Currently reading all of Hughes work, Australian by birth, former art critic for the times, especially relevant in todays political morass. Worth your time, though YMMV.
Quote:
There has always been a friction between the remains of the Puritan ideology of a hierarchy of the virtuous under the immutable eye of God, and the later, 18th century American conception of continuous secular development towards equality of rights which were inherent in men and not merely granted by government. This friction never seems to vanish, we still feel it today. It was seen in 1835 by Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America
Men will never establish any equality with which they will be contented…When inequality of condition is the common law of society, the most marked inequality do not strike the eye, when everything is nearly on the same level, the slightest are marked enough to hurt it. Hence, the desire fore equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion as equality is more complete.
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