THE MYTH OF NATIONAL INNOCENCE

IS A DELUSION. After all, whites coming to these shores were reared in the Calvinist doctrine of sinful humanity, and they killed red men, enslaved black men and later on imported yellow men for peon labor - not much of a background for national innocence.

"Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem," Niebuhr wrote, "are insufferable.


The self-righteous delusion of innocence divides the world between good (us) and evil (our critics).

---Reinhold Niebuhr