Politics & Power Quote by William Dean Howells

A jab like this lands because it steals the costume drama America likes to dress itself in and swaps the labels. Howells pairs “inequality” with “liberty” not to balance them, but to accuse the nation of loving both with equal sincerity. The phrasing is deliberately intimate: “dear to the American heart” evokes patriotism’s warm self-image, then poisons it with a truth we’d rather treat as an unfortunate side effect than a cherished tradition.

Howells was writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the country was industrializing at breakneck speed: robber barons, strikebreakers, tenements, and an emerging consumer culture that marketed aspiration while normalizing hierarchy. In that context, “liberty” often meant freedom for capital and employers more than security for workers. The quote’s bite comes from its insinuation that inequality isn’t just tolerated; it’s emotionally and culturally defended, folded into national mythology as proof of merit, hustle, and divine favor.

The subtext is aimed at the American habit of moralizing success and personalizing failure. If liberty is sacred because it promises self-determination, inequality becomes sacred because it certifies winners. The line also anticipates a modern contradiction: the country can speak the language of rights while craving the spectacle of stratification. Howells, the realist, isn’t offering a policy prescription here. He’s diagnosing an appetite, one that turns democracy’s ideals into branding while keeping the social ladder steep enough to feel meaningful.