraction than fraternizing with one’s co-religionist and inter-linguistic community.”
“Around that time, there was the 2008 financial crisis. A lot of people in New York publishing were let go, and my contract with Macmillan seemed to be in jeopardy.”
“As such, quiet gratitude rather than arrogant pride is, I believe, the right attitude to take towards the idea of the nation.”
“What is it, then, that intellectuals should do? In order to answer this question, it is first necessary to return to a claim made earlier, namely that the telling of truth cannot be the responsibility of an intellectual because being an intellectual, in its very definition, is truth-telling.”
“This means conservatives are actually quite willing to engage in radical social change, but only if they feel that it is necessary to counter efforts by the Left to destroy these hierarchies.”
“Like Pelagius, Peterson thinks we can achieve salvation through our own efforts of will, without the grace of God. Like the aforementioned Gnostics, Peterson repeatedly argues that we each have a spark of the divine in us, so can manifest the divine here and now in our damned world of suffering.”
“So claiming that the Nazi’s nationalism and imperialism were exceptional strikes me as untrue. Almost all of the modern nation-states held up as examples made exceptions of Westphalian principles for themselves, often invoking national glory or superiority as an excuse.”
“In the Democratic caucus, we elected more new women than men. Think of that statement!”
“I can tell you that many protesters who advocate for ‘Palestine’ would find themselves not so welcome in its territories. The outspoken feminists at the National Women’s Studies Association who endorse BDS and attack the Jewish state would not be so loud on the streets of Hebron.”
“It may sound trite to say so, but the national state is the worst way of arranging and governing human societies, apart from all the others.”
“Whether one buys into his system, the Left needs more thinkers with Unger’s courage and intellectual ambition.”
“In a sense, the Founding Fathers feared democracy because of the tendency of people to be carried away by their passion and easily led astray by demagogues, and I think that our modern polarization, augmented by social media, could well bring their worst fears to reality.”
No one usually looks to Venezuela for investment advice, but there is one thing the South American country can teach us.
“Strangely enough, for all its notoriety, the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ has few of the characteristics of a unified movement oriented around concrete goals.”
“I think reciprocity is a very important part of a friendship or, in fact, any type of relationship. I think having a balance where both of you are investing equal amounts of time and energy and love and attention into that relationship is really important.”
“Real change has to be made with how standardized testing companies operate, but at its core, the standardized test is an excellent resource for universities and shouldn’t be removed.”
“…Areo is bipartisan; it doesn’t take a side. I personally find that I agree with about 25% of the pieces I put out. The other 75%, I think they’re good, but I’m not convinced by their arguments ultimately.”
“You can’t take politics out of the judicial process because judges are human.”
“Will the First Step Act protect against the release of gang members?”
“Intra-sexual competitive behavior remains a major barrier to women’s full inclusion in the university workplace, and we would be wise to break it down.”
“Like any good satirist, McLeary directs a lot of his vitriol against the powers that be. He condemns the wealthy families and politicos that encouraged the country to give into its worst impulses, and then fled into space when the inevitable decline set in.”
“Changing the meanings of previously understood words is what ideologues do.”
“I had an old chief master sergeant tell me that when you first enter a job, you should keep your mouth shut for three months…So I have a lot to learn.”
“A technologically-advanced species with the capacity to destroy itself had better learn how to work together.”
“When Justice Ginsburg reviewed his case, her concurring opinion warned that the federal false statements statute arms government agents with authority to generate felonies.”
“Communities do not have ‘gang problems.’ America has a gang crisis.”
A look back at our editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West articles of 2018.
A look back at our editor’s choices for our favorite Merion West interviews of 2018.
“Burke’s place in the American conservative pantheon is peculiar if not paradoxical.”
“As has sometimes been noted, one can buy a castle in some parts of Europe for less than a modest condo in San Francisco.”
“Rather than emphasizing abstract duty like Kant—or God, as Kierkegaard did—Nussbaum maintains that we become who we are through the people we interact with and the projects we are capable of pursuing.”
“No one people, nation or culture has a monopoly on the shadows of human nature. Historians influenced by Zinn and the story he tells should try to remember this.”
“There appear then to be two kinds of people: those who presume history has ended and those who do not presume history has ended.”
“And this is the rub of Kant’s political critique of nationalist-type arguments. If the nationalist allows too much deviation from the shared identity of the nation, then his society risks becoming one of liberal individuals.”
“The mere fact that ‘girl’ scooters exist proves that girls tend to have different preferences than boys when making consumer decisions.”
What factors make Iowa in play for both Republicans and Democrats?
“We needn’t regard internationalism as a failed or misguided project, which the 20th century demonstrated was destined for the ash heap of history. Rather we should regard it as our first, clumsy, and tentative steps towards establishing a more complete global union.”
“Johnson understood that winning an election was much less important than winning a party. Elected offices came and went every couple of years; parties were institutions anchored in place by their coalitions and organizers.”
“For it is through political conflict that greater representation is born, more interests come to the table, and the expansion and development of liberty and order comes about.”
