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A century after the Great War’s end, we still have much to learn from its lessons and still wrestle with its consequences and leftovers.

No one concerned about the erosion of freedom in the world can afford to be complacent about the state of international human rights, or simply blame it on bad actors. The UN’s bureaucratic human rights mechanisms increasingly fail to protect individual human rights, yet offer cover to human rights abusers.

The impact of American missionaries on American foreign policy is three-fold: it can be applied outward to other nations, inward to our own, and upward into the official foreign relations apparatus.

From a liberal Augustinian perspective, Christians should affirm several liberal institutions, such as the separation of church and state, religious tolerance, and a number of individual rights. Beyond that, it’s over to the considerations of wisdom. And democracy, best I can tell, remains the best of the worst.

We cannot lift or obfuscate the uniquely American burden of global leadership. But by staying involved and providing perspective, we may be able to lighten the load.

Matthew Kroenig’s The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy provides an immensely important and forceful rebuttal to those nuclear scholars who have gained influence among average American citizens as well as within the walls of the Pentagon where nuclear strategy is conceived and carried out. In doing so, the central theme in Logic also exposes the vacuity of the moral “arguments” mainline Christian “thought leaders” have pushed in the name of US disarmament advocacy.

For Providence readers, there are three topics of particular interest from the Prodigal Prophet’s second half: justice, politics, and patriotism.

Much of the human experience is consumed in the pursuit of peace. It is a universal human longing. The peace we pursue is not merely the quiet enjoyment of life’s little pleasures, but the restoration of the real life we were created to enjoy.

Just war theorists should agree that war must be waged according to the rule of law if it is to be considered an exercise of “legitimate authority.” The American system, with its marbling of war powers between the executive and legislative branches, usually requires authorization based on the deliberative consent of the popular will expressed through the people’s representatives in Congress.