The Amazing Blinkered European Elites
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an important article outlining the steps that allowed Anis Amri, the main suspect in the Berlin truck massacre (killed today in Milan), to carry out his atrocity: The...
View ArticleThe Thirteen Blogs of Christmas: 2016-17 Edition
The stockings are hung by the chimney with care at the ancestral Mead mansion; and as I settle down for a long winter’s rest I am taking a break from politics and war, sort of, to yet another run of...
View ArticleUN Vote on Settlements Can’t Hide Palestinian Collapse
President Obama’s decision not to block a UN Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements on the West Bank illegal can be read many ways. In part, it’s an Obama counter-strike against...
View ArticleChristmas Gift!
Merry Christmas and happy holiday to all! Christmas is a tense morning wherever the Meads gather, as we jump whenever the telephone rings. There’s an old South Carolina custom that when two friends or...
View ArticleRolling the Credits
As we start to look at this whole Christmas phenomenon, it makes sense to begin with the basics. The first questions any sensible person asks about Christmas are pretty straightforward: What event is...
View ArticleBorn of a WHAT???
It is not quite the most controversial verse in the Bible, but Luke 1:35 comes close. Mary has just replied to the angel Gabriel’s statement that she will be the mother of the Messiah with a question...
View ArticleThe Pretense of the Peace Process
Kevin Drum has an important short post—titled “There Will Never* Be an Israel-Palestinian Peace Settlement”—up at Mother Jones on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that’s worth your time. (Click through...
View ArticleThe Hinge of Fate
Yesterday, we looked at why the Gospels make such a point of saying that Jesus was born of a virgin. But there is more to the story than the absence of a biological father. What kind of home was Jesus...
View ArticleOn Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!
Years ago, we had a talented young intern who was interested in all things Jewish. I told him about a science fiction story about Jews on Venus that I loved back in the 1970s but hadn’t seen since. He...
View ArticleHardline Islamists Gain Ground in Indonesia
A blasphemy scandal involving the Christian governor of Jakarta continues to inflame tensions in Indonesia, as hardline Islamists gain ground in a country typically known for its religious moderation....
View ArticleThe Meaning of Christmas
Happy fifth day of Christmas, and welcome back to the 2016-17 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...
View ArticleThe Great Unraveling
European policy on Russia is beginning to crumble as the French presidential candidates step away from sanctions. The WSJ: The two leading candidates, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen, are both avowed...
View ArticlePersonal Meaning
Yesterday’s Yule Blog featured an essay 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...
View ArticleMeaning in 3-D
Now it gets tough. Yesterday’s post looked at what divides Christians and other theists from atheists; today we cut deeper and look at what separates Christians from believers in other religions.And...
View ArticleOne for All
Back in the beginning of the Christmas season, I wrote about the way the Gospel Christmas narratives “roll the credits” by giving genealogical tables that link Jesus to Jewish history. In contemplating...
View ArticleGod’s Dilemma
Six years ago at this time, New York city was paralyzed by a blizzard; thankfully, I was visiting family outside the city when the snow fell and was able to hole up in my house upstate where I teach at...
View ArticleThe Mother of All Meaning
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 seem to sympathize with our natural human curiosity;...
View ArticleChristmas Violence Forces Germany to Face Hard Truths
The decentralization of police power and the weakening of domestic intelligence services was a deep seated reaction to the horrific excesses of the Nazi era, and few ideas have been set as deeply in...
View ArticleThe GOP Takes a Hack at the Healthcare Gordian Knot
We covered the Obamacare story closely here at The American Interest, both in feature-length analyses and in the ongoing daily analysis at Via Meadia, because it seemed to us that the fate of the...
View ArticleChina Bubble Looking Ever More Ominous
These days, organizaitons like the IMF don’t lightly diss China, a major power in the world of international finance. It’s therefore remarkable that IMF economists are being as frank as this, basically...
View Article