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… is from pages 353 of H.L. Mencken’s indispensable 1949 collection of some of his finest writings, A Mencken Chrestomathy [2]:
I have often pointed out how politics, under democracy, invariably translates itself from the domain of logical ideas to the domain of mere feelings, usually simple fear – how every great campaign in American history, however decorously it started with a statement of principles, has always ended up with a violent pursuit of hobgoblins.