The blue vision of the future, as I wrote in my last essay, is a bleak one in many respects. If the establishment liberals of our time are right in their future vision, most of the population will be economically surplus; globalization and automation will empower a creative class on Wall Street and in Hollywood […]

[As regular VM readers know we have been writing about the decline of the “blue social model” — which you can read more about here and here.]While many ask whether the blue social model has a future, it may be more interesting to ask what kind of future the blue social model offers. Blue opinion […]

Americans like to think we are pragmatic, results oriented people, but many of our political disagreements are argued in terms of abstract theory. In particular, Americans like to argue about the proper role of the state: how big should it be and how its responsibilities should be divided between state, local and federal levels. Often, […]

After every mass shooting, the talk of the nation turns to gun control, and the particular horror of the Newtown tragedy has made the conversation louder than ever.New York lawmakers passed the strictest gun laws in the country on Tuesday, and yesterday President Obama released a set of executive orders that marked the strongest action […]

In the last couple of years I’ve been writing about the death of the blue social model. By that I mean that the characteristic form of 20th century industrial democracy has come unglued, and that the advanced industrial democracies around the world must adjust to basic changes in the way the world works.For those who missed […]

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about California’s return to fiscal solvency thanks to a round of tax hikes; the ‘one percent’ of Californians are, we have been told, happy to pay their fair share and to participate in the rescue of the Golden State.That’s what the politicians say; some of the actual taxpayers dissent. […]

This is the twelfth day of Christmas and so the Yule Blog is drawing to a close for another year. As always, it’s a nice break from the regular blogging and a way to mark the holidays.The Christmas season ends on a high note, with the Feast of the Epiphany — also known as Three […]

President Obama was officially re-elected by the electoral college yesterday, but as he turns toward a new term, he is still haunted by one of the biggest failures of the first four years of his presidency: Israeli-Palestinian peace relations. At Via Meadia, we think that the President needs a better approach to get better results.Israeli-Palestinian peace […]

As the Christmas season draws to a close and the return of regular blogging looms, I’m looking back over this short period of intense religion writing and thinking about how writing on religion is and is not like writing on other controversial topics.There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s important to write about religion.  […]

Connections between the adult Jesus, his childhood and the family in which he was raised aren’t easy to make. At first glance, the gospels don’t offer much; whatever the gospel writers had in mind, producing complete biographies of Jesus wasn’t it. Mark omits Christmas altogether, and starts with Jesus getting baptized and launching his career. […]