From C. Vann Woodward's essay "The Irony of Southern History," published in 1953.

In this portion of his essay, Woodward is discussing Reinhold Niebuhr's book The Irony of American History: "In clinging to our infant illusions of innocence along with new power, writes [Niebuhr], we are 'involved in the ironic perils which compound the experiences of Babylon and Israel' — the perils of overweening power and overweening virtue. "

Woodward continues:

There are many perils, both for our nation and for the world, inherent in this situation — and they do not all come from abroad. We are exasperated by the ironic incongruities of our position. Having more power than ever before, America ironically enjoys less security than in the days of our weakness. Convinced of her virtue, she finds that even her allies accuse her of domestic vices invented by her enemies. The liberated prove ungrateful for their liberation, the reconstructed for their reconstruction, and the late colonial peoples vent their resentment upon our nation — the most innocent, we believe, of the imperial powers. Driven by these provocations and frustrations, there is the danger that America may be tempted to exert all the terrible power she possesses to compel history to conform to her own illusions. The extreme, but no means the only expression, would be the so-called preventive war. The would be to commit the worst heresy of the Marxists, with whom it is dogma that they can compel history to the pattern of their dreams by the ruthless use of force.

"The Irony of Southern History" appears in Woodward's collection The Burden of Southern History.