May God always protect the prosecuted and the countries that give them asylum.

President Kennedy understood the need to counter America’s enemies without precipitating WWIII.

As the generation that grew up in and saw the collapse of the USSR, Generation X is uniquely positioned to lead the US as it drifts into the second Cold War.

Providence editors Mark Tooley and Marc LiVecche discuss Abigail Lindner and Eric Patterson’s article on G.K. Chesterton and war memorials, Lubomir Ondrasek’s piece on Czech leader Vaclav Havel’s warning against hatred, and Lee Trepanier’s counsel for how Russian Orthodoxy, lacking the Just War tradition, can oppose injustice with church teaching on personhood.

“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred!” is how Václav Havel ended his speech to a crowd of freedom-longing people gathered in Prague on December 10, 1989. This statement was one of the slogans of the Velvet Revolution and embodied the overall spirit of this unparalleled historical event.

The courage of Václav Havel was grounded in a sense of responsibility for promoting ideals and values that transcend material goods, confront human decadence, and endure beyond our earthly existence.

Living in truth was Václav Havel’s basic answer to the problem of falsehood, one of the defining characteristics of the ideology and regime that ruled Czechoslovakia until 1989.

The prophet Václav Havel wants Americans to know that there is an important connection between remembering God and living in freedom.

Someone like me who once lived in a totalitarian society finds it surprising and troubling that so many American churches have defined their mission as “to work for peace and justice in our world” but have neglected the defense of freedom as an essential part of their public ministry.