H.L. Mencken on demagogues

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots…  His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretences.  He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him…  He may be, on the one hand, a cross-roads idler striving to get into the State Legislature… or he may be, on the other, the President of the United States. 

~ H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

 

Paul Johnson on H.L. Mencken's attacks against the New Deal

Mencken excelled himself in attacking the triumphant FDR, whose whiff of fraudulant collectivism filled him with genuine disgust.  He was the 'Fuhrer,' the 'Quack,' surrounded by 'an astonishing rabble of impudent nobodies,' 'a gang of half-educated pedagogues, nonconstitutional lawyers, starry-eyed uplifters and other such sorry wizards.'  His New Deal was a 'political racket,' a series of stupendous bogus  miracles,' with its 'constant appeals to class envy and hatred,' treating government as 'a milch-cow with 125 million teats' and market by 'frequent repudiations of categorical pledges.'

~ Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (1997), p. 762

H.L. Mencken on government

[Government’s] great contribution to human wisdom... is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on democracy

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on American journalism

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

~ H.L. Mencken

Doug Casey on speaking out and how H.L. Mencken avoided persecution during WWI and the Roosevelt years

If you believe in thinking for yourself, or if you believe in free minds and free markets, you’re in the minority.  You better be careful. 

H.L. Mencken, undoubtedly one of the greatest public intellectuals in American history and the best journalist in our history, is a cautionary example.  During World War I and throughout the Roosevelt years, he basically stopped writing or saying anything controversial because he might’ve been singled out and persecuted.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Dangers of the Growing “Snitch Culture” in the US," International Man, March 10, 2021

H.L. Mencken on Puritanism

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

~ H.L. Mencken

(tweeted by Stephen Kinsella on August 31, 2020)

H.L. Mencken on democracy reaching perfection

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on the urge to save humanity

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face to rule it.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on government and decency

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on the wisdom of the average citizen

I am suspicious of all things the average citizen believes.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on war and the choice before young men

The choice before the average youngster, when war breaks out, is not between enlisting in the army and staying home to become President of the United States, or going into the movies at $10,000 a week, or marrying a girl with four or five doting stepfathers, each worth $100,000,000.  It is between enlisting in the army and taking a job in a filling station, or following the plow, or adding up long rows of dull figures; or sitting day after day in an unventilated classroom while half-dead pedagogues try to teach him things that don't interest him.

War, to this typical, this normal young fellow, is a colossal release.  The problem of making a living in a stupid and unappreciative world departs from his shoulders.  He ceases to be a nonentity and becomes a public figure, cheered by his relatives, his friends and the populace in general.  There is someone to feed him when mealtime rolls round, someone to cloth him, and someone to tell him what to do.  He has a gun in his hands and feels like a man.  His country needs him, and tells him so with many a slap on the back, though in a little while it may forget him.  No more lordly life is imaginable.  It combines all of the advantages of a sure income, good and racy company, and a job full of thrills.  The soldier stands proudly above all the ordinary laws.  Even the laws of economics are repealed for him.

~ H.L. Mencken, "Peace on Earth - Why We Have Wars," 1936

H.L. Mencken on the popularity and thrill of war

There is, indeed, nothing in all this world that can match war for popularity. It is, to at least nine people out of ten, the supreme circus of circuses, the show beyond compare, it is Hollywood multiplied by ten thousand. It combines the excitements of a bullfight, a revival, a train wreck, and a lynching. It is a hunt for public enemies with a million Dillingers scattered through the woods. It is the dizziest, gaudiest, grandest, damnedest sort of bust that the human mind can imagine.

~ H.L. Mencken, "Peace on Earth - Why We Have Wars," 1936

(I thought this quote was fitting on a day Americans celebrate the life of one of their beloved war presidents, George H.W. Bush.)

Spectators at the First Battle of Bull Run
July 21, 1861

H.L. Mencken on public education

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.  That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else...Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.

~ H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on free speech

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. [...] Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.

~ Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) in 1948 interview with Donald H. Kirkley for the Library of Congress

H.L. Mencken on President Warren G. Harding's writing style

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

~ H.L. Mencken

Mencken on government

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.

~ H.L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken on revolution

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

~ H. L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on the Puritans

It’s too bad Plymouth Rock didn’t land on the Puritans.

~ H.L. Mencken