“In a democracy like ours, perception is reality, and the predictable outcome at Berkeley (and other places) was groupthink and radicalization because a fact-based discourse failed to materialize.”
“One of the basic concepts I had was that if there are some benefits to having some depression manic symptoms; the corollary is that there are some limitations to being normal and mentally healthy.”
“In many parts of the world, the anarchy came, and those like Pinker who insist otherwise should reflect on whether their claims really reflect reality, or whether they are simply bromides used by those thought-leaders who see the horror and turn away, looking to statistics as consolation against th
“I agree that without local news, communities suffer from a dearth of necessary information, but this bill opens up way more problems than it fixes.”
“Moreover, this also implies postmodern writers should be far more modest and careful when criticizing the virtues of science and reason, since it is not clear that they fully appreciate what it is that scientists actually do and believe.”
“If a speaker from the alt-right attracts listeners, it is useless to rush to block him. The better approach is to engage in deep thinking to determine why so many people are willing to follow these messages.”
“Through persistent and coordinated action by federal, state, and local authorities, together with the assistance of medical professionals and other leaders in our community, we can put a stop to the spread of opioids and their wake of destruction.”
“I hope that on Tuesday, Anderson Cooper—and all journalists wrestling with the same question—show up to the polls.”
“The political right has long been better at playing the Nietzschian game of values than the political left.”
“Putting Georgia gang membership calculations into chilling context, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia Bobby Christine imparted, ‘Think about that. At its height, ISIS probably didn’t have 35,000 members.’”
“People are going to use, so let’s teach them how to use and limit the use correctly. This limits the damage and harm they can do to themselves until they reach a path of recovery.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and the West lost their common foreign enemy. Would the sense of rivalry that characterized these tensions abroad then turn inwards, once no common enemy remained?
While post-modern conservatism is not doomed to failure due to some immanent dialectical process, it is utterly unable to rectify the social and political problems of the day.
“The debate about gender and the market can’t be won with a single sentence—or with a single disputed statistic like the 80% figure. It is a nuanced discussion.”
“Unless there are certain universal mores, then a preference for the national values of the United Kingdom over those of Iran seem purely aesthetic, not moral.”
“As Ross Douthat says, you may have hated the religious Right but wait until you see the post-religious Right.”
Instead of worrying about “manspreading” or subtle displays of sexism, feminists in the West need to focus on major problems affecting women in the world, like being shot going to school or female genital mutilation.
“Any bill that’s passed by 100% Republicans and no Democrats or 100% Democrats and no Republicans is not the best piece of legislation that could have been forged.”
“Proponents of identity politics tended to push for these historically marginalized groups, in all their intersectional complexity, to have a greater say in the cultural and political dynamics of the day.”
“For those of us nerdy enough to frequent the annals of the U.S. Census, it was a jarring thing to hear that Puerto Rico is 70 percent white, according to its own inhabitants!”
“I believe the Left has a great deal that is can learn from these arguments. For too long we have left problems of meaning to the Right, while largely focusing on issues of material equality and political participation.”
“Peterson is aligned with the alt-right not because he is a card-carrying member but because both he and the alt-right are nostalgic for previous paradigms. They yearn for the America of yesteryear—the same time period Trump and his supporters envision when they call to ‘Make America Great Again.’”
“David Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, embodies the opposite view to that of the EU. Auschwitz was possible because there was one nation not in existence: Israel.”
“While the task of critique is always important, it is not sufficient if the expectation is simply that deconstructing regimes of marginalization will immanently lead to the emergence of some vaguely conceived egalitarian society.”
“We are constantly told to free ourselves from our traumas and pain, but what if we just accepted them?”
“I was multitasking, and as one person came up to ask a question, I almost hit send on a $20,000 transaction. It was a scary moment, because if it happened there is no way to cancel it, and you have to say, ‘Listen, good friend, can you send it back to me?’”
“There is no debate about whether social media might fuel genocidal violence. It already has. The question is how best to meet our moral responsibility.”
“I have taken a pledge not to accept any corporate tax money. One of the first and most important reasons I took that pledge is because I think that the influence of ‘Big Pharma’ is far too great in our legislative body in Washington.”
“Most Americans would be astonished to discover that, despite the devastating size, scope, and magnitude of gang crime, no federal statutory framework specifically designed to prosecute gangs exists.”
“In America, nearly half of all violent crimes are gang-related.”
“It is easier to imagine Emperor Palpatine of the Sith falling than to imagine a politician effectively challenging the power of Wall Street.”
“I suggest that the ebbing of polarization has already been occurring. We’re just not aware of it because of what’s presented to us in the media. If you look at the polling numbers, Democrats and Republicans are minorities; the plurality of Americans identify as independents.”
“If the present seems increasingly like nothing more than a depressing prelude to a dark and unchanging future, it is unsurprising that individuals may look to past for answers to their personal problems.”
The final exchange in the debate between Professor Ricardo Duchesne and Professor Matt McManus over the book Canada in Decay and Canadian immigration policies.
“It is the appealing but ultimately confusing conflation of textualism with Constitutional conservatism, of facts and norms, which gives textualism its ideological power.”
