ABSTRACT
Just-war thinking is primarily for deliberating about and perceiving what counts as good and bad wars. During the cold war, America could conceive of itself as a superpower while at the same time recognizing that its activities in the world were limited by an opponent roughly equal in power to itself. Between the World Wars and Vietnam, Americans had the opportunity to revel in their power. The twentieth century also witnessed an information landscape that was much more streamlined than we know in the present. From the 1920s, national radio broadcasting was dominated by a relatively small number of media corporations. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about an end to the cold war, and a short period in which the United States could think of itself as the globe's sole superpower. More broadly, even for non-Christians, hope is the virtue that allows us to continue working to achieve the good even when that effort faces significant challenges.
