SAUL TO PAUL

F.A. Hayek observed that socialists and conservatives are close in their attitudes toward the use of State power because they both believe in coercion for moral or religious ends.


Eric Hoffer in The True Believer, page 84, makes a consilient observation:

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other's throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. They are as far apart and close together as Saul and Paul. And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be convened to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.

Hoffer also notes that fanaticism can "rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil." For many on the Right, the devil is the Liberal.