Niebuhr's Irony

To explore the discussion on the great irony of American history, first we must understand how Niebuhr defines irony. He states that, “irony consists of apparently fortuitous incongruities in life which are discovered, upon closer examination, to not be merely fortuitous. If virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect In the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much reliance is placed upon it, if wisdom becomes folly because it does not know its own limits- in all cases the situation is ironic”(Niebuhr). The true irony of American history is that we are the world’s dominant force of power; however, when we try …show more content…
On the contrary about American values he says, “Our own culture is schizophrenic upon the subject of power. Sometimes it pretends that a liberal society is a purely rational harmony of interests. Sometimes it achieves a tolerable form of justice by a careful equilibration of powers and vitalities of society, though it is without a conscious philosophy to justify these polices of statesmanship” (Niebuhr page 5). This philosophy adopted by the United States causes people to be blinded by imperialism and arrogance during the Cold War. How can the United States be considered the world’s greatest democracy when we solely desired world domination? For example, we went to war with the Philippines in Cuba just to protect our acquisition of Cuba, essentially so we could show our version of democracy. The terms associated with democracy include equality, prosperity, and peace yet we did the opposite by getting involved in wars and taking over possessions that didn’t belong to …show more content…
Both powers in a way failed during the Cold War because the soviets main goal was to establish a classless society by using force to rally the people as one regime, and the United States were the policemen of the world and was supposed to liberate nations using democratic ideals. The USSR failed to instill Marxism and we failed because we didn’t use pure democratic principles, and we had issues on our homeland. The rise of McCarthyism ignited a fear of communism even though it posed no real danger to the US. As a result, we had issues domestically about civil rights and tensions between local and federal authority. Niebuhr compares the US to a new “Israel” because we started fresh in a “Corrupt world” specifically he refers to Washington DC being a symbol of a failed American