This article is more personal. I have some experience with Peterson’s description of suffering, and I believe that what he says is right.
“The last four or five years I was in the Senate, there was simply no Democrat more conservative than any Republican and no Republican more liberal than any Democrat. And that’s just wrong. It’s unnatural.”
“Rarely do media reports focus on the political leanings of prosecutors, investigators, or witnesses. It is, however, often a highly relevant consideration in cases where selective prosecution claims are made.”
“After my most recent piece on Jordan Peterson, a string of correspondents contacted me with further questions and comments about my opinions about the controversial Canadian Professor (not words one usually sees strung together).”
“One wonders what Socrates, that foul destroyer of Western civilization, might say about appealing to book sales and public opinion as an argument for the correctness of one’s views.”
“How do we explain, then, the fact that the liberal nations that fought Nazism, Australia, Canada, and the United States, had immigration policies aimed at preserving their ethnic heritage? Should we call European nations with liberal constitutions racist if their populations vote for immigration re
“Neoliberal economic policies have deepened the anxiety of many rural conservatives, who felt they were gradually being ‘replaced’ or outdated by an economic system which no longer prioritized the resource, industrial, and agricultural sectors.”
“The left, in all its myriad forms, is unified by a utopian vision and end goal. Meanwhile, ‘the right’ has no such vision and is made of many disparate groups who do not share end goals beyond a general opposition to the left.”
It was Wordsworth who wrote in the language of the common man, thereby giving a microphone to those on the edges of society. Are the rappers of today following in his footsteps?
“Even if you continue to disagree on 90% of the issues, if you have a little bit of trust, understanding, and empathy, you might find common ground on that 10% or wherever you do have some agreement.”
“I very much understand why Jordan Peterson might appeal to many who feel attracted to the kinds of questions he is asking. My problem is with the specific answers he gives at a political level.”
“Since the days of his childhood, Corbyn has been able to engage in his socialist and New Left fantasies, insulated from the catastrophic consequences when they are put into practice.”
“Wouldn’t the French-speaking Quebecois have more in common with, say, francophone Roman Catholics from Haiti who happen to be black? To avoid this conclusion, Duchesne shows a truly ugly side by just biting the bullet and claiming that skin color and race matters.”
Bernadette Scarduzio, who lives with a rare neurological disease, argues that medical marijuana has helped normalize her life and has the potential to help reduce opiate overuse in the disabled community.
“With that mindset, no wonder we feel bitter, absurd, and helpless. Even though we are living in great times, it is hard to see it.”
“The right has clearly learned how to deploy the language of values, while recognizing that we have entered an era where blatantly contradictory positions can be a strength rather than a weakness.”
“You can’t be a Neo-Nazi and be happy in life. It’s 100% impossible to be those two things at the same time.”
“In fact, one of my best training grounds was being a basketball referee. That taught me how to make tough decisions under tough circumstances where you already knew you were going to make half the people mad most of the time.”
“The world is not becoming meaningless; it is becoming so saturated with symbolism that meaning itself no longer means anything.“
“So unless you are Seymour Hersh, who has The New York Times backing him, or some young activists or aspiring journalist who’s willing to work an issue, [thorny issues such as these medical experiments] can fall through the floorboards.”
“We try to take away the value judgments because economics is not designed to make a value judgment—that’s not the tools that we have in this discipline.”
“The vast majority of political parties in Brazil have no ideology whatsoever. They are crony parties who trade political and economic favors, and they do so with those who offer more, regardless of principles or values.”
“I have no desire to be president for example. But in that one aspect, I’m motivated or inspired to have my character better reflect [Lincoln’s] character. Not bring him down to my level but bring my character up to his level.”
“Those who proclaim their concern for the poor in the abstract nearly always find that they hate what the poor believe in when confronted with it.”
Families with money are using doctors and psychologists to get their kids a leg up, at the expense of those playing by the rules.
“There won’t always be a happy marriage between impactful environmentalism and progressive values. For environmental groups to weather the political storm, they’ll have to be able to tap sources of support from outside the left.”
“My point, and the point of the post-modern philosophers, was to demonstrate that even a simple word like apple can beget numerous interpretations, let alone words like justice, equality and so on.”
Henry George takes aim at today’s popularization of so-called “Classical Liberalism,” a movement that fails to appreciate that, for true conservatives, economic priorities are always subservient to ensuring social order.
“Signs point to another yes vote from Manchin. Yet, for all this posturing, voting out of fear of losing an election is not any more morally commendable than being whipped.”
“While we should note the absurdity of simultaneously blaming global elites and destitute refugees for the collapse of tradition and order, we also recognize that this confluence is the transference of a real but unsignified fear.”
The American Left needs to spend less time hitting the pavements criticizing government and institutions outright. Instead, they must do the less glamorous: study the policies that best help working people and then go to the polls and vote that way.
“As Mayor Koch used to say: ‘If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.’”
“In Congress, no matter how strongly I agree with somebody on some issues, I’m going to strongly disagree on others. But, it is this stance that has enabled the ACLU to work in odd bedfellow coalitions to advance our agenda.”
