Daniel McDermon
Daniel McDermon has tended bar, hosted a pub quiz, and reviewed motorcycles. An editor for twenty years, he has worked at Newsday, The New York Times, and Atlas Obscura. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, three children, and a dog named Queso.
The Golden Door
John Washington on the Case for Open Borders
Our nation’s founders attained political power by invading this land, killing most of the people who were already living in it, stealing large swaths of land from other countries, and then saying, “This is ours, and no one else can come in.” It’s hard to defend that moral claim.
November 2025Under Construction
Richard Reeves on Rebuilding Masculinity
McDermon: In my day-to-day life I’ve definitely seen gender stereotyping that has excluded girls from certain realms, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen similar evidence of men and boys being excluded or oppressed. What is it I’m missing?
Reeves: I completely agree that the problems facing men are not largely about exclusion or oppression. That’s why I find the term “men’s rights” so unhelpful. It’s basically an oxymoron. The reason fewer men are attending college today is not the same reason why women were attending college in lower numbers at the beginning of the seventies. Women were not encouraged to go to college. In fact, women were intentionally discouraged, and in many cases legally excluded, from certain spaces. That’s by and large just not true for boys and men. We have two similar-looking gender gaps with very different causes.
Where I think the debate goes wrong sometimes is when people look at these disadvantages for men and boys and try to find a villain or an oppressor. They’ll claim the “feminist woke takeover of institutions” is causing men’s problems. That’s just horseshit, and it distracts us from structural issues.
June 2025Mind the Gap
Melissa Deckman on the Challenges and Strengths of Gen Z
The lion’s share of Gen Z organizing on the Left is being done by young women, because they care passionately about the issues. I think there’s less of that drive among young men. Instead there’s a sense of rootlessness. We’ll have to see whether that actually translates into conservative voting behavior or support for certain policies.
October 2024Sticks And Stones
Yascha Mounk On The Erosion Of Good-Faith Discourse In America
It’s hard to be optimistic about this country overcoming its current political challenges without some disaster happening.
April 2022Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
SEND US A LETTER