" 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 giant 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 "

― Jill Lepore , These Truths: A History of the United States