Christopher Mead has a piece up over at New Geography that looks at the role of local chambers of commerce in the progressive era. At the birth of the blue social model, much of the impetus for key progressive reforms came from these associations of mostly local, mostly small businesses.  This comes from research he […]

When U.S. and coalition forces ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in 1991, a new American era of military power projection began. During the Cold War, America’s military became an increasingly static force, forward based around the world to deter warfare, dampen regional security competitions and contain Soviet expansion. With the collapse of the Soviet […]

The story of the week was Chinese Vice President Xi’s visit to the United States. As this next round of the Asian Game of Thrones got seriously underway, Via Meadia had ringside seats in Washington and sketched out some important takeaways from what we observed. We also noted signs of concerted push-back from China against […]

It’s always fun when new statistical research confirms something Via Meadia already believes. We’ve written earlier about the wave of poor and ignorant atheists pollsters say is sweeping America. Now come the latest Gallup findings on wellbeing, which report that religious Americans are happy Americans: Very religious Americans of all major faiths have higher overall […]

[Turkey doesn’t just stand geographically between East and West. Turkey’s attitude towards problems ranging from the Armenia-Azerbaijani dispute to the Iranian nuclear program to the conflict in Syria and many others will have major implications for how these problems unfold. Because Turkey is in a period of rapid domestic change, its behavior is not as […]

Regular readers know that Via Meadia spends more time at the opera than on Broadway, but last night we made a venture into midtown Manhattan to see “Anything Goes,” the revival of one of Cole Porter’s greatest.It was a stunner, one showstopping number after another, and when the cast broke out the tap shoes for […]

Michael Fagan, the barefoot intruder who humiliated British royal security by climbing unobserved into Buckingham Palace, wandering through the building’s art collections and private areas, trying out various thrones for comfort before breaking in on the queen in her nightgown, was finally corralled by a footman who gave him a glass of Famous Grouse whiskey […]

The typical American church today is organized around the ideas and realities of blue model America. Denominational structures (weakened by years of cutbacks in many cases) are bureaucratic staff organizations. Most local congregations own a large building and land; most of their budgets are eaten up by professional salaries and building maintenance. The mainline Protestant […]

Not all the Democrats are celebrating the January unemployment numbers as morning in Obama’s America. Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary and one of Via Meadia’s favorite liberals, notes dourly that most of the hiring is happening in lower-wage sectors.With more Americans impoverished than at any other point over the past fifty years, Reich finds candidate […]

Joel Kotkin wrote a thought-provoking piece in The Daily Beast the other day about how Silicon Valley’s elites are predominantly supporting Democrats.It wasn’t always this way, Kotkin argues. While firms were in the business of manufacturing hardware, they were concerned with much of the same things as any other business: minimizing onerous government regulations which impact […]