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The merits of
democracy
By Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956) Democracy is .. a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to
rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right...Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of
frauds.
...the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. This is like saying that the cure for crime is more crime...
[A demagogue is] one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds. If they were not, it would be impossible for them to retain the allegiance of their
dupes...
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y.
One of the merits of democracy is quite obvious: it is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not
true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is
true.
Democracy gives them [the vast majority of men] an even higher credit and authority than Christianity. More, democracy gives it a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth. The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets
a feeling that he is really important to the world - that he is genuinely running things.
One cannot observe democracy objectively without being impressed by its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic
states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Nor is this
process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in and day out.
ABCD
I believe that any man or woman
who, for a period of say five years, has earned his or her living in some lawful and useful
occupation, without any recourse to public
assistance, should be allowed to vote and that no one else
should be allowed to vote. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a
democrat? The great masses of men, though theoretically
free, are seen to submit supinely to oppression and exploitation of a hundred abhorrent
sorts. Have they no means of resistance? Obviously they
have. The worst tyrant, even under
democratic plutocracy, has but one throat to slit. The moment the majority decided to overthrow him he would be
overthrown. But the majority lacks the resolution; it cannot imagine taking the
risks. Further
Quotations of Henry Louis Mencken
Politicians and Press
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a
streetwalker.
It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda...
Truth
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.
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.
I believe that nothing is unconditionally true, and hence I am opposed to every statement of positive truth and to every man who states it. Such men seem to me to be idiots or scoundrels.
It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
Truth has a harshness that alarms the vast majority of men, and an air of finality that collides with their incurable romanticism. They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely
comforting.
Freedom, justice and lawyers
The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.
I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his
enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
All the extravagance and incompetence of our present government is due, in the main, to lawyers... If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, ..., we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half
Other
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact.
They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions.
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
[An] Archbishop [is] a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic.
There are, indeed, only two kinds of music: German music and bad music.
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