"All nations are tempted – and few have been able to resist the temptation for long – to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one’s side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.
The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled.
That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations -- in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself."
What does that remind me of! The sad thing is that the Bush Administration is not the entire embodiment of this concept; but merely an extreme manifestation of something that has prevailed since the Republic was founded. Ben Franklin once said,
"If a sparrow can fall to the ground without His notice,
it is likely that an empire can rise without His help?"
Which the Cheneys found so delightful they put it on their annual Christmas Card in 2003 (the first Christmas after invading Iraq.) How delightful...Going back to Morgenthau; I think it was Thomas Aquinas who described Pride as the worst sin of them all. And he may have been quoting the messiah himself, Jesus Christ. I don't care to look it up as I have to continue studying
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