“[Feminism today sometimes] sees the world as a zero-sum struggle between Venus and Mars. But most women want equality, not war. Men aren’t their adversaries. They are their brothers, sons, husbands, and friends. We are in this together.”
“So is Deneen right? Has liberalism failed? I think in the long run nothing wrought by the hand of man lasts forever. This includes political ideologies. We have a tendency to naturalize the world as it is and assume that things can never change.”
Last year, The Intercept published an article following the dollars, tracing a link between campaign contributions by big agriculture and laws meant to silence animal rights activists. But what’s happened since?
“Trump’s visit saw him declare Britain to be in chaos (it is), that the current Brexit wasn’t what people voted for (it isn’t, and never would be), and that Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister.”
“This is especially true in large urban areas. Forces beyond our control compel us to focus on the now “yolo?” and live fragmented lives of needs and satisfaction. In these contexts, we focus on being like animals rather than selves, and become increasingly homogenous and indistinguishable.”
Now a year has passed from that day at St. John’s, and all Kreuzburg can think about is running and the effect it’s had on his life.
“We are not just material objects in a value-free universe. Kant makes the radical and highly innovative argument that autonomy of the individual is the enabling condition of moral philosophy.”
“As Harry Frankfurt of On Bullshit indicated, a liar is someone who still has some tangential sense of what the truth is. They are aware of what is true and choose to dishonestly present the opposite. This is not true of Mr. Trump and his acolytes.”
“…Politicians are regular people who should not be expected to be more moral in their political lives than their economic lives. If we have this assumption that people in politics are no better than people in markets, this leads to a lot less confidence that political solutions will be any better th
“When we look back on honor cultures like the Mafia…They embrace values that are precisely what are lacking in our lives—like that fierce, passionate loyalty that Sonny has. He’s not thinking about his own self-interest. He’s thinking about the fact that that guy beat up his sister, and he needs to
“This means that fact-checking is the fake solution to the real problem of fake news. It helps debunk the simple hoaxes, but it only adds undeserved gravitas to fake political narratives and metanarratives.”
A photograph Ron Haviv took at age 23 would be cited by George H.W. Bush when the President called for the American invasion of Panama. Since then, Mr. Haviv has traveled from conflict to conflict zone, producing photographs of some of the late-twentieth century’s most difficult periods of violence.
“Despite the stellar success of ordinary people lifting themselves out of poverty through production and access to a stable market, the income inequality narrative has come to dominate our current public policy discourse, especially in the United States.”
“[People] want to give back, they want to help out, and the mistake is in presuming that the most effective and transparent way of helping is to do the work ourselves—to get on a plane to see and participate in it being done.”
“…after you’ve been away for 25 or 30 years, the likelihood of your having a family is pretty slim. A lot of people’s parents die while they’re in prison. Women don’t have the same support network as men do in prison which I think people find surprising.”
“As with all matters legislative, right now our partisan polarization stands in the way. But hope springs eternal that our better angels, and our ability to compromise—on this and other matters, will eventually return.”
“The last four or five years I was in the Senate, there was simply no Democrat more conservative than any Republican and no Republican more liberal than any Democrat. And that’s just wrong. It’s unnatural.”
Milton Friedman’s argument that corporations refrain from engaging themselves in social and political issues is compelling. But his argument likely doesn’t apply in today’s world, a world where “social consciousness” actually drives business.
“If we value our heritage, conservative intellectuals like Peterson need to stop pandering to their followers, and instead start motivating them to be more reflective about the culpability of complex social forces.”
“True patriotism is the guy, man or woman, who shows up at the post office every day to be a postal clerk… I dislike and disapprove of those people who wrap themselves in the flag claiming to be patriots when they’ve…done nothing to help move this country forward.”
“As newscasters reported in painstaking detail about the intricacies of a politician’s body language or outfit, 3.2 million Americans lost health insurance in 2017. Only 39 percent of Americans can afford a $1k emergency. And 41 million Americans are hungry.”
“There are more wedge issues that divert our attention from the real issues. That’s what I found during my time in the Senate…But the Republicans wanted to send their Republican candidates out to campaign about gay marriage and abortion and flag burning. It’s all about control of the Senate.”
“Students are commonly told that Jesus was amenable to socialism because he favored the sharing of wealth. But in fact, he taught personal responsibility, voluntary charity, and doing good from the heart, not from someone else’s wallet.”
“The unceasing accusations of bias are no longer used to promote dialogue and bridge interpretive frameworks. Instead, they are used to seal ourselves off inside bubbles that allow us to preserve the integrity of our world view, free from contamination by the views of others.”
“The practice of politics is always a form of violence, whether literal or figurative, as different groups of friends and enemies attempt to overcome one another and seize control of the state.”
“Rather than going for the stories that are most easily obtained, which are also often the ones people want to leak, you ask yourself what is going to be permanent.”
“Writers should be judged first by the quality of the content of their prose, not their identity. If we forget this, then the world of literature will be much poorer, and with the loss of this source of consolation, so will we all.”
“It was critically important to me then, and it’s still critically important to me now that I do not take advantage of the subject of any photograph…for my benefits or for my agenda. We saw some really tough things, and it could have become gratuitous.”
