…an appreciation for human sinfulness\u201d\u201dwhich Niebuhr drew from his Christian faith\u201d\u201dhelps us guard against unchecked power in government. But an appreciation for human potential\u201d\u201ddrawn from the Biblical notion that human beings are made in the image of God\u201d\u201dshould also lead us to value human freedom. As Niebuhr famously put it in his foreword, \u201cMan\u2019s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man\u2019s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.\u201d\u009d Importantly, Niebuhr grounded democracy\u2019s necessity in the nature of mankind, without qualification, not in cultural or social factors unique to the West. What is true about human nature in the West is also true of human nature in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.<\/p>\n
Niebuhr then suggests\u201d\u201dcontrary to the realists who want to appropriate him\u201d\u201dthat the goodness of democracy should lead us, by love of our neighbor, to make its spread a part of our foreign policy. Niebuhr\u2019s well-known complaint against Wilsonianism wasn\u2019t that it was idealistic, but that it was naive. In Children of Light and the Children of Darkness he applauds the idealism of democracy, even as he understands that it will inevitably be hypocritical: \u201cHypocrisy and pretension are the inevitable concomitants of the engagement between morals and politics. But they do not arise where no effort is made to bring the power impulse of politics under the control of conscience.\u201d\u009d The effort itself is sound in principle; better to be a failed idealist than a successful cynic.<\/p>\n
This is the part of Niebuhr that today\u2019s realists fail to hear.<\/p>\n