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In The Irony of American History, Reinhold Niebuhr reviews the competing ideologies of communism and liberal democracy and finds that they both express an overly optimistic view of human nature. In the liberal view, the defects in human nature are curable through education or changes to social and political institutions. In communist ideology, the proletariat is a repository of virtue that will create a perfect society when the corrupting influence of the institution of private property is abolished. History, of course, shows that these views are dangerously inaccurate. Against them, Niebuhr offers the Christian view that man must struggle to create justice in this world while realizing that ultimate solutions lie beyond his grasp: "every sensitive individual has a relation to a structure of meaning which is never fulfilled in the vicissitudes of actual history." This book was written more than 50 years ago, during the hottest part of the cold war. Much of the book focuses on America's new (at that time) responsibilities as a superpower, and on the struggle between communism and democracy. Still, a modern reader will be surprised by the book's relevance to the current position of the United States in the world. Niebuhr takes it as self-evident that, if there is one center of power and authority, "preponderant and unchallenged, ... its world rule would almost certainly violate basic standards of justice." He outlines the attempts made in the U.S. constitution to diffuse power among different institutions and create a system of checks and balances. He cites James Bryce's assessment: "The aim of the constitution seems to be not so much to attain great common ends by securing a good government as to avert the evils which will flow not merely from a bad government but from any government strong enough to threaten the pre-existing communities and individual citizens." This works well enough in the United States, but how can the dangers associated with hegemonic power be averted in an international context? Niebuhr, a realist, notes that "no world government could possibly possess, for generations to come, the moral and political authority to redistribute power between nations in the degree in which highly cohesive national communities have accomplished this end in recent centuries." However, he expresses optimism that the United Nations might serve as a forum in which national policies are subjected to the scrutiny of world opinion. He also suggests that a sense of community with others might serve as some kind of internal check on power. Establishing such a sense of community requires recognition of our own fallibility and of the valid elements in what are to us foreign cultures, outlooks, and systems of government. Niebuhr sees that the strength of the United States after World War II has brought us into contact with very different societies, and "... neither their conceptions of the good, nor their interests, which are always compounded with ideals, are identical with our own." Lacking a deep understanding of the complexities of national aspirations and cultural differences, U.S. foreign policy often lunges between two extremes of offering economic advantage to secure cooperation or overcoming intransigence through military force. Moreover, the United States has always considered itself an example for others to follow: "except in moments of aberration, we do not think of ourselves as the masters, but as tutors of mankind in its pilgrimage to perfection." People in the United States do not lust for world power, although we feel the pride that accompanies power. Because we see our motives as idealistic, the anger that others feel toward us is hard for us to understand or accept. The great danger for the United States is an excess of hubris. "Our moral perils are not those of conscious malice or the explicit lust for power. They are the perils which can be understood only if we realize the ironic tendency of virtues to turn into vices when too complacently relied upon; and of power to become vexatious of the wisdom which directs it is trusted too confidently. The ironic elements in American history can be overcome, in short, only if American idealism comes to terms with the limits of all human striving, the fragmentariness of all human wisdom, the precariousness of all historical configurations of power, and the mixture of good and evil in all human virtue."