It was 149 years ago today that deeply misguided Confederate hotheads rejoiced as they began the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.  The Confederate cabinet in Montgomery had determined on the attack, overriding the prescient advice of Secretary of State Robert Toombs that to fire the first shot “will lose us every friend at […]

It appears that the Episcopal Church is beginning at long last to take evangelism seriously.  Over at the very useful news source RNS, there are not only the usual stories about evangelicals holding mass meetings and preaching to tens of thousands of people.  Evangelism is, after all, not just a question of Rick Warren preaching […]

Last week I wrote about the standpoint, the place from which you look out on the world.  I described my own standpoint, growing up in the American south, the outskirts of London and a New England boarding school (or, as I once described it to a group of students in a religious school in Pakistan, […]

OK, you may be saying.  Maybe Mead is right that the One Big Treaty approach to climate change is a non-starter.  And maybe he’s right that the various bills working their way through Congress aren’t going to amount to all that much either.  And, just possibly he’s right that the two Green Princes, Al Gore […]

Yesterday’s post on climate change was pretty gloomy.  A combination of scientific uncertainty, green ineptitude and the volume of other insistent global problems competing with the green agenda for resources and attention add up to near-certain for greens who think the only way to Save the Planet is to cut carbon use by international decree […]

Sometimes, you don’t have to be an emperor to have no clothes.  Just being the Prince of Wales can be enough.  After all, in May of 2008 Prince Charles warned the world that we had only eighteen months left to save the planet from spiraling climate disasters.  Twenty-three months later we are struggling to cope […]

Two cheers for AIPAC; this is not the most popular sentiment in the foreign policy world, where the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is often both feared for its power and loathed for an approach to Middle East policy that, in the opinion of its many critics is often seen as unsubtle, one-sided and unhelpful.I’d […]

Today’s post was written by Sam, Research Associate for Team Mead at the Council on Foreign Relations. He studied political science and English at Yale.Giving me the reins of The Blog for the day (and Easter no less!) is daunting—a bit like when Mr. Mead lets me dust and clean the statue collection in the […]

A few years ago I was lucky enough to have some time in Athens, while attending one of those endless conferences during which the world’s affairs are handled in such an exemplary fashion.  I think this one may have been about relations between Turkish and Greek Cypriots.  It went as these things usually do; the […]

Et tu, Britain?This is what a lot of Americans are thinking with the news that a British parliamentary committee has pronounced the special relationship ‘dead’.Actually, one of the wonderful things about a special relationship is that it has more lives than a cat.  Brits and Americans have been pronouncing the special relationship dead since the […]