History

This is an axiom, as true for foreign policy as it is for our faith. We may not be bound by history, but we are damned if we ignore it. The root of conservatism is the tendency to see value in traditions not as ends unto themselves but as visible reminders of the sacrifices of those who have gone before.

America began building an empire long before 1898. Stephen Kinzer, it seems, is yearning for a mythical America.

Robert Kennedy had rejected the anti-Semitism of his father, Ambassador Joe Kennedy, and had pledged to send 50 jet fighters to Israel to help that small, embattled country survive in a sea of enemies. For that, he would pay with his life.

Four hundred years ago, the Second Defenestration of Prague occurred when a Protestant mob threw the Austrian emperor’s representatives out of a castle window. The Bohemians then started the Thirty Years’ War, which changed the course of world history and led to today’s nation-state world order.

Memorial Day is an opportunity to reflect on the debt that the many owe to the few. Wars must sometimes be fought to defend the innocent, restore justice, and punish evil. When wars are fought, those who fight them sometimes fall. We must remember them.

Reflecting on Israel at its seventieth anniversary, I wonder why Reformed Christians, or Calvinists as they are sometimes called, are more reluctant and timid about their views on Israel. 

Both the Jacksonian and Progressive persuasions that Michael Doran describes exhibit symptoms of secularized politics. Neither articulates a truly Christian view of politics or foreign policy.

Ultimately, why Americans see the world through one theological lens or another has a lot to do with whether they identify more closely with a Hebraic or Hellenic kind of Christianity. Put another way, American Christians view the world differently depending on how much they read the Bible, believe the Bible is divinely inspired, and accept the Bible as authoritative in their lives.

While there is enormous merit to Michael Doran’s binary and overall thesis in his First Things essay, there are some complicating factors that obscure the “wondrous chasm” between Jacksonianism and Progressivism.