James Alan McPherson (1993):
Meanwhile, while we retreat into a debate over which group is more victimized and deserving of close attention, the larger and more important issue remains: just who, even under the purview of the old Roman Jus Gentium, remains a foreigner, and what is left of the Romans who maintain the remnants of the old Jus Civile? The antagonistic cooperation, the creative tension, between the rule of law and a settled code of conduct, could be ripe with human possibilities. The Americans of the coming centuries will emerge, and mature, out of this tension. According to my own thinking, they will be the ones who act, and who encourage others to act, in areas beyond either a fixation on Civil Rights or on the preservation of the more negative and reductive aspects of the white status quo, both of which have produced nothing more than human stasis. They will be the ones who accept the greater challenges and goals of full and equal citizenship, of a higher ethical responsibility towards the human individual, in a space far above and beyond the fires of two radically opposed camps. But after the destruction of most of the country’s large-souled men, and during this time of fear, such people, even if they do exist, have no good reason to announce their presence among us, even if they were welcomed.
A near perfect match for that 1930 Karl Jaspers quote I never tire of:
The truly real takes place almost unnoticed, and is, to begin with, lonely and dispersed. . . . Those among our young people who, thirty years hence, will do the things that matter are, in all probability, now quietly biding their time; and yet, unseen by others, they are already establishing their existences by means of an unrestricted spiritual discipline.