Posted on 12/31/2008 1:09:04 PM PST by 1rudeboy
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."
The politician is never to be trusted:
"What is a political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better? The former assumption, I believe, is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth. It is to the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum and to reduce his compensation to nothing; it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear."
But ours is a democratic republic where We the People choose our leaders freely in fair elections. Doesn't the need to secure a majority of votes ensure that only worthy candidates win?
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
L
I posted something about him last year on the 50th anniversary of his death and there were some responses to the effect that he was a pioneering elitist liberal.
Mencken-fan bump!
"When we say that (government) has decided to do this or that, that it proposes or aspires to do this or that -- usually to the great cost and inconvenience of nine-tenths of us -- we simply say that a definite man or group of men has decided to do it, or proposes or aspires to do it; and when we examine this group of men realistically we almost invariably find that it is composed of individuals who are not only not superior to the general, but plainly and depressingly inferior, both in common sense and in common decency."
And today - - that defines the MSM...
My fave of his is the succint “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”
Much more at my FR home page.
Democracy is the belief that the common man knows what he wants...and deserves to get it, good and hard.
o that’s some powerful stuff there.
Mencken was an infidel and a reactionary - an easy man to hate.
His "Happy Days" gets re-read here every once in a while just because he could be so doggone engaging when he wasn't grinding an axe.
Mr. niteowl77
Democracy is the theory that the more idiots who vote for a politician, the less idiotic he will be.
"The sort of man who wants his ideas to be forced on others is usually the sort of man whose ideas are idiotic.”
.
I haven’t read that one in a very long time. Thanks for sharing it with me.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
L
Cordially,
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "The Non-Constitutional Crisis from Illinois"
The Declaration, the Constitution, parts of the Federalist, and America's Owner's Manual, here.
“I posted one of his quotes on an econ thread and a paleo accused me of being an elitist liberal for doing so. I don’t think she even bothered to read it.”
Did you ask her if she was blond?
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