“The negative ads we’ve kind of moved into, starting in the nineties, have gotten worse and worse. You never see businesses do attack ads, right? If Coke did an attack ad against Pepsi, Pepsi would have to attack Coke…. You could suppress down an entire product category.”
“When it comes down to it, most of us realize the cake a Christian baker refuses to bake for a gay couple isn’t just a cake—it stands for so much more.”
Thinking about opening a barber shop, what do you do? If your answer was something other than, “Find out how to obtain the state’s permission,” you’re in for a surprise.
“My suspicion is that many of Peterson’s readers feel an affinity to the advice he offers and so don’t look to question his political commitments that deeply. This is problematic because it leads to deep inconsistencies in doctrine that, if applied as stated, would lead to a rather unusual politics.
“When you think about what we have here—FedEx, UPS, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club—you’ve got all these places that have networks that can be used to do distribution…I truly see the private sector as part of the first responder network.”
“What prepares men for totalitarian domination…is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.”
“To tell you the truth, I am drawn to these dangerous events even though they scare the hell out of me. I am sure a shrink would have a field day with that…I guess there is an adrenaline rush in trying to capture images under dangerous situations and making it out alive.”
“People working at the local level are indeed the people who understand how to make the federal government more responsive…”
“Why does Peterson get this so wrong? He simply doesn’t care to present a more complex narrative that would problematize his cute and hyperbolic story about the left.”
“But instead, universities have been captured by a destructive ideology of victimhood that insists that to be a female or a minority on an American college campus is to be the target of endless, nonstop oppression.”
“Let’s say somebody is solidly in favor of abortion rights. She feels very strongly. Okay? But how can she learn to persuade anyone on the issue if she never even hears the other side of the argument?”
“You cited the race between Romney and Obama and that the Independents seemed to choose one or the other. My question for the political scientists would be: ‘Who was the Independent in that race?’”
The problem for originalists is that there is little truth or historical validity to their argument, which amounts to just a feel-good story of the Constitution’s natural legitimacy.
“As a person of Indian heritage, I’m willing to lower my odds in November’s game of chance if it makes the admissions process, as a whole, more inclusive.”
Everywhere is becoming like Israel in the need to take security measures that encroach further and further into daily life. One would not be surprised if Israelis did not feel a sense of schadenfreude; after all, those who criticized Israel as a police state now indulge in the same practices.
“The Bush period and the approaches we took then, in many respects, are directly related to an era of American politics that came and went.”
The attempt to conflate Marxism and post-modernism under the label of “cultural Marxism” is, at the very least, highly problematic.
“It’s what Irving Babbitt meant when he wrote that happiness is to be found in work if at all. Or why John Adams would write that he was happiest on days he felt most purposeful.”
“People behave themselves for one of two reasons: love of God, or fear of punishment. There’s not much that politicians can do about the former, but the latter is in our wheelhouse.”
“I really don’t see the Republican Party standing for a real free market or getting the government out of our lives on the domestic front. I don’t see them…proposing winding down the welfare state.”
“My point was always, ‘Look, this is the hook.’ Piracy is the hook, if you want to get people interested in Somalia’s problems and the region’s problems; you’re not going to get them to read a World Food Programme treatise.”
“It is my conviction that we are going through the greatest technological and economic shift in human history, and our political class is completely asleep at the switch.”
A woman, who had a Pennsylvania carry permit, gets arrested in New Jersey, not knowing that they don’t issue carry permits—and certainly not to out-of-state residents.
“I think it’s awful. It’s shocking what people are willing to accept just because everyone else in their community goes along.”
“But the columns that stick with us most of all rarely touch on the polls or the name-calling. Instead, they might be retired Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Bill Lyon’s ‘viewpoints’ columns, which chronicle the dissolution of his memory as he suffers from Alzheimer’s.”
Professor Caplan thinks students are wise to the true value of a degree, which could help to explain why almost no student ever audits a class and why students spend only about 14 hours per week studying, down from 24 hours per week in 1961.
“I changed my major from theater to film because, in many of my auditions, I was typecast as a drug dealer or a murderer, and that changed my perception of what people thought a black man was.”
The cost of a Senate seat, after all, averaged $10,476,451 during the 2012 elections. With that steep of cost, can we expect anything other than politicians sometimes having to speak out of both sides of their mouths?
“I’m a Vietnam era veteran myself. The stigma of suicide today is only a fraction of what it was back then…Times are changing, and we are trying to meet those changes to get people taken care of in a timely way.”
Israel deserves criticism like any state, but its castigation on the Left (and elsewhere) goes way beyond that. Israel is now the world’s demonic Jew, subject to the calumnies and libels Jews have faced throughout history.
One pundit said that “data died” after the 2016 presidential election. Gallup’s editor-in-chief doesn’t think so.
“I want to tickle a certain part of your brain, a thinking person’s part of your brain. We don’t really like giving answers on our podcasts. I ask questions.”
In the UK recently, there has been concern over the growth in private and unregistered faith schools.
