Selected Essays
“Is Nothing Sacred?”
Merion West - 10/28/21“And this is exacerbated by a situatedness in a contemporary culture that has removed the sort of guardrails that would tell a would-be troublemaker that to defile something like a grave or a tribute to those lost in a mass casualty terrorist attack is unacceptable…”
Politics: Not an End in Itself
Merion West - 08/19/21“As such, politics has eclipsed its primary purpose—namely, to provide the means by which people can seek out and, in turn, live good lives, lives that have nothing to do with politics.”
Elite Colleges Reconsidered
Quillette - 11/07/19“Yale students, if they’re still anything like they were when I graduated a few short years ago, likely aren’t overly concerned with the college admissions scandal that dominated the news this past spring, even as Lifetime releases its TV-movie …”
How Things End
Merion West - 08/06/21“As Joshua Foa Dienstag reminds us, the essential tragedy of being human (or being anything, for that matter) stems from the passage of time.”
Thoreau and the Primitivist Temptation
Quillette - 03/05/19“When Edward Abbey died, his friends honored his wishes. They stopped at a liquor store for a few cases of beer and loaded his body into the back of a pickup truck to take him into the desert …”
Going Deeper Than a Famous Quotation or Two
Merion West - 03/16/20“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.”
Columbus Belongs Not Only to History
Merion West - 06/17/20“And one example of this—among others—is how prominently he features in a particular tradition of philosophy: that of philosophical pessimism.”
Additional Essays
A Once-Unnecessary Reminder: Criticism Produces Good Works
Merion West - 11/29/20“My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending…”
And They’ve Come for the Founders
Merion West - 06/24/20“However, as one watches the Founders find their way into the crosshairs of so many, perhaps the obvious needs to be restated.”
Leisure: When It Becomes an Unexpected Curse
Merion West - 05/17/18“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.”
You’re Probably Not Actually a Libertarian
Merion West - 03/01/18“It is not so much that these young people have decided that libertarianism is preferable to traditional conservatism. It is instead that many of the tenets of traditional conservatism are condescendingly rejected out-of-hand for their inability to be mapped onto any scenario and always produce the same predictable answer.”