Politics & Power Quote by Rebecca West

West twists the knife with a paradox that lands because it refuses to flatter either side of the Atlantic. The American fight for suffrage was "more difficult" precisely because, in a purely procedural sense, it should have been simpler. The United States had the clean, modular logic of state-by-state enfranchisement, a written constitution amendable in theory, and a national mythology built on consent of the governed. England, by contrast, lugged around a hereditary state and an unwritten constitution that could always shrug and say: tradition.

So why was America harder? West is diagnosing a peculiarly American form of resistance: when a country advertises itself as already free, any demand for more freedom sounds like a personal accusation. In Britain, suffragists were fighting an openly stratified system; the enemy wore a visible crown. In the U.S., the obstacle hid behind ideals. A nation that calls itself a democracy can turn reform into a referendum on its self-image, which makes the backlash more moralized, more punitive, and more inventive.

The subtext is also about the trap of "ease". When change seems administratively available, opponents have to manufacture reasons it must be impossible: pseudo-science, religious panic, states' rights absolutism, social chaos. West's line captures how hypocrisy hardens politics. If the door is unlocked, the people blocking it have to pretend it's a wall. Her wit isn't just clever; it's an indictment of a culture whose founding promises made it expert at rationalizing their denial.