New York. 1967. March 1967. Knopf. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 291 pages + index. hardcover. Jacket design by John Kashiwabara.. Inscribed by the author. keywords: Politics America History. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In a stimulating examination of the nature of politics in the United States, John H. Bunzel maintains that a substantial number of Americans are insensitive to the ultimate value of democratic politics in a free society. The author finds that politics is seriously distorted by those who have no understanding of its functions, lack any appreciation of its role in society, and have no real commitment to its basic purposes. Mr. Bunzel analyzes various groups dedicated to their own special gods and certainties that regard political compromise as no less ignominious than moral compromise: the right-winger, with his outraged sense of morality and conspiratorial view of the world; the Quaker, committed to his conscience and the search for eternal truth; the left-winger, with his fixed view that politics is merely the conditioned reflex of economic power. Removed as they are from the dilemmas of political responsibility and decision-making, these groups find refuge in a pleasing ideology or plausible theory. Unconcerned with the reasons for politics, they seek to reduce it to something other than itself. But Mr. Bunzel believes that in a democracy politics has a life and character of its own and is a legitimate and necessary activity to be valued for its own sake. Politics, he argues, is not the pursuit of ultimate truth, and cannot be transformed into an orderly arrangement of beliefs and goals. Political decisions are the end product of the conflicts and strategies characteristic of political life in democratic societies. inventory #13057