Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a Dominican Philosopher and Theologian, a thirteenth-century European who reshaped Western philosophy as no other was noted for saying that prudence is the “Queen of Moral Virtues.” Of the cardinal virtues, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance, I would venture to say that Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they would degenerate into folly and excess. But what is prudence? Maybe it helps if we say what prudence is not. It is not to be...

I was reading a few days ago the words of a veteran as he recalled what he experienced in the past from being downrange in Iraq following an encounter with the enemy: “ I have never been shot at in my civilian life.  I have never been blown up in my civilian life.  I have never lost an ‘adopted’ child to a suicide bomber in my civilian life.  And, I have never had to listen to a man’s death over the Med-Evac frequency in my civilian life.  All those things happened during my year in Iraq.”...

Charles Moore writes the following in The Plough Reader (Autumn 2002): “When I first became a pacifist, I hit the warpath. In my zeal, I tried hard to convert others to my newfound position. I didn’t recognize that my zeal was blinding – and hardening me. I had ‘seen the light.’ Now those who differed from me were hawks, war-mongers, compromisers, enemies of humanity, or mutineers of Jesus. ‘Size them up and shut ‘em out’ became my modus operandi.” On the other hand, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,...