Dec

30

Donald J. Boudreaux presents Mencken’s timeless insights

Filed Under H.L. Mencken, National, Political Philosophy | Leave a Comment

As Murray Rothbard wrote in H. L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian, “No one truly immersed in Mencken could emerge quite the same again; no one could retain the same faith in our “statesmen” or in the democratic political process itself, no one could ever be quite the same sucker for all manner of ideological, social, and political quackery, the same worshipper of solemn nonsense.”

Donald J. Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek, who is truly immersed in Mencken gives us some timeless Mencken wisdom.

Mencken’s timeless insights

By Donald J. Boudreaux
Friday, December 26, 2008

L’affair Rod Blagojevich reminds me that if I could bring one person back to life for an evening of good food, stiff drink and sterling conversation, that person would unquestionably be H.L. Mencken (1880-1956).

Mencken was a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, literary critic and expert on what he called “the American language.” But he was, in my view, above all this country’s unmatched observer and recorder of politics. So sit back and feast on these intellectually nutritious and tasty tidbits of Mencken’s political wisdom.

In Mencken’s view, the typical politician is a “merchant of delusions,” a “pumper-up of popular fears and rages.”

READ ON AT THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Dec

30

Obama is like FDR, only dumber

Filed Under Economics, H.L. Mencken, History, National | Leave a Comment

Like F.D.R., Only Worse
by A.W.R. Hawkins
12/23/2008

When F.D.R. took office in 1933, our country had been in a depression for approximately three and half years. Not unlike today’s severe recession, the depression he faced was international in scope, but the faltering economy of the United States predominated. F.D.R.’s “solution” to the economic hardships we faced was a socialism-made-simple approach that included everything from an expansion of government through more regulatory oversight and tax increases to the creation of employment opportunities via jobs for which the private sector saw no need.

READ ON AT HUMAN EVENTS

Mr. Hawkins does a pretty good job comparing Obama’s New New Deal with FDR’s New Deal at Human Events. Dumb ideas always manage to find their way back to bring ruin on a new generation of victims, reborn new and improved—usually even dumber than the original. As H.L. Mencken wrote, “The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.” There’s an important distinction there, a man with idiotic ideas that would effect a large number of other people typically wants to use the force of government to impose his ideas on others. If he could only rely on voluntary participation in his dumb ideas, practically nobody would listen. Government on the other hand can do what no sane and moral person could ever do; they can give idiocy—legitimacy. Why anybody would allow some idiot elected by idiots to have control over their lives and property I’ll never understand.

Jul

9

A Democracy of Idiots

Filed Under Economics, H.L. Mencken, National | Leave a Comment

Over at Lew Rockwell, Doug French writes about Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. I side with Doug French and Mencken all the way.

Votes of Idiots
by Doug French

H.L Mencken once described democracy as “simply a battle of charlatans for the votes of idiots.” Writing in 1937 for the Baltimore Evening Sun, Mencken theorized that by now “the incurable idiots may conceivably constitute an absolute majority of the population.” Alas, another election season is upon us to prove his prophetic point.

Of course, this is about the time democracy fans will throw out the old Churchill saw: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” But few realize that Churchill quickly added: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

READ ON


Jun

18

H.L. Mencken on Congressman

Filed Under H.L. Mencken, History | 4 Comments

This essay appeared in the book “Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans” By Harold Stearns published in 1922.
This is a particularly scathing criticism of members of the House of Representatives. (just as bad if not worse today) You’ll notice Mencken’s accurate foreboding that the same was to happen to the Senate as “direct elections have not yet done their work”. There is also an excellent explanation of “the process whereby prohibition was foisted upon the nation by constitutional amendment, to the dismay of the solid majority opposed to it and to the surprise of the minority in favour of it.” (Beware those single issue lobbyists)

POLITICS

No person shall be a Representative who … shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
… No person shall be a Senator who … shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

SPECIALISTS in political archaeology will recognize these sentences: they are from Article I, Sections 2 and 3, of the constitution of the United States. I have heard and forgotten how they got there; no doubt the cause lay in the fierce jealousy of the States. But whatever the fact, I have a notion that there are few provisions of the constitution that have had a more profound effect upon the character of practical politics in the Republic, or, indirectly, upon the general colour of American thinking in the political department. They have made steadily for parochialism in legislation, for the security and prosperity of petty local bosses and machines, for the multiplication of pocket and rotten boroughs of the worst sort, and, above all, for the progressive degeneration of the honesty and honour of representatives. They have greased the ways for the trashy and ignoble fellow who aspires to get into Congress, and they have blocked them for the man of sense, dignity, and self-respect. More, perhaps, than any other single influence they have been responsible for the present debauched and degraded condition of the two houses, and particularly of the lower one. Find me the worst ass in Congress, and I’ll show you a man they have helped to get there and to stay there. Find me the most shameless scoundrel, and I’ll show you another.

