“The far right combines the pity of the minority with the power of the majority.” —Leon Wieseltier
This is according to Ari Melber on an internet-only bit from The Last Word, who I think may have the wording wrong. Perhaps that should be “self-pity”?
Update (22 September 2012 9:43 am)
I guess I was wrong about the “self-pity” change. I just found a more exact quote from—Surprise!—Ari Melber in Bill O’Reilly Raps: NYT Discovers Talk Radio-Hip Hop Nexus in The Nation:
That may sound odd coming from the party of business elites and racial majorities, yet as the critic Leon Wieseltier once observed, American conservatives, and especially the Christian Right, delight in combining “the power of a majority with the pity of a minority.”
That would make the quote more accurately, “The far right combines the power of a majority with the pity of a minority.” That does sound better. The right article makes all the difference in the world.