“By and large, as people mature and learn about how the real world works, they tend to become more pro-liberty. I know a lot more former socialists than I know former libertarians.”
We may need to tap into music, sports, video games and even some street talents to reach some students.
According to a Pew report, millennials, more than any other generation, are both averse to organized religion and distrustful of other people.
In a one-on-one interview with Merion West, Georgia Congressman Jody Hice explains how his background as a Christian pastor informs his worldview, his bill to address the taxpayer burden of former presidents’ pensions, and a possible solution to easing division in a polarized America.
“Normally you have separation of powers, and you have supervision, but with special prosecutors you don’t have very much supervision. That’s the great danger.”
In an attempt to fix the stigma, my field started overpathologizing normality in an unconscious attempt to make everybody feel more empathy towards people who are mentally ill.
In our society, whatever is important is what we don’t let children do. They can’t buy property, take out loans, consent to medical procedures (with the glaring exception of abortion), or rent a car.
The Republican Party has been quick to turn against Senator Rand Paul, the only remaining principled conservative left in the Senate. Is this it for the Grand Old Party?
The American Civil War Museum president S. Waite Rawls discusses how both 1860 and 2016 witnessed fractured political parties, anti-immigrant sentiments, and clear divides in voting patterns between different geographical factions of Americans.
My father was a blue collar worker. He was about to buy his first car: a Cadillac. Instead, he gave me the money to go to the school.
Lauren Southern’s unjust arrest is a threat to freedom of speech and philosophy. This is an example of how the UK Border Force’s efforts to keep citizens safe are misguided.
On how Americans talk about their political opponents: “I am delighted by our continued polarization and the fact that each side is unable to communicate with the other.”
The HUD Secretary’s outrageous spending on tableware is causing an uproar because of how relatable it is — not its cost.
Steve Simpson’s guide on how not to defend free speech.
Most college students claiming to be libertarians are actually just traditional conservatives misidentifying themselves. It’s because universities still take libertarian arguments seriously.
The Winter Olympics encourage a healthy feeling of patriotism that does not unleash the tiger of unthinking nationalism.
On the current trend towards drug liberalization: “Everybody I know who functions at a high level in society is fairly reliable and trustworthy. My husband is an oncologist, and I can tell you that hardworking cancer doctors don’t spend their free time getting high.”
“These players are heroes to many young black boys. Sadly, now they see their heroes disrespecting the flag and our country. It’s a terrible message to send.”
In many ways, libertarians can rest happily knowing that their ideas are winning, even if their candidates are not.
The election of transgender politicians to public office can effectively mobilize transgender individuals to become more politically active and engaged in the political process.
“Far from being a detriment to democracy, resistance to a dictator-lite like President Trump is essential to saving it.”
Concerning the Ontarian minimum wage, the lesser of two bad ideas is still a bad idea.
Criminal street gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions, yet the mainstream media gives almost no attention to the issue.
Conservative students display the very immaturity they accuse liberal students of. Duke University conservatives, the same people frequently advocating on behalf of “free speech,” demand a professor be punished for using language they find offensive.
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron argues that prohibition is among the worst policies for curbing “irrational” drug use.
Honest criticism of current drug policy should not justify a culture of permissiveness about drug abuse.
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report discusses the left’s opposition to free speech, polarization, third party candidates, and finding common ground in an interview with Merion West.
“I came to this country from another country, and I struggled. I used to dream about coming to this country as a child, and I probably love this country more than many people who were born here.”
Conservatism has a long history at one of America’s oldest, most prestigious colleges.
For the Koch brothers, an ideal government would support gay marriage, freedom of speech, balancing the budget, and capitalism.
The parade of world leaders through the streets of central Paris made a mockery of the dead cartoonists; some of those who linked arms did all they could to suppress freedom of expression in their own countries.
Unite America is on a mission to bring the moderates back to government.
President Trump may be wrong on many things, but he is absolutely correct about reforming the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. Here’s why.
I was twelve years old, and a man on the street was already verbally harassing me. He looked at me as if I were a juicy steak instead of an innocent child.
“Rising tides lift all boats, whether they’re white, black, brown, yellow, immigrant, or any other American.”
Although it may be a pastime to bash the two-party system, it is probably better than any of the alternatives.
Tobacco use is the leading single cause of preventable death worldwide.
“I know that you can’t completely run government like a company, but you can bring in business principles and processes.”
“I don’t spend my weekends at $1,000 cocktail parties with powerful people. I spend my weekends with my family going shooting on our farm and doing things that everyday, ordinary Americans do.”
While many condemn President Trump’s alleged use of such vulgar language, some question the validity of said reports. Others agree with the President’s sentiment.
People should support labor policies such as paid time off based on nothing but concern for their own health and well-being.
A “Never Trumper” has a change of heart.
“The law in a democracy is never potent in a vacuum. It must work in concert with the people.”
“I want to create a culture in Georgia as Lieutenant Governor that rewards good policy over good politics.”
“Engaging with domestic politics is crucial to our collective response to global environmental change and other social justice issues.”
Most of Western media, leftist politicians, and feminist organizations have been largely silent on the recent protests in Iran. Sadly, this was to be expected.
