Crusading moral idealism, denied other outlets, turned inward against external change

Evidence

When the disillusion that followed the war choked off any large international or progressive outlet for moral idealism, about all that remained of it in small-town America turned inward, in a final effort to preserve the values of the community against change and against every external influence. … Perhaps, in the pageant of American history, the whiterobed Klansman should stand in the place of Santayana’s genteel New Englander as the Last Puritan. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1782

Categorization

• XREF: Supports reader’s core question: moral-idealism energy needs an outlet and regenerates an enemy when prior ones are exhausted. — connects to: Deferential invisibility inside power corrupts an idealist’s stated goals — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 620; Burroughs prioritized internal moral reform over the physical alley conditions — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 926; Emerson resented nature as competition with human moral hopes — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 811 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Higham here frames nativist energy as redirected idealism rather than fear — worth holding against threat-based theories of solidarity.