"WE HANG THE PETTY THIEVES AND APPOINT THE GREAT ONES TO PUBLIC OFFICE."   Aesop, 550 B.C.

                                            

 

"CONGRESS...THE SMALLEST MINDS AND THE SELFISHEST SOULS AND THE COWARDLIEST HEARTS THAT GOD MAKES." Mark Twain, 1891

                        

 

...The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed ( and hence clamorous to be led to safety ) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

      H. L. Mencken
 In Defense of Women
              1917

 

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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.

      H. L. Mencken
          Smart Set
               1919

                                                 

 

    It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as a mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own.
It constitutes for them a creature somehow interposed between themselves and the great flow of cosmic events, and they look to it to think for them and to protect them. In democratic countries it is theoretically their agent, but there seems to be a strong tendency to convert the presumably free citizen into its agent, or, at all events, its client. This exalted view of its scope, character, powers and autonomy is fundamentally false.
  A government, at bottom, is nothing more than a gang of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. Its business, in civilized countries, seldom attracts the service of really superior individuals : its eminentissimos are commonly nonentities who gain all their authority by belonging to it, and are of small importance otherwise. Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general, have come to a degree of puissance in the world that is unchallenged by that of any other group. Their fiats, however preposterous, are generally obeyed as a matter of duty, they are assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom, and the lives of multitudes are willingly sacrificed in their interest.
  Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Indeed, it would not be far wrong to describe the best as the common enemy of all decent citizens. But there will be small hope of gaining adherents to this idea so long as government is thought of as an independent and somehow super-human organism, with powers, rights and privileges transcending those of any other human aggregation.

     H. L.  Mencken
     Minority Report
             1956

ISP

 

"THERE IS NO NATIVE AMERICAN CRIMINAL CLASS EXCEPT CONGRESS." Mark Twain, 1927

 

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  "I LOVE A DOG. HE DOES NOTHING FOR POLITICAL REASONS."  Will Rogers "ALL KNOWLEDGE, THE TOTALITY OF ALL QUESTIONS AND ALL ANSWERS, IS CONTAINED IN THE DOG."  Franz Kafka "A DOG HAS THE SOUL OF A PHILOSOPHER."  Plato "HEAVEN GOES BY FAVOUR. IF IT WENT BY MERIT,YOU WOULD STAY OUT AND YOUR DOG WOULD GO IN."  Mark Twain "UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED A DOG, A PART OF ONE'S SOUL REMAINS UNAWAKENED."  Anatole France ""BUY A PUP AND YOUR MONEY WILL BUY LOVE UNFLINCHING."  Rudyard Kipling "THERE IS NO FAITH WHICH HAS NEVER YET BEEN BROKEN, EXCEPT THAT OF A FAITHFUL DOG." Konrad Lorenz "HISTORIES ARE MORE FULL OF EXAMPLES OF THE FIDELITY OF DOGS THAN OF FRIENDS." Alexander Pope "WHEN ALL OTHER FRIENDS DESERT, HE REMAINS. "  George G. Vest THE DOG IS THE ONLY ANIMAL THAT HAS SEEN HIS GOD. TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE - CANINE. THE MORE I SEE OF MAN, THE MORE I LIKE DOGS. ACQUIRING A DOG MAY BE THE ONLY OPPORTUNITY A HUMAN EVER HAS TO CHOOSE A RELATIVE. DOGS' LIVES ARE TOO SHORT; IT'S THEIR ONLY FAULT.

          

 

 

     

     

to be continued...

    Thank you.