H.L. Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was a journalist, satirist and cultural critic from Baltimore and whenever the political climate gets too silly and I am looking for a little respite, I look to Menken’s writing.
One of my many "favorite essays" by him is Last Words on Democracy written in 1926.
Here’s a couple quotes:
They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely comforting, and of all those ancient promises there is none more comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the earth.
The seeds of his disaster, as I have shown, lie in his own stupidity: he can never get rid of the naive delusion – so beautifully Christian – that happiness is something to be got by taking it away from the other fellow.
The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state – but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.
