Daniel Strand

As we look out at the world today, Americans need to recount the lessons of the Cold War that Gaddis helpfully brings to our attention.

Nationalism is on the rise worldwide with nationalist-oriented leaders taking the helm in some of the largest countries.  Some call them “authoritarians,” others “populists.” 

Robert Kagan seems unwilling to consider that there might be something to learn from these “authoritarians.” If he did, he might paradoxically find an ally in the cause of preserving and securing liberal democracy and the rules-based order it helped build.

Though Mead’s talk was focused on bipartisanship in American foreign policy, he had news for the audience: American foreign policy has rarely ever stopped “at the water’s edge.”

To have former heads of our most important and sensitive agencies spinning conspiracy theories as if they were facts can only do harm to our government and our trust in our intelligence services.

Politics is essential for any working society, let alone a thriving one. To the extent that Christians abandon politics or leave it to the jackals, society will suffer.

In a recent issue of Providence, several scholars presented a defense of liberalism that cited Augustine. Daniel Strand responds that many things about Augustine are not liberal at all and would probably set him deeply at odds with American liberal democracy.

Americans fought a revolution over the exercise of absolute power. We should think long and hard about resurrecting absolutist tendencies in the modern presidency and how we can put the genie back in the bottle.

We need a return to a sober Christian Realism that appreciates our fallenness, the fallenness of the world, and our limits in shaping world events.

President George H.W. Bush was a principled Christian politician who was devoted to public service as an outgrowth of his faith, and not in spite of it.