"Abstract pity invites cheap sentiment, Manichean absolutism, and confounds any possibility for genuine political freedom. Writes Arendt: 'Since the days of the French Revolution, it has been the boundlessness of their sentiments that made revolutionaries so curiously insensitive to reality in general and to the reality of persons in particular, whom they felt no compunctions in sacrificing to their 'principles,' or to the course of history, or to the cause of revolution as such.' Virtue without limits is evil and poverty lends itself all too readily to this construction of virtue. Opponents are turned out as traitors. Plurality gives way to 'massification.' Hypocrites must be hunted down and crushed. The Reign of Terror and the Reign of Virtue are one." Jean Bethke Elshtain