Politics & Power Quote by James F. Cooper

Cooper comes in swinging at one of democracy's most comforting slogans by treating it like a con: not a noble belief, but a line sold either by fools ("reasoned ignorantly") or operators ("flattering the popular feeling"). The energy here is novelist energy, not philosopher energy. He builds a little drama of motives, casting the egalitarian maxim as propaganda with a marketing strategy: tell people they're already equal, and you can recruit them, soothe them, steer them.

The phrase "aimed at effecting their personal ends" signals the subtext. Cooper isn't merely disputing equality; he's suspicious of the people who weaponize it. That suspicion fits the early-to-mid 19th-century U.S., when mass politics was expanding, party machines were learning how to mobilize voters, and Jacksonian rhetoric leaned hard on the dignity of the "common man". Cooper, who often bristled at populist taste and the volatility of public opinion, reads the new democratic style as flattering sentiment over hard distinctions: virtue, education, competence, restraint.

The kicker is his three-part tribunal: "nature, revealed morals, [and] political theory". It's an attempt to make the rebuttal feel total, as if every authority that matters rejects the slogan. "Revealed morals" invokes religious hierarchy of conduct; "nature" suggests innate differences; "political theory" claims even secular governance needs ranking and expertise. The intent isn't to deny equal dignity so much as to defend unequal judgment and authority: not everyone is fit to lead, decide, or even be trusted with their own appetites. Cooper's line works because it exposes a perennial democratic tension: the difference between equality as moral standing and equality as interchangeable competence, and how easily that slippage becomes a tool for manipulation.