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.)
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