Leaving aside the rightness or wrongness of any particular policy, it seems clear that there is a deep division between the worlds of policy making and the worlds of moral reflection.

Morality and interests unite in our duty to destroy ISIS.

The following is based on remarks delivered at the Providence launch party, Friday, November 6th. The recorded event is available on our Facebook page. For those who prefer to read, in the days ahead, we will post additional transcriptions. Watch for them!

For soldiers, the burden of having to do that which they believe to be morally evil is devastating. And according to the classic Just War tradition, it needn’t be.

It was a terrible anniversary. Seventy years ago this past week, at zero eight fifteen hours, August 6th, 1945, the Enola Gay, a U.S. Army Air Force B-29, dropped an 8,900-pound bomb, dubbed “Little Boy”, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb, Fat Man, fell upon Nagasaki.

The headlines are exasperating, if a bit hyperbolic: Reuters writes, “Pope Says Weapons Manufacturers Can’t Call Themselves Christians” while the Daily Beast puts it, “Pope: Gun Makers Are Not Christians.”