TheAgitator.com
H.L. Mencken, Postmordem Pundit
Wednesday, October 20th, 2004What would H.L. Mencken think of our current, sorry mess?
I was scanning a series of Mencken quotes for a project I’m working on, and was struck at just how spot-on the early 20th-century writer’s observations disect the political scene some 80 years later.
I pulled a handful I thought were particularly apt, and applied them to current events. The quotes are unaltered.
Click “more.”
On our options for Election 2004:
No one in this world, so far as I know- and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
On Judge Roy More:
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
On Congress:
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
On post-reductio America:
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
On Guantanamo Bay:
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
On judgmentalism:
Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.
On obesity, Oxycontin, marijuana, global warming, and a host of other hysterias:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
On the campaign:
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.
On the likes of Gingrich, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, and Bennett:
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
On Dan Rather and memogate:
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth–that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
On politicans’ penchant for passing a law to address every available crisis:
For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong.
On inserting “personal opinions” into judicial rulings:
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
On the role of think tanks:
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
On the plausability of representative government in the Middle East:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
On the “reality-based” community:
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
And..
…men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
And…
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked…
On “the public good:”
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
And…
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
On do-gooders:
Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
On civil liberties and homeland security:
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume…that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.
On neoconservative idealism in the executive:
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
On John Ashcroft:
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
On antiwar activism:
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
On “strong leaders” who “stay the course:”
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
After reading those, I suddenly became much more terrified of the prosepect of a second Bush term.
Radley -
Great post. Thanks.
I like this one the best:
“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods”.
I see that the Libertarians are wondering how much Radley got paid not to mention Badnarik for a FoxNews story:
http://badnarik.org/supporters/blog/2004/10/21/foxnews-you-have-no-choice-but-what-we-tell-you/
it’s nice to see that things really never change. “these kids today” has been said for centuries.
Great Post. Really shows the difference between Bush and real conservatives.
Bush calling himself a conservative is like Avril Lavigne being called punk
Hey Radley,
I read your article on Fox News. Of course I got wind of it from Badnarik’s blog, and judging by the comments some not so nice emails were sent to you. While I thought some of the emails were a little harsh, I would like to understand myself why no mention of Badnarik was made.
You definitely come down on both major parties equally, but make it appear that voting R or D is still the only choice. Do you have some hangups about the LP or Michael Badnarik in general? I’d like to know, I truly would. If you don’t think the LP is a viable choice, because it is too extreme or what have you, why not voice this concern…why not help make us better. I’m a small “l” libertarian myself, but the LP is my only political home…it is my ONLY choice.
Reason Magazine showed alot of integrity to post who they’re voting for…
http://www.reason.com/links/links101904.shtml
Can you do the same?
I visit CATO’s website daily and follow all the events closely. It’s clear of some of CATO’s members who will vote Bush. Tell me if I’m wrong…Griswold, Tanner, who else? We need you guys, we need people who say they are libertarian to support the LP! Make your voices heard and tell me what you don’t like, because I’m truly interested.
There is nothing more disheartening than a libertarian who fights the good fight at CATO or somewhere else, and say they will cast their vote elsewhere.
vote constitutional scholar Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party!
http://www.badnarik.org
Mencken and Lardner are always digested best in small doses. Take too much, and your brain might turn on. Then you become an insufferable bore to all of the sheeple in their self-induced walking comas.
Great post, Radley…
Started out good, but turned into just another dose of anti-Bush/Ashcroft/Limbaugh/Newt/[insert name of hated Conservative here].
Tiring.
It is good to know others think about these things. I thought I was a lone voice in the wilderness. I refuse to vote the lesser of two evils, as that always leaves you with an evil.
I read all about candidates, and if I don’t like any of them I bring a pen with plenty of ink to write-in my vote. I know voting for me is safe.
However the people have spinelessly handed their children to the state to be “educated” and they are glued to the TV after their exhausting days. I fear it will never get better.
Dear Radley,
Why, pray tell, did you write in your most recent FoxNews column that:
Why not endorse Michael Badnarik?
Yours truly,
Mr. X
…curious…
There is nothing new under the sun… nothing.
What Libertarianism Means to Me (The Remix)
ââ?¬Å?I am nothing. I should be everything.ââ?¬Â ââ?¬â??Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto Picture it. A beautiful Garden. A beautiful woman. A snake. A temptation. A choice. Eyes open. Shame erupts. Guilt is shared and they hide. God weeps and the
LP peoples, I’ve asked the Balko many times why he doesn’t care for voting LP but considers voting the other two parties a wholly sane act.
