In claiming what they believe to be their rights, they are in their own opinion acting on behalf not merely of their interests, but of an absolute democratic principle.

Their angry resentment becomes transformed in their own minds into righteous indignation; and there may be turned loose upon the community a horde of self-seeking fanatics--like unto those soldiers in the religious wars who robbed and slaughtered their opponents in the service of God.
II DEMOCRACY AND DISCRIMINATION The principle of equal rights has always appealed to its more patriotic and sensible adherents as essentially an impartial rule of political action--one that held a perfectly fair balance between the individual and society, and between different and hostile individual and class interests.

But as a fundamental principle of democratic policy it is as ambiguous in this respect as it is in other respects.

In its traditional form and expression it has concealed an extremely partial interest under a formal proclamation of impartiality.

The political thinker who popularized it in this country was not concerned fundamentally with harmonizing the essential interest of the individual with the essential popular or social interest.