The unremitting spate of bad news from Pakistan continues; rains are still drenching the highlands and the devastation continues to spread down the river valleys.  This year’s harvest has been ruined; increasingly, it seems unlikely that farmers will be able to plant fall crops.  While visiting Pakistan earlier this month, I posted on the roots […]

We know that Christianity has been growing remarkably in recent decades—in China there is talk of “Christianity fever”. We don’t know just how many Christians there are in China at present. The reason for this is simple. Christian churches in China come in two groups: those that are registered and officially recognized by the government, […]

As the midterm elections approach, the political topic on everyone’s tongue is jobs. The discussion in the popular press, such as it is, takes several forms. Lately, the most common question one hears is how come the economy in general seems to be recovering from the recession but the unemployment rate is still so stubbornly […]

After two weeks in Pakistan and a week’s vacation I am hoping to return tomorrow to the stately Mead manor in glamorous Queens.  A bit sunburned and blistered from some tough scuba duty here in the Cayman Islands, I expect to resume regular posts on Via Meadia this week.  Many thanks to Professor Cristol and […]

I am nearing the end of a week’s rest and recuperation at an undisclosed location in the Cayman Islands, but Pakistan’s Summer from Hell is still going strong.Things were tough enough during my stay.  On my way in from the airport in Karachi, traffic was unusually light.  Roving gangs of armed thugs were roaming through […]

Over the last few years there was published a flurry of books marketed and discussed under the heading of “The New Atheism”.  The best-known authors are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.  While differing in emphasis and style, their books have in common an aggressive, indeed vituperative hostility to religion in all its forms (though […]

On July 13 the lower house of the French parliament banned all forms of headgear that hide the face, with the rationale that such garments are “contrary to the values of the French Republic”. One politician put it more poetically:  “The Republic has an open face”.  It was probably not an accident that this law […]

We have in The American Interest an ongoing project called “Nation-Building in America” and infrastructure renewal is a subject I have been trying to get covered now for some time, so far to no avail. The reason for my difficulties is my standard of adequacy: I don’t want an essay just telling my readers how […]

On July 28 the regional legislature of Catalonia passed a law banning bullfights. The official rationale was that bullfights involve cruelty to animals. This is undoubtedly true (though I, for one, am not sure that killing in an abattoir is necessarily less cruel). It is widely assumed that there is a more relevant political rationale—to […]

Sometime in the last 24 hours, Via Meadia passed an important milestone: the blog has had more than one million hits.When I started to blog last fall, I had no idea whether these essays would find an audience.  I’ve been more than gratified by the response, and thanks to all the visitors, regular and occasional, […]