Read more

Apr

11

Petraeus and Crocker Face the Ron Paul Constitution Test

Filed Under Global, H.L. Mencken, National, Ron Paul | 1 Comment

Ron Paul’s question posed to Petraeus and Crocker was “…does the administration have the authority to bomb Iran without further congressional approval?”
You would think that two public servants who swore to defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic would know that the Constitution forbids the executive branch from waging war without a congressional vote of approval.
Both men squirming in their seats gave the same answer “I don’t know”. Crocker even had the audacity to say he was “not competent to pronounce on an issue like that”. Knowing that to answer that question honestly would mean career self destruction in the service of the empire, I can understand their sudden lack of knowledge but I don’t respect it. Like H.L. Mencken famously wrote “It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.”

Jul

25

Mencken’s Law

Filed Under H.L. Mencken, History, Libertarian | Leave a Comment

In the early 20th century, H.L. Mencken as a young police reporter in Baltimore, was put up as a witness to testify before a police board in which two policemen were up on charges of not enforcing a rather frivolous law “against dance halls that paid their female interns commissions on the drinks they sold”. Mencken noted in his writings at other times as a reporter he knew that Baltimore cops would just ignore victimless crimes.

“The poor flatfeet were unquestionable guilty, for I had discussed the matter with them in the place, but I managed to sophisticate my testimony with so many ifs and buts that it went for nothing and they were acquitted. I made up my mind at once that my true and natural allegiance was to the Devil’s party, and it has been my firm belief ever since that all persons who devote themselves to forcing virtue on their fellow men deserve nothing better than kicks in the pants. Years later I put that belief into a proposition which I ventured to call Mencken’s Law, to wit:

Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

The moral theologians, unhappily, have paid no heed to this contribution to their science, and so Mencken’s Law must wait for recognition until the dawn of a more enlightened age.”

Now that’s a good law.

Mar

10

THE AMERICAN CREDO OF LIBERTY

Filed Under H.L. Mencken, History, Libertarian, National | Leave a Comment

In 1920, the book THE AMERICAN CREDO A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind, coauthored by George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken was published. Mencken, one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, a staunch individualist, one of the greatest critics of self-serving politicians and the growing herd mentality of average American citizens, was a dangerous man in some people’s minds. As he said, “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.” During WWI he was considered dangerous to the Wilson administration because one, he was a son of a German immigrant and two, he was a newspaperman with an acerbic pen. During the war his writings were censored and he was spied on by government agents, facts that made Woodrow Wilson his most despised President of his time.
If he were alive today, he would be have much to write about in these post 9/11 times.

This is an excerpt from the preface of American Credo:

Ask the average American what is the salient passion in his emotional armamentarium-what is the idea that lies at the bottom of all his other ideas–and it is very probable that, nine times out of ten, he will nominate his hot and unquenchable rage for liberty. He regards himself, indeed, as the chief exponent of liberty in the whole world, and all its other advocates as no more than his followers, half timorous and half envious. To question his ardour is to insult him as grievously as if one questioned the honour of the republic or the chastity of his wife. And yet it must be plain to any dispassionate observer that this ardour, in the course of a century and a half, has lost a large part of its old burning reality and descended to the estate of a mere phosphorescent superstition. The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful and others abhorrent and felonious.
Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: it is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto, In God we trust, were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, Verboten, substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet.
Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights; and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.
It is surely a significant fact that, in the face of the late almost incredible proceedings under the so-called Espionage Act and other such laws, the only objections heard of came either from the persons directly affected-nine-tenths of them Socialists, pacifists, or citizens accused of German sympathies, and hence without any rights whatever in American law and equity-or from a small group of professional libertarians, chiefly naturalized aliens. The American people, as a people, acquiesced docilely in all these tyrannies, both during the war and after the war, just as they acquiesced in the invasion of their common rights by the Prohibition Amendment. Worse, they not only acquiesced docilely; they approved actively; they were quite as hotly against the few protestants as they were against the original victims, and gave their hearty approbation to every proposal that the former be punished too. The really startling phenomenon of the war, indeed, was not the grotesque abolition of liberty in the name of liberty, but the failure of that usurpation to arouse anything approaching public indignation. It is impossible to imagine the men of Jackson’s army or even of Grant’s army submitting to any such absolutism without a furious struggle, but in these latter days it is viewed with the utmost complacency. The descendants of the Americans who punished John Adams so melodramatically for the Alien and Seditions Acts of 1789 failed to raise a voice against the far more drastic legislation of 1917. What is more, they failed to raise a voice against its execution upon the innocent as well as upon the guilty, in gross violation of the most elemental principles of justice and rules of law.