Marc LiVecche

Marc LiVecche is the McDonald Distinguished Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life at Providence. He is also a non-resident research fellow at the US Naval War College, in the College of Leadership and Ethics.

Marc completed doctoral studies, earning distinction, at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the supervision of the political theorist and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain, until her death in August, 2013. His first book, The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. Another project, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition, co-edited with Eric Patterson, was published by Stone Tower Press in the fall of 2020. Currently, he is finalizing Moral Horror: A Just War Defense of Hiroshima. Before all this academic stuff, Marc spent twelve years doing a variety of things in Central Europe—ranging from helping build sport and recreational leagues in post-communist communities, to working at a Christian study and research center, to leading seminars on history and ethics onsite at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. This latter experience allowed him to continue his undergraduate study of the Shoah; a process which rendered him entirely ill-suited for pacifism.

Marc lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and children–and a marmota monax whistlepigging under the shed. He can be followed, or stalked, on twitter @mlivecche. Additional publications can be found at his Amazon author page.

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Adoration of the Child

Gerrit Van Honthorst (c. 1620)

Great Again is Not Enough

Nations must seek to be just even as they seek to be strong – goodness and greatness must characterize them

Not Set Off But “Sent Off”

We have to grasp the nature of the threat and its blind, indifferent willingness to strike out at everyone, everywhere, and anytime.

War & Fine Distinctions

Seventy-four years ago today the United States entered WW II. Knowing what is worth fighting for is just as important today as it was then.

Women in the U.S. military will end the virtue of gallantry
The End of Gallantry

A Nation of men who have abdicated their responsibility to stand between women and the beasts is a nation that has already gone beastly

Cry-bullies: The Coming of Age of the Abuser-Victim

You can tell a lot about a person or group by how they respond to wrongdoing. At the center of the spectrum of options is the golden mean: the proportionate and discriminate rectification of injustice through the recovery of what has been wrongly taken, the rescue or protection of the innocent, the appropriate punishment of the wrongdoer, and the pursuit of a sustainable peace. Not everyone responds to wrongdoing so maturely.

Paris, ISIS, & American Responsibility

What is becoming increasingly clear is that whether concerning the export of terror, the refugee crisis, or the dangers of the maintenance of the caliphate, the only foreseeable end to this crisis is to see the end of ISIS.

Syrian Refugee
Compassion, Yes; (But Security Too)

Mercy need not run roughshod over prudence

After Paris

Morality and interests unite in our duty to destroy ISIS.

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Christianity & National Security 2023

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