The way to escape similar trouble in the future is to go on preaching ideality, and to leave its realization wholly to the individual.

We can then be "uplifted" by the words, while the resulting deeds cannot do us, as individuals, any harm.

We can continue to celebrate our "noble national theory" and preserve our perfect democratic system until the end of time without making any of the individual sacrifices or taking any of the collective risks, inseparable from a systematic attempt to make our words good.
The foregoing state of mind is the great obstacle to the American national advance; and its exposure and uprooting is the primary need of American education.

In agitating against the traditional disregard of our full national responsibility, a critic will do well to dispense with the caution proper to the consideration of specific practical problems.
A radical theory does not demand in the interest of consistency an equally radical action.

It only demands a sincere attempt to push the application of the theory as far as conditions will permit, and the employment of means sufficient probably to accomplish the immediate purpose.