Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation

In 1951, American social philosopher Eric Hoffer published http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060505915/qid=1049406031/sr=2- 1/ref=sr_2_1/102-2147312-0431321#product-details">The True Believer, his first and most influential book. In it he portrayed political fanatics as people who embrace a cause to compensate for their own feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

I can't help but think of Hoffer's book as I watch George W. Bush in the first weeks of war. "It is the true believer's ability to shut his eyes and stop his ears to facts which in his own mind deserve never to be seen nor heard," Hoffer wrote, "which is the source of his unequalled fortitude and consistency."