Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, and the Distinguished Scholar in American Strategy and Statesmanship for the Hudson Institute. He previously served as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations. His works include God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (2008), and he is the Global Views Columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

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Day 13: The Light at the End of the Yule Blog

Christmas is important to Christians because from their point of view the Baby Jesus is the meaning of Christmas, and the meaning of Christmas is the meaning of life.

Day 12: How Real is the Meaning?

History turned a corner with the birth of Jesus Christ, and while the written reports of that event don’t tell…

Day 11: Sitting in Darkness, Blogging the Light

If we leave religion out of our national conversation, we end up with a vapid conversation that doesn’t address the…

Day 10: The Mother of All Meaning

To get any insight at all into what Jesus’ childhood and upbringing were like, you have to do something that…

Day 9: God’s Dilemma - Yule Blog - Sin Grace Love
Day 9: God’s Dilemma

The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong, is what and who God is bound…

Day 8: One for All

The Christmas story suggests that we can somehow try to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and…

Day 7: Meaning in 3-D

Now it gets tough. Yesterday’s post at the Yule Blog looked at what divides Christians and other theists from atheists; today…

Day 6: Personal Meaning

Yesterday, the Yule Blog featured an essay about how theists and atheists are not all that different from each other;…

Day 5: The Meaning of Christmas

Happy fifth day of Christmas, and welcome back to the 2023-2024 Yule Blog, where we aim to keep the holiday…

Day 4: The Hinge of Fate

Everybody wants to reduce Christmas to a Christmas card: we’d like this to be a pretty and sentimental tale. But…