It is tempting for presidents, who are the final arbiters of exercising state power in foreign affairs, to view the material realm as destiny. But ideas and principles have power too, often above and beyond the visible.

While there is enormous merit to Michael Doran’s binary and overall thesis in his First Things essay, there are some complicating factors that obscure the “wondrous chasm” between Jacksonianism and Progressivism.

When history renders its awful verdict of Barack Obama’s responsibility for the human catastrophe of Syria, the Corker-Blinken confrontation will be part of the brief.