"Individuals can learn to be altruistic, Niebuhr allowed, but groups never will. Elites will always defend their power, and human beings have always chosen to “invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior.” Furthermore, “political opinions are inevitably rooted in economic interests of some kind or other and only comparatively few citizens can view a problem of social policy without regard to their interest."
