Volume 37, Number 12 · July 19, 1990
The Politics of Grievance
By Garry Wills
The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath
by Kevin Phillips
Random House, 262 pp., $19.95
'Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds.'[1] Henry Adams derived that earthy insight from a favorite author, Blaise Pascal. In his copy of the Pensées, now at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Adams marked this passage: 'Tous les hommes se haissent naturellement l'un l'autre.'[2] Pascal goes on in the same fragment to describe zeal for the common good as a pretense.
Review, 1699 words
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