“This field is still considered by most to be something that is not really science, something that is not really possible, and we really have to change that.”
“It’s been proven that the more centrists there are in Congress, the more bills get passed and are enacted into law.”
As my family swore an oath to pledge allegiance to the United States, a year later I was swearing allegiance to the Republic of Finland.
Even liberals acknowledge that some individuals unfairly exploit welfare programs.
The final point is this, and it is something that the “resistance” needs to hear. You are not heroes.
Job-matching sites Internships.com and WayUp have a new competitor.
A new Republican proposal would allow young people to choose a reprieve on student debt in exchange for delaying the age when they can collect social security.
A look back on our editor’s choices for their favorite Merion West articles of 2017.
Our human nature, something that is capable of cruelty or goodness, is something we all have in common, whether able or disabled.
Did you know the Nixon Administration prepared a speech that would have been delivered if Apollo 11 had ended in disaster?
We have a healthcare system that does not believe that the normal human lifespan can or should be extended.
This is a president who openly and personally attacks the leaders and employees of the agencies in the Intelligence Community. In turn, some of them respond by attacking him, and on it goes.
Must ISIS be treated differently from the terrorist organizations of the past?
While the U.S. Capitol grapples with sexual harassment allegations, less than a mile away, thousands of travelers take for granted the wall-size posters of lingerie-clad models at the Victoria’s Secret in Union Station.
This is the President, after all, who did everything that the modern Left supposedly despises; this is the man who sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in Iraq.
Aaron Spring, the Fordham student asked to leave a university coffee shop for wearing a “Make America Great Again Hat” answers whether businesses should be allowed to discriminate against people they disagree with politically and whether he would consider returning to the coffee shop.
“When people say things like “Trump is the Ayn Rand presidency,” that’s nonsense. She’s influenced the political right, but there’s a big gap between Objectivism and what many conservatives believe.”
A final positive consequence of polarization is that it slows down the government.
From the Abscam days to the present, political corruption in America appears to be all but inescapable. It is a societal problem in need of correction. However, it must be solved on an individual level.
As it currently stands, university campuses across the Western world are being eaten from the inside out – this is just an undeniable reality.
Political repression is commonplace across the developing world. To maintain power, authoritarian rulers intimidate and imprison their competitors. Comparing Donald Trump to someone like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is inaccurate and unwarranted.
While the idea has attracted fervent support from across the political spectrum, practical constraints keep it from being anything other than a utopian pipe dream.
The Iran Hostage Crisis introduced America to political Islam and helped usher in a new era of conservatism, but the lasting legacy of the ordeal remains linked to a fictitious scheme and human fallibility.
Some enthusiasts speculate that eliminating immigration restrictions could double global GDP.
Opinion: This frog is the banner of the forgotten young male, with no place in the world.
White supremacists have a mindset that America is a land of finite opportunity, and gains by others come at the expense of their own. But they are wrong.
Ailes is dead. Weinstein is in rehab. Yet, the culture they thrived in remains intact.
Yes, it is acceptable to legislate morality. But simply passing a law is not the end of the story.
My relatives in Ukraine live in a perpetual state of fear of war with Russia, a country that has oppressed Jews, Ukrainians, and defenders of freedom alike for centuries.
Libertarians should pride themselves as harboring the most consistent political philosophy.
The Constitution is still relevant today. We should expose more people to it, so they can make up their minds how they want it to be applied, rather than addressing government with minimal knowledge of how it works.
Might ending DACA be a first step toward immigration reform?
For Christian Trump voters, the decision must be at least a little awkward, as faith leaders across the country came out strongly against the decision to rescind DACA protections.
Why white supremacy and white nationalism are different.
Religious conservatives have made a political alliance with Republicans but are losing their influence.
Why a vocational education might be worth it
Single payer healthcare could prove to be disastrous for California.
Conservatives are as much of a threat to free speech as radical progressives.
As an increasing number of universities take a stand against alt-right figures, perhaps it’s the wrong approach.
James Damore’s memo is far from what the mainstream media has made it out to be. That said, alternative media sources are not necessarily right about it either.
Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans.
If the private market decides to flee racism and terrorism, everyone will be better off.
They hope to attach to Antifa the same stigma as is attached to fascism.
Progressives often blame difference of outcome on “institutional racism.” However, it’s always up to the individual.
While charity is often considered the highest virtue, donating used clothes has the power to destroy the economies of developing nations.
Opinion: A change in perspective is necessary if we wish to get a handle on America’s healthcare problems.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all … let us strive to achieve a just and a lasting peace among ourselves.”—Abraham Lincoln
Despite the Republican Party’s tremendous electoral success, pseudo-conservatives have chosen to ignore basic economics in favor of their constituents.
Image via DVIDSHUB Foreign aid has lifted millions of people out of poverty and tremendously improved diplomatic relations around the world.
This idolatry of racial origin as definitive of a person’s worth runs directly counter to the foundational principles of the American Right.
Businessmen, career politicians, and lawyers are incapable of effectively representing the interests of all Americans.
If Americans can rally behind these common sense health care reforms, we can finally fix our broken system.
