Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.

Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley

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Venezuela’s Chavismo Disaster

People have to recognize, I think economic gain isn’t everything, and you can lose your democracy.

Marksism – No. 37: Locke and Burke

In this week’s episode, the editors discuss Brad Littlejohn’s article about John Locke and his “appeal to heaven” reference and Mark Tooley’s interview with Allen Guelzo on whether American conservatives should look to Edmund Burke.

WASP Brahmin & Killing Diem

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

Allen Guelzo on Burke vs US Principles

Nations have certain importance, but at the end of the day, the Gospel itself trumps those characteristics.

Marksism – No. 36: Nations and Repentance

In this week’s episode, the editors discuss Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker’s article about how the nations appear in the Bible,…

Christian Nationalism?

I am hosting a conversation about a very hot topic, Christian nationalism, very much discussed, especially since the events of January 6.

George Washington’s Christian Realism

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.

Marksism – No. 35: On Human Rights, Nationalism, Northern Ireland, and Feeding Enemies
Marksism – No. 35: Human Rights, Nationalism, Northern Ireland, and Feeding Enemies

In this week’s episode, the editors discuss Mark Tooley’s conversation with Nigel Biggar, a Presbyterian’s look at nationalism, Mark Melton’s review of a book on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Reinhold Niebuhr’s call for Christians to feed and clothe the defeated Germans in 1946.

Nigel Biggar on What’s Wrong with Rights
Nigel Biggar on What’s Wrong with Rights

In Christian circles, there is the view that there’s something problematic about the very concept of a right as a property of an individual.

Walter Russell Mead on US Endurance

The law prevailed, the institutions prevailed, the electoral college, which a lot of people spent a lot of the year dumping on, delivered a result. The electors elected, and there we have it. We’ve been reading about the coup in Myanmar this week. That’s what happens when there’s a coup. We did not in the United States have a coup, we had a mob, and we had a riot. That is a very, very different thing.

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