Extremists right and left are cut out of the same piece of cloth

From Florence King's With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy. Purchased and half read fifteen years ago, then set aside temporarily for some unremembered reason. I came across it on my shelves yesterday and am finishing up reading it. As insightful, sharp and entertaining as ever. Page 168.

Comparing Bierce's reaction against democracy to that of the later Mark Twain, Edmund Wilson wrote: "The insistence of Ambrose Bierce on discipline, law and order, and on the need for the control of the disorderly mob by an enlightened and well-washed minority has today a familiar fascistic ring."

True enough, but the left-wing Wilson forgot to include his own side. Socialists have their own agenda for discipline and law and order, and they also believe in the control of the disorderly mob by an enlightened, though not necessarily well-washed, minority. Extremists right and left are cut out of the same piece of cloth. Both are idealists with lofty standards for human nature who often become misanthropic once the inevitable disillusionment sets in. Right wingers, concluding that mankind is despicable and hopeless, turn to the savage misanthropy of Jonathan Swift and Ambrose Bierce. Left wingers, concluding that mankind is inherently good and needs only one more chance to prove it, turn to the sentimental misanthropy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his naive dream of universal love and cooperation. Both are susceptible to totalitarianism, for when human nature invariably declines to be perfected, the only thing left to perfect is the State.