Idealism

Where Are the Playful Realists?
Where Are the Playful Realists?

It is childish to demand the real world conform to one’s fancy; it is childlike to learn about the real world by playing in an imaginary one. Both the idealist and the cynical realist are childish. The Christian realist, by contrast, should be childlike.

What Power Still Gets Wrong on Humanitarian Intervention: A Book Review of Samantha Power’s The Education of An Idealist
What Power Still Gets Wrong on Humanitarian Intervention: A Review of Samantha Power’s The Education of An Idealist

In “The Education of an Idealist,” Samantha Power comes across as a compassionate person with generous impulses. These attributes cannot by themselves determine policy on the question of humanitarian interventions.

Why Idealists Are Wrong about China’s Peaceful Rise
Idealists Are Wrong about China’s Peaceful Rise

Idealists argue China’s increasing power will not result in a hegemonic war with the US. They are dead wrong.

What the Coronavirus Can Teach Us about Politics - COVID-19 Government
What the Coronavirus and Lockdowns Can Teach Us about Politics

Do not be too hard on politicians who struggle with and differ on their answers to these questions about the COVID-19 and the lockdowns. These are very hard things, and there is no indisputable right answer.

Reinhold Niebuhr and the Second World War

Beginning in 1940, Reinhold Niebuhr made the case for a sober, realistic, and morally grounded US involvement overseas, out of the central admission that whatever America’s own faults, a punctilious detachment from world affairs might very well result in the triumph of greater imbalances and injustices

Rethinking the Marshall Plan
Rethinking the Marshall Plan

Neither active idealism (a massive humanitarian intervention) nor defensive realism (an anticommunist security strategy) quite comes to grips with the Marshall Plan’s rationale. Americans would not have been so committed to spending these large, sacrificial sums except that their own core beliefs, values, and institutions were at risk.

Trump’s UN Realism and Christian Benevolence

Many Christian elites will not like Donald Trump’s United Nations speech this week, whose key phrase was “we reject the ideology of globalism and accept the doctrine of patriotism.”

The Great Good of Order: A Partial Defense of Jeff Sessions
The Great Good of Order: A Partial Defense of Jeff Sessions

Most Christians, including most evangelicals, have been falling over themselves to denounce Jeff Sessions. But the way this immigration debate is carried out too often mirrors the political debate.

Part 1: Protestant Roots of US Foreign Policy Divisions Michael Doran Mark Tooley FDR Teddy
Part 1: Protestant Roots of US Foreign Policy Divisions

The foreign policies of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt represent an intersection between two different Protestant worldviews.