Politics & Power Quote by Junius

“Holy, mistaken zeal” is Junius at his most surgical: he borrows the glow of religion to expose politics as its shadow faith, then punctures both with a single adjective. “Holy” flatters the believer’s self-image; “mistaken” slips the knife in. The line is less a complaint about passion than an indictment of the way moral certainty is manufactured. Politics, in this view, isn’t merely a contest of interests; it’s a theater where people audition for righteousness.

The second sentence explains the mechanism. Persuasion isn’t just outward-facing rhetoric; it’s self-medication. When we argue, canvass, post, or preach, we’re not only trying to move others across the line. We’re trying to quiet our own doubts by hearing our convictions echoed back. Junius is describing what modern psychology would call motivated reasoning, but he does it with a satirist’s economy: the real audience is always the speaker.

Context sharpens the barb. Junius wrote in late-18th-century Britain, in anonymous letters aimed at the corruption and opportunism of the political class. Anonymity made the critique sharper: he could dissect power without wearing a party badge. The subtext is grimly contemporary: zeal thrives not because people are irrational, but because zeal is useful. It turns messy compromise into sacred duty, and it turns self-interest into a sermon.