Mark Tooley

IRD/Providence hosted a conversation with the Hanns Seidel Foundation on Cancel Culture.

Today we’re covering three scintillating pieces from Providence this week, one on the Israel and Hamas conflict, another on a new book about the Iraq War, and thirdly, one by yours truly on the New Whiggery.

Whiggery isn’t an ideology or a political agenda. It’s a centuries old sensibility that counsels mutual respect, patience and optimism for persons and communities.

May America amid its sins seek virtue and justice. And may America never be at peace with a world led by tyrants.

America is audacious and globally indispensable chiefly because of its soaring ideals. And those ideals speak to the world in the measured but constant affirmation of benevolence and good will to all who reciprocate. May it always be good news when a mighty American ship anchors in a distant harbor in times of trouble.

Nations great and small largely determine their own destiny under the mercy or judgment of an ever watchful Providence.

But it’s important for the souls of democracies that, even as they must make nasty accommodations in pursuit of a wider good, that they fully admit to themselves this reality, without self-delusion.

Needless to say, demands for complete justice in this world, humanly rather than divinely enacted, are dangerous, potentially lethal, and inevitably will be disappointed.

Lodge was governed by a WASP devotion to American interests and to democratic fair play that drove his role toward displacing the autocratic Diem.

Christian Realism is our theme at Providence, and Christian Realism was the theme of George Washington’s life that America celebrates with today’s federal holiday.