But Niebuhr warns: "Men will never be wholly reasonable, and the proportion of reason to impulse becomes increasingly negative when we proceed from the life of the individual to that of social groups, among whom a common mind and purpose is always more or less inchoate and transitory, and who depend therefore upon a common impulse to bind them together." [p. 35]
"The larger the group the more difficult to achieve a common mind and purpose and the more inevitably will it be unified by momentary impulses and immediate and unreflective purpose. The increasing size of the group increases the difficulties of achieving a group self-consciousness, except as it comes in conflict with other groups and is unified by the perils and passions of war." [p. 48] "Momentary impulses and immediate and unreflective purpose?" Sounds like America going into Iraq!
Moreover, "Even a nation composed of individuals who possessed the highest degree of religious goodwill would be less than loving in its relation to other nations. It would fail, if for no other reason, because the individuals could not possibly think themselves into the positions of the individuals of another nation in a degree sufficient to assure pure benevolence. Furthermore such goodwill as they did possess would be sluiced into loyalty to their own nation and tend to increase that nation's selfishness." [p.75]
Finally, those American crackpot Christians who gave and continue to give their unquestioning loyalty to this objectively and inescapably evil Christian Commander-in chief might want to ponder two additional universal truths posited by Niebuhr.
(1) The paradox of patriotism: "The unqualified character of this devotion is the very basis of the nation's power and of the freedom to use that power without moral restraint. Thus the unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations." [p. 91]
(2) "The man of power, though humane impulse may awaken in him, always remains something of a beast of prey." [p. 13]
Thus, rather than continue to wallow in idolatrous heresies that President Bush associates with the American Creed, America's crackpot Christians might want to step back to ponder one final universal truth proclaimed by Reinhold Niebuhr: "The selfishness of human communities must be regarded as an inevitability." [p. 272]
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