[x]

This is a pretty trashy and trivial article. Most of what most people write about conservatives -- or liberals -- isn't of much value to anyone than themselves. What they're doing is just talking about people they don't like. The problem with such talk can be seen in how Mencken's contempt for the "average American" becomes a liberal principle. If Hart were thinking seriously, and not just thrashing about in search of ammunition, the connection between liberalism and cynicism might trouble him.

Mencken has come full circle. The young liberals and radicals of the Twenties idolized him. When Mencken applied the same ironic denunciation to FDR as to Coolidge, Harding and Hoover, the more earnest liberals of the 1930s reviled him. Conservatives and libertarians picked Mencken up again in the 1970s. Now it's a liberals turn to argue that Mencken was really a liberal. But it doesn't wash. Mencken was a cynic, an antinomian, an ironist, a Nietzschean, and more than half a nihilist. Of course Mencken would sock it to conservative, religious, political and business leaders, but he was even more scathing with liberal or radical "idealists" and "crusaders." His denunciations of Puritans apply equally to the Ralph Naders and Hillary Clintons as to the Fallwells or Robertsons.

Mencken knew language. He wielded it like a saber or a rapier, but not like a "surgical laser," unless Dr. Evil was working it. Striking the deepest blow and drawing blood were more important to Mencken than precision or accuracy or fairness.

[Twodees]

Wow.Doesn't it become a burden to know simply EFT? Sure, x. Ol' Henry would cut his own throat for the sheer joy of cutting. Any reasonable human being on earth would just have to agree with your asessment.

Malarkey.

[ijcr]

Well analysed,Mencken would be rolling on the ground laughing at all these in depth studies of his writing.

America was Mencken's circus, a constant source of entertainment and amusement.In Mencken's world all politicians were clowns. He reveled in their self righteous absurdity and scorned all that sought to impose their will on others.

Antinomian is a harsh sentence on Mencken,after all he was an avowed atheist.Mencken had few absolute articles of faith, the most important one of them was this: When politicians start talking morality, grab your wallet and your children, and run for your life.If history repeats its self then Mencken's description of Bryan could equally apply to Clinton.
"What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition - the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits. His whole career was devoted to raising those half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine."

[muleboy]

Of course Mencken would sock it to conservative, religious, political and business leaders, but he was even more scathing with liberal or radical "idealists" and "crusaders." His denunciations of Puritans apply equally to the Ralph Naders and Hillary Clintons as to the Fallwells or Robertsons. Mencken knew language. He wielded it like a saber or a rapier, but not like a "surgical laser," unless Dr. Evil was working it. Striking the deepest blow and drawing blood were more important to Mencken than precision or accuracy or fairness.

I consider Mencken's insight of the nature of man rivalled only by Twain, Vidal, and Hunter Thompson. All of whom wrote well of man's inherent inadequacies when the subject turned to "virtue" and "power".

You say that HLM's denunciations apply equally across the ideological spectrum and then claim that his attacks were motivated more by malice than by reason. Do you have a specific critique in mind when you say that HLM was imprecise, inaccurate, and unfair?