The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simpliciti… - Jacques Barzun

[...] the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality

The only political ism surviving in full strength from the past is nationalism. This was partly to be expected from the liberation of so many colonies simultaneously, beginning in the 1920s. But this nationalism differs from the old in two remarkable ways: it is not patriotic and it does not want to absorb and assimilate. On the contrary, it wants to shrink and secede, to limit its control to its one small group of like-minded-we-ourselves-alone. It is in that sense racist, particularist, sectarian, minority-inspired.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.