Public perception of the mainstream media is so low that President Trump’s petty fights with CNN might actually be helping him.
Despite the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare, there is still hope for market-based healthcare reform.
People should be judged based on the content of their character, not their identity traits.
President Trump’s RAISE Act is far from the disaster the mainstream media has made it out to be.
Transhumanist and libertarian, Zoltan Istvan, discusses his vision for the state of California and why he believes he should be its governor.
Statistics combined with context will tell a different story than your college professor might have you believe.
In Iceland, every single baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome is aborted.
Are accusations of anti-Semitism against the British left justified? Yes and No.
Instead of blaming problems on centuries-old events, encourage young people to work hard.
It’s not bigotry. It’s just business.
We can legislate morality. We do it all the time.
Like most government regulations, it’s unnecessary and counterproductive.
Shiva Ayyadurai has decided to challenge Elizabeth Warren for her Senate seat. He makes his case in this Merion West interview.
Despite its critics, money in politics is a good thing. Campaign ads, especially negative ones, help voters make better-informed decisions.
Can a new thought experiment involving hypothetically joining the National Guard shed light on the abortion debate?
Former Congressman Bob Barr’s take on our current intelligence climate.
Can we do anything about the horrific human rights violations in North Korea?
Missouri Senate candidate and libertarian activist Austin Petersen joins Merion West to discuss trade, immigration and his decision to run for Senate as a Republican.
Journalism is supposed to be about reporting facts not writing misleading stories about those one disagrees with politically.
Look no further than events in Europe to see how far Russia will go to upset the democratic process in other nations.
The House and Senate were always intended to serve different functions.
What does the Supreme Court have to say about suing nations hostile to the United States?
Is it time for the United States to walk away from the United Nations’ anti-firearm agenda?
Would you force Muslim bakers to make cakes trashing the Koran or a black baker to make a cake promoting white supremacy?
Critics of gun rights seem to forget that guns are not, first and foremost, for hunting or preventing a burglary but rather to ensure that governments don’t get out of control.
What did the Republicans actually do when they “killed” Dodd-Frank?
Is the ATF trying to ensure that no marijuana “user” can purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer?
To loosely quote Babe Ruth from the movie The Sandlot, “Heroes get remembered, but screenshots never die.”
The biggest victims of a minimum wage hike are always young people. In Canada, 58.4% of workers earning minimum wage are in the 15-24 age demographic. And besides, if you don’t want a minimum wage, build skills that are worth more to employers.
Centrist Democrat Jason Altmire (D-Pa) outlines his vision for a less polarized future in which moderate voters participate more in primaries to ensure that fewer hardliners make it to Congress.
As scary as terrorism is, a war on civil liberties in the name of catching terrorists is not the answer.
“I think you have to separate conservatism from reactions to the Left. I don’t think they’re quite the same thing. Conservatism is starting to get more popular because of reaction to the Left.”
Sexual assault is indeed a problem in India, but is rape actually more common in India than in the West? Social pressures, however, are a big factor in whether or not rapes are reported.
Both the United States and Israel refuse to say the words “Armenian Genocide.” Is this because they doubt whether the killings constitute a “genocide” or because of deference to Turkey, a crucial ally in the Middle East?
Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga), in this Merion West op-ed, discusses how the federal government is increasingly claiming the right to search people’s laptops and smart phones.
Conservatism and comedy don’t usually go together. Tim Young is challenging that notion.
Is there a better explanation than the traditional answer of bedrock? Some experts claim the origin of the gap in the skyline actually is more related to demographics and discrimination.
Has the federal government not yet overstepped its boundaries when it uses radiation to strip-search its citizens each time they fly and frisks them as they go to football games?
A Prime Minister of Singapore famously said: “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” Is this true in America?
People often want to help others in the abstract but never quite get around to it. Can we use photography to encourage them to start helping?
MIT atmospheric science professor Richard Lindzen suggests that many claims regarding climate change are exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist.
Green Party Presidential candidate William Kreml describes the evolution of the 2010 Citizens United ruling.
This new Indian political party is all about the free market.
Critics may be correct to call nepotism on Jared Kushner. But the same must also be said for Hillary Clinton. If she hadn’t been married to the President, no one would know who she is.
If you ask someone for his favorite president, odds are he’ll tell you Lincoln or FDR. These are reasonable answer of course. But American history is interesting and complicated, and we should make an effort to look beyond the obvious.
It’s amazing how unwilling people are to reconsider their beliefs, even in light of persuasive new evidence to the contrary. Here’s one answer of why.
If liberals actually care about making poor people better off, then there is no better system for accomplishing this than the free market. Life expectancy in capitalist countries is much higher than in socialist or communist ones.
Fans are tired of celebrities assuming they can’t make informed political decisions for themselves.
Vijay Chokalingam, the author of Almost Black – How I Posed as Black to Get into Medical School and brother of comedian Mindy Kaling, sits for an interview with Merion West to discuss affirmative action.
We ought to harness the unique features of bitcoin to serve us more completely than traditional currencies have done in the past.
The writings of Hans Riess at Merion West.
