This is a war for civilization

There are two ways to think about the November 13 Paris attacks. The first is that ISIS has taken a strategy to hit Western countries in order to pull them out of the game, to dissuade them from further airstrikes in greater Syria. The second way to understand this is as a strategic miscalculation that will raise Western resolve. Let’s explore both strategies and what is then likely to happen.

“liberté, égalité, fraternité”

With student protests at the University of Missouri resulting in the resignation of that school’s president and concerns about Halloween costumes at Yale sparking a national debate about the commensurability of deeply held values such as free speech and anti-racism, the American conversation about what colleges and universities can and should promise students has entered a moment of reignited intensity. A similar conversation is raging in South Africa.

The Obama White House seems blithely unaware that one of America’s most important partners in the struggle to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) and alleviate the refugee crisis in Europe—Turkey, a member of NATO—is on the brink of a political meltdown that could end its experiment in liberal democracy.

It is not “the military” nor “the government” that will be primarily responsible for the production of knights – of just warriors. Rather, it is, above all, the family, and, secondarily, our places of worship, our schools, our civic institutions – all those relational associations that fill the space between the individual and the state and make up civil society. Impeding this, and lurking in the background of this project, is the civil-military relations of our land.

After the deadly assault on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which saw jihadists execute writers, artists and janitors in retaliation for the paper’s publication of crude cartoons mocking Muhammad, the Paris-based publication is facing regular death threats. Freedom of speech is under threat.

The following is based on remarks delivered at the Providence launch party, Friday, November 6th. The recorded event is available on our Facebook page. For those who prefer to read, in the days ahead, we will post additional transcriptions. Watch for them!

Providence aims to rediscover Protestant tradition and to unearth some of those resources as they relate to international affairs and the vocation of the state and how we would counsel America as a great power to perform on the world stage.