There is no nation in which we can place total faith.

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.

Just war theorizing has typically left the issue of national honor untouched, although warriors and statesmen routinely emphasize the importance of vindicating the sacrifice of the fallen. Does prolonging a war in order to assuage or vindicate national honor comport with the just war tradition?

On March 22, 2018, Rebeccah Heinrichs spoke about nuclear weapons at a dinner launching a just war conference that Providence and Catholic University of America co-hosted.

If we use last resort to prevent war in almost all circumstances because we see the use of force as evil, we do not preserve peace but instead allow injustices to go unchecked.

Force is always only the form love takes against terrible evil in the last resort when nothing else will protect the innocent, restore justice, and bring about the conditions for peace. The old Chestertonian nugget remains: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

If Russian agents in the UK tried to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Russian agents should pay.

Perhaps the most intriguing—and certainly the most disquieting—section of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was his 475-word overview of the monstrous North Korean regime.

Against the seemingly gentle assertions of pacifism, those who truly want to love in our world must understand there remains a need of coercion to maintain a minimum of justice and to preserve those innocents whom the unjust would ravage.