Catholics find it increasingly difficult to sustain expectations of their church engaging & redeeming modernity. The problem is not simply that the institutional church today stands discredited, but that it has misconstrued the problem. The ramparts it persists in defending have long since been scaled, breached, and bypassed & have fallen into ruin.

The “Western world has never been richer, more secure, or more heavily armed in its history,” writes Overy. So relax.

A review of Jackson Lears's 'Rebirth of a Nation'

What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention?

  Time to ditch the Bush Doctrine

What does the United States owe Iraqis?

What does the ’surge’ really mean? Hint: it’s about the administration’s reduced strategic appetite.

America’s "liberating tradition" isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

The all-volunteer army, arguably the most successful federal program of the past thirty years, is failing, argues Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran. The war in Iraq, coupled with U.S. interventionalist foreign policy, has placed a great strain on the volunteer force, exposing as false the assumption that the U.S. can enjoy the prerogatives of being the world’s sole superpower on the cheap.

From his apartment overlooking Germany’s Wannsee River, Andrew J. Bacevich gives us “The View from Berlin: Reflections on Empire.”