My resolution for 2012 is to restart the blogging I did on The American Interest’s web site, something I haven’t done since 2009. I stopped writing back then because I was in the process of drafting the first volume of The Origins of Political Order and didn’t have the time.I’m now in the midst of […]

Earlier this week I blogged about how theists and atheists are the not all that different from each other; we are almost all transcendentalists in the sense that almost all of us find some kind of moral, ethical and even spiritual meaning in life. Human life amounts to more than eating and scratching our various […]

The editors of Foreign Affairs have published my list of the three best books on the United States I reviewed for them in 2011.  You can also see the list of my colleagues’ selections in a variety of fields.  The capsule book reviews at the end of each issue of Foreign Affairs are one of […]

Now it gets tough. That little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying so cutely in the manger is the biggest trouble maker in world history, and the shocking claims that Christianity makes about who he is and what he means divide Christians not only from atheists and agnostics, but also splits Christians off from […]

Hugo Chavez has a new theory: that the US has developed a secret technology and is using it to give cancer to left wing Latin American rulers that we don’t like.  After all, Fidel Castro, the Hero of Venezuela himself, the president of Paraguay, the current and former presidents of Brazil and now Cristina Kirchner […]

The Wall Street Journal has published a piece I’ve written on America’s emerging Pacific policy.  It’s a policy that has roots in both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and rests on ideas that date back before the American Revolution, and it is one that is likely to outlive the Obama administration. While the […]

It’s been a light blogging Christmas week here at Via Meadia.  The staff has deserted the sinking holiday ship, skiing in Switzerland in at least one case.  But the Mead clan has also been absorbing a lot of the attention that in quieter times of the year goes to the blog.  During the last few […]

For some readers, this Megan McArdle post at The Atlantic is the most important thing you will read all year.  Her subject is savings, and why you need to save much more than you are currently socking away.Most older readers haven’t saved enough; most younger readers will need to save more (as government retirement programs […]

Five go-old rings!Happy fifth day of Christmas, and welcome back to the 2011 Yule Blog, where we aim to keep the holiday fires burning right up through Twelfth Night on January 6.Yesterday King Herod’s massacre of every child in Bethlehem under the age of two shocked us out of the idea that Christmas is basically a […]

As the heavily staged mourning for the “Dear Leader” grinds on, it’s worth noting that former US President Jimmy Carter has reportedly sent his personal condolences to North Korea upon the death of the old dictator and wished his son and successor Kim Jong-Un “every success” in the future. According to the Washington Times: A […]