Who of us very recently hasn’t thought about the likes of these poignant words?

If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a great nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.  

—Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, 1952

(Niebuhr was a long-time professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and the author The Serenity Prayer.)