H. L. Mencken's Modern Wisdom

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) was the sage of the early part of the 20th century. Back then, if you wanted to be a politician in what are now called "Red States" you had to belong to the Ku Klux Klan. Being black, if you were lucky, meant being an Invisible Man. If you were unlucky it meant getting lynched. Moralists were imposing their puritan philosophies on everyone else. Religion was taught in public schools. Book banning was popular. People were being imprisoned for merely possessing a controlled substance (booze). Fascism was on the rise. In other words, it was a time very much like our own and Mencken's words still ring true.

Iraq War
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Bush and Cheney
~The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
~The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
~Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
~In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
~No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Neo-Cons
~The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
~The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
~The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
~Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
~Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

Religion
~Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
~Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
~The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Guantanamo
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.