He does not clarify.
I highly doubt this position is in relation to his Foxnews column writing.
I believe it to be more inline with an aversion to appearing to be on the fringe or somesuch nonsense.
You see, whereas being a libertarian (small L) makes you “deep” and “intellectual” with a principled core, being a Libertarian Party member or perhaps even a member of any power-brokering political cabal isn’t so hip, and may be seen as nutty or crazed.
This is just what I suspect might be his phobia towards the LP.
Could’ve at least mentioned badnarik or other third partiers… didn’t have to be an ass about it.
Rob D sayeth:
“Reason Magazine showed alot of integrity to post who they’re voting for…
http://www.reason.com/links/links101904.shtml
Can you do the same?”
He has said before on his blog that he is not voting. This was after much time deliberating whether to vote “for gridlock” by voting for Kerry, or simply not voting.
While his ultimate decision is better than his predescribed alternative, it is lacking in the morality commanded by principled anarchists who don’t vote.
For you LPer’s that are posting.
Really, fix your party and people might vote for it.
What do you mean by “fix” the LP?
The LP’s problem is that they go too extreme on some issues–namely drug legalization. People are not going to get behind a party that wants 100% legalization of all drugs. I personally would like to see it but if the LP ever had enough votes to implement such an idea they would be voted out in the very next election cycle. It’s called compromise.
Foreign policy is another area that the LP needs to get it’s act together. I’m all for tossing the UN out of the USA but many in the LP sound like they want complete isolation from the rest of the world which isn’t going to happen. I also don’t think the LP has a strong enough stance on terrorism. When barbarians attack you, you don’t sit back and let them have the last laugh.
Of course, buying oil from them in the first place is pretty freaking stupid. That is something that no Republican or Democrat is willing to change anytime soon.
What good is voting for a candidate that is willing to stand strong against wackos that hate us but at the same time uses that as an excuse to increase the size of government? We need fascism to defeat fascism!? That doesn’t make much sense.
In this election, Badnarik is the only candidate that even remotely comes close to standing up for liberty. It’s a shame that the two major parties will not let people like him take part in the debates and it’s a bigger shame that the media will not give the guy any time. The competition would mostly like create better candidates and better results.
Personally, I prefer extremism in a 3rd party. When I vote 3rd party it is to counterbalance the merging of the 2 major parties. If the Greens and Libertarians started getting 10-20% of the vote in elections, I think you’d see the Democrats and Republicans atart jumping back to the principles that they both used to stand on.
It’s called compromise.
The LP can’t compromise. The party is built on libertarian philosophy. Which always boils down to no use or threat of force against a person or his legitimately held property. Property being justly attained through claiming unowned property and any non-invasive act such as trade or a gift.
They’ve gone to the brink of pragmatism and are miniarchists. Going any further makes them just another party pandering to the public that they can run your life or the lives of others better so you personally benefit from their good-natured benevolence.
That’s not freedom. And that’s why the LP is the party of principle.
Excellent, be the party of principle.
Then have enough principles to not beg for votes.
Sayeth Lee:
“Really, fix your party and people might vote for it.”
Then sayeth Lee:
“Excellent, be the party of principle.
Then have enough principles to not beg for votes.”
Your political strategy is vexing to say the least.
Why has Radley seem to go into hiding? no new updates at all and no info about why no new updates…
I think you are letting your advertisers down, is this issue really that hard to deal with?
It is pretty simple.
If you want to be the party of principles, do not whine about people not voting for your party because they disagree with your principles.
…Or, if you keep voting for those who are against freedom, do not whine about your government chipping away at your liberties. When you vote for the lesser of two evils, no matter who wins you still get evil…
If you want to be the party of principles, do not whine about people not voting for your party because they disagree with your principles.
Where did this happen? As far as I can tell Radley agrees far more with LP principles than DNC uh… rhetoric.
The LP were whining about the lack of coverage of 3rd parties from a guy who obviously knows at least that the LP exists.
Mencken v. 2.0
The Agitator has divined what H. L. Menken would think about current affairs. Some things never change.
Quote(s) of the day: H.L. Mencken
The Agitator has collected a bunch of H.L. Mencken quotes (some of which I’d never seen. . .and I’ve read a lot of his writings), including: On Congress: Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were…
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