E.J. Dionne: Progressive Conservatism

"For me, the struggle in politics is trying to figure out how to give practical life to a set of aspirations without becoming foolishly utopian. Another tradition I respect is that of Reinhold Niebuhr, a Christian realist, a great theologian, who was concerned with how can you maintain ideals and yet be practical about the nature of human beings and the nature of the political enterprise."