The Rise of Violent, Revolutionary Ideology in the 20th Century and its Christian Realist Tonic.

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.

Should Washington become a party to a peace settlement for the Russia-Ukraine War, it should be prepared to defend Ukraine against inevitable Kremlin pressure to forcibly repatriate Russian prisoners of war.

Shoup’s actions during Christmastime 1955 offer an un-planned, un-staged snapshot of a political system and world view strikingly different from that of Lenin, Stalin, and Xi—a system founded on the freedom to believe in God or Santa or not, to believe in the meaning of Christmas or not, to believe in Immanuel or not.

The struggle for that free and decent world never ends this side of the parousia.

But it’s important for the souls of democracies that, even as they must make nasty accommodations in pursuit of a wider good, that they fully admit to themselves this reality, without self-delusion.

We comfort ourselves, saying, “This is not who we are.” But without deeper reflection, such pat answers are lies, strengthening the “vulgarized knowledge” that allow us to ignore the chasms that threaten to consume us.

Why is the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict still considered “frozen”? Simply put, the conflict’s continuation is in Russia’s interests.

Embattled Christian communities throughout the Middle East still feel the reverberations of the Armenian Genocide.