Walter Russell Mead

American Withdrawal is America Last

Some America First Republicans are nearly indistinguishable from the standard fare retreaters we were served from the “Blame America First” leftists of the Cold War.

Five Impressions on Niebuhr and Co., 1945–47

From 1945 to 1947 as the United States and Soviet Union moved toward the Cold War, Christian realists writing for Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal, Christianity and Crisis, responded to global dilemmas. Here are five impressions of those articles, along with lessons for today.

Public Opinion Will Disappoint Isolationists - Ukraine - Russia
Public Opinion Will Disappoint Isolationists

Once again, public opinion polls have disappointed isolationists and others who want the United States to have a minimalist foreign policy. Almost overnight, a large swath of America now wants to counter Russia, and elected officials who want to keep their jobs have responded.

Climate Change and Human Nature
Climate Change and Human Nature

Another report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasted the potential consequences of climate change. But even if more voters begin to believe the issue is important, they may still not support the environmentalists’ policies.

Day 12: How Real is the Meaning? Yule Blog Apologetics Bible
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 me everything I want to know, they do tell me everything I need. The Gospels occupy a kind of center point in human culture as a whole: products of a particular time and place, but comprehensible to all.

Day 11: Sitting in Darkness, Blogging the Light - Yule Blog
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 deepest realities that move most of the people in this country.

Day 10: The Mother of All Meaning Yule Blog
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 sometimes makes Protestants uncomfortable: study Mary.

Day 7: Meaning in 3-D Yule Blog Trinity Christmas
Day 7: Meaning in 3-D

My goal is much more modest: to help Christian and non-Christian readers understand what classical vanilla Christians mean when they identify the baby in the manger with God on high. That means taking on the most controversial and complex idea in Christianity; the doctrine of the Trinity is wrapped around that baby in the manger even tighter than the swaddling clothes.

American Unity after Japan’s Surrender: A Reflection from 75 Years Ago
American Unity after Japan’s Surrender: A Reflection from 75 Years Ago

After Japan’s surrender 75 years ago, McCulloch implored Christians and governments to affirm “the dignity of the human person as the image of God” because this principle could determine the world’s fate.

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