Being the end of the year, it’s inevitable that we would decide to publish some “top lists”–as we’ve already done for movies. There’s a few more lists coming your way over the next couple of weeks, but in deciding what to quantify for the year, we decided that nothing is closer to our hearts than ourselves. So the staff here at Heretical Ideas decided that we would determine what the best ten articles of the year we wrote were.

Narcissus, by Michaelangelo Carvaggio

The process was simple–each member of the staff determined their own top ten list (that did not include their own writing), which were then blended into a bizarre set of Excel algorithms to arrive at the best articles. So without further ado (and what is ado, anyway?), here are the ten best Heretical Ideas articles for 2009:

10. “Accidentally Effective Activism” by Tom Traina

A do-gooder college liberal stumbles into an oil and gas land auction by accident and ends up with 22,000 acres. Although he intended to gain awareness for his cause by ending up on the evening news with handcuffs, he instead thwarted the environmental perils of oil exploration on 22,000 acres of land, increased the cost of near-by land to speculators, and generally became a giant tub of kitty litter to big oil. In his article, Tom shows us how this model could serve as a new, efficacious way for progressives to use the system against itself.

– Brian Knapp

9. “Protests Don’t Work” by Brian Knapp

There are a lot of places that publish contrarian pieces for their own sake, or, perhaps, simply for the sake of making people drop their jaws in disbelief. Like this absurd article, for example. However, “Protests Don’t Work” makes the very simple point that, in a information era under a political system of a functioning representative democracy, protests serve very little point except to irritate and annoy. We tend to think of protests as truly being effective agents of change, but here in the United States, that just isn’t so anymore. I think this piece does a good job of underscoring why.

– Alex Knapp

8. “Organized Sports Teaches Us Nothing” by Brian Knapp

We’ve all heard parents, teachers and coaches go on and on about the wonderful benefits of playing sports as a kid. Here, Brian Knapp dismantles that myth, and instead illustrates how sports teaches violence to children of all ages. This is the best kind of heretical idea: taking on an established tenet of our culture, but doing it carefully, and with evidence.

I like this piece even more because I don’t agree with it. Reading a thoughtful, as opposed to strident, article on an opposing position helps me understand my own position better. A football coach once told me, “Keep your head on a swivel.” To this day, that’s one of the better pieces of advice I’ve ever received, especially when crossing a street in Asia. That alone goes to show that sports teaches us something.

– Jon Stonger

7. “Harry Anslinger: The Original Drug Warrior” by Alex Knapp

Most Americans alive today have never lived in a country where there was a wide array of legal, mind-altering substances people could take at their own risk. It has, for better or for worse, warped the debate over drug policy in America by shifting the burden of persuasion onto those who favor legalization over illegalization. In this article, Alex does a wonderful job of explaining the origins of the ‘War on Drugs’ and showing how it stemmed from nonsensical paranoia rather than a well-thought out attempt at good policymaking.

– Tom Traina

6. “Augustine v. Pelagius” by Alex Knapp

Any site can gossip about the latest events in politics and entertainment. Yet how many general interest webzines would be willing to attempt to unravel the tangled skein of ancient theological arguments between Augustine and Pelagius?

This series is thick with ideas. I went back and tried to skim the articles and found I couldn’t; I had to read them. Even now, I feel I should read them again more carefully. There is so much to think about. Examining how church doctrine was made puts religious tenets in a much more human light. The tensions between freedom and responsibility, the individual search for truth and the structure of the church, are still being played out in myriad ways today.

– Jon Stonger

5. “Is Barack Obama An American Citizen?” by Alex Knapp

Whether we like it or not, we live in a universe that is independent of our own subjective perspective and the facts of that universe are indeed knowable to anyone capable of perceiving and understanding them. Now, I happen to think there are definite benefits to this sort of existence. I admit the downsides, though. For instance, I can’t fly, I can’t breathe underwater, and I can’t shoot lightning bolts from fingertips. These things I lament, but I am getting over it.

The philosophical paradigms that would be required of my supernatural wish-list are the same that would be required of a lot of things. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Heaven, and the illegitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency due to his birth origin. Alex’s satirical bent makes this article enjoyable, but also a little disturbing that so many accept non-natural philosophies that do not accurately reflect our real world. That acceptance of those philosophies by people is in name only since natural law will not allow for the intended consequences to occur. Yet people still act as if they could. And that’s a little worrisome. Until of course my superpowers fully develop; then it won’t really matter what is believed.

– Brian Knapp

4. “Still Offended by Language” by Jon Stonger

In my opinion, this was our finest article last year. It puts into words what I have felt for a long time now, that people misusing words is a far worse offense than any so-called expletive. As an editor, I find nothing wrong with ANY word used properly. If my boss asks me to work with a team and find a creative solution to a problem, I have no issues. If she asks me to synergize with my team to think outside the box? Then we are going to have issues. As Jon so succinctly puts it “I had to extrapolate my banana rabbit” And no one gets to do that to me. Not even if you pay me.

– Kati Coolon

3. “The Persistence of Conspiracy” by Alex Knapp

A fine article, trying to explain why so many people fall into the conspiracy trap. This has a personal interest to me, as I work in the healthcare industry at a hospital for children. And the new fad amongst the conspiracy theorists is the whole “immunization causes autism” thing. Ask them for one study showing this to be true, and they cannot. They will defend this argument with their child’s last, wheezing breath as they die of an easily preventable childhood illness. To me, this is the most damaging kind of crazy belief, and it used to drive me insane as I attempted to reason with these people. I know I will never change their minds, the people who have all ready succumbed to this belief, but maybe if a few more people read this article then they will step back and think before they believe the words that fall from Jenny McCarthy’s lips. Maybe, just one person will think “Hey! She’s not even that good and actress! What makes her an authority of immunizations, and the causes of autism?”

– Kati Coolon

2. “Dogs, Pigs and Death” by Jon Stonger

Animal rights are always a tricky topic, with all sorts of philosophic thorns and difficulties to think about. One of the things I really appreciated about this article was it’s completely different way of thinking about our rights and duties towards animals in the cultural context of how we evolved with them. In many ways, dogs really are our friends, and that really does seem to put them in a different moral context than pigs. It was a thought-provoking piece that I’ve gone back to read a few times because it’s really changed my way of looking at animal rights.

– Alex Knapp

1. “The Moral Exemplars of Watchmen” by Alex Knapp

This article hit on two major themes for me. First, I find it very frustrating that so many people consider animation and the comic book / graphic novel format to be an immature, childish form of storytelling. “Comic books and cartoons are for kids and immature adults”, the chorus goes. Alex’s analysis of these characters shows that graphic novels can convey as sophisticated a story with character as rich and complex as you’d find in any other piece of literature. The second reason that this article resonated so well with me is that, in the field of morality, there is a tendency of people to regard their own moral code as objectively supreme and to analyze the moral codes of others by applying their own. By using the Watchmen as a vehicle to explore the different moral philosophies that exist without judging them, he gives readers the tools to look at their own moral codes and look at the relative strengths, weaknesses, and lingering effects of their own beliefs.

–Tom Traina

So these are the staff favorites. What are yours?