“You have to have a steel spine in your liberalism. ‘What kind of government did you create, sir?’ ‘We created a republic, if [you] can keep it.’ The ‘if you can keep it’ part requires a steel spine.”
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Erich J. Prince
Erich J. Prince is the editor of Merion West. Erich has contributed to a variety of publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Hartford Courant, The News & Observer, the Orlando Sentinel, and The Hill. He studied political science at Yale, completing his thesis on polarization in the United States Congress.
Category: The Center
James Lindsay: “Counter Wokecraft” and Responses to Institutional Takeover
In Reply to “Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream”
“As a former graduate student in religious studies and writer of the classics, it is deeply regrettable that the scholarship of the academy does not reach further and that century-old myths no longer of any substantial prominence in academic study still hold public sway.”
The Great American Disconnect
“A disconnect ensues: Even as the American public has indeed polarized, our elected representatives have fled to the extremes to an even greater degree.”
Finland, Russia, and the NATO Question: An Interview with Risto Penttilä
” I think that we are, as always, pragmatic idealists.”
Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream
“So, yes—my friend has a point: To someone who has never given a moment’s thought to whether Jesus was a real person or not, he does seem like an entirely fictional character.”
Peter Boghossian: On the Purpose of Education
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with debate. In fact, debate, in certain circumstances, can be good, but we can often solve the problems…through conversation.”
Remembering Sir Roger Scruton, Two Years On
“At the time, I would not have guessed my encounters with Roger through YouTube and a handful of books would lead me to studying with him just prior to his death.”
When It Comes to Medical Aid-in-Dying, We Must Protect the Vulnerable
“Many such persons will have internalized the idea that they constitute an inconvenient and expensive burden on loved ones, as well as the healthcare system. Legalizing MAID risks reinforcing that message.”
Magatte Wade: The Power of Free Markets for Africa
“Eventually, I had an emotional crisis because I could no longer reconcile the life of abundance that the U.S. afforded me. I made a pact with myself that from here on, I’m really going to try to see what needs to happen for [Africa] to thrive.”
The Failed Attempt to Rescue Marx’s Labor Theory of Value
“Without the notion of socially necessary labor time, nothing in Marx’s value form or overall theory of exploitation makes sense.”
The Power of Facing: A Review of “Christopher Hitchens” by Ben Burgis
“One of the causes of tension with Noam Chomsky, for example, Burgis observes, was Hitchens’ recognition that the forces of anti-imperialism today are dissimilar to ‘Ho Chi Minh or the Sandinistas.'”
Frank Vogl: Understanding the Kleptocrats and Their Enablers
“Too often, people think of corruption as something that happens somewhere else: in Russia, in authoritarian regimes.”
What Karl Marx Got Wrong About Value
“As a matter of economics, scarcity is the source of all value, even if it is a combination of ‘manufactured’ scarcity via monopoly control and relative scarcity due to the costliness of extraction and the preferences of consumers.”
Editor’s Choice: The Best Interviews of 2021
Here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.
Why I Oppose the JCPOA
“As a former political hostage in Iran, I oppose the efforts to revive the current agreement as it stands. I will explain my reasoning and what I believe is the best path forward.”
