Mercy need not run roughshod over prudence

While showing how a war between the U.S. and China would play out, P.W. Singer and August Cole’s Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War is a highly-recommendable read that has already helped focus minds on this topic, both inside the Beltway and beyond.

The current controversy over admitting Syrian refugees into the country raises some very challenging questions for Evangelical Christians.

Given that Obama’s strategy is incoherent and will not work at achieving a specific goal, whether that goal is stopping ISIS or removing Assad, American voters should consider the three alternative options proposed at Brookings on November 16.

A memorial mass at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris for victims of the recent terror featured the French tri-colors illuminated on the altar. The organ played La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, prompting the congregation to stand. Some waved small French flags.

This is a war for civilization

There are two ways to think about the November 13 Paris attacks. The first is that ISIS has taken a strategy to hit Western countries in order to pull them out of the game, to dissuade them from further airstrikes in greater Syria. The second way to understand this is as a strategic miscalculation that will raise Western resolve. Let’s explore both strategies and what is then likely to happen.

“liberté, égalité, fraternité”

With student protests at the University of Missouri resulting in the resignation of that school’s president and concerns about Halloween costumes at Yale sparking a national debate about the commensurability of deeply held values such as free speech and anti-racism, the American conversation about what colleges and universities can and should promise students has entered a moment of reignited intensity. A similar conversation is raging in South Africa.