Second Mencken Chrestomathy

by H. L. Mencken

  Thomas Jefferson, the greatest of all American political philosophers, saw this clearly, and so he was in favor of keeping the government as weak as possible. He believed that in any dispute between a citizen and an official the citizen ought to have the benefit of every doubt. But Jefferson was too intelligent a man to believe that the sweet could be obtained without also taking in a certain amount of the bitter. He knew that a weak government was very likely to be an unstable one—that its very mildness would be no more than a symptom of sickness. He swallowed the fact bravely, and even went to the length of arguing in favor of frequent revolutions. But not many men of today would go with him so far.

  Most men incline in the other direction. They like a strong government because, so long as they do not offend it, it gives them protection and security; they are quite willing to give up some of their liberty, and even a great deal of it, in return for those boons. This, I take it, is the position of most respectable Americans today. They are not precisely in favor of rushing innocent men to the electric-chair, as Sacco and Vanzetti were rushed; they are simply in favor of letting the government frame any definition of public enemies, so long as it takes and scotches those public enemies who are actually and palpably dangerous to the peaceable citizen. Their view of it is thus much like their view of the policeman. Not wanting to be clubbed by him, they are polite to him. But they do not protest very violently when they see him clubbing some one else, for they assume that he knows his business.

  It is easy to deride this attitude, but not easy to formulate a better one. In the department of government, as in all other departments, the plain man is confronted by harsh alternatives. When political wizards offer to show him a way out, it almost always becomes plain in short order that their way is quite as bad as the old ones, and maybe worse. So he sticks to his rough guesses and approximations. He would welcome, no doubt, a perfect government, but his instinct teaches him that it is as unimaginable as a perfect wife.

  The End of an Era

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, Sept. 14, 1931

  On September 4, 476, a gang of ruffians commanded by Odoacer the barbarian seized young Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Emperor, and clapped him into a dungeon. This was at 10:40 in the forenoon. At the same instant the Roman Empire blew up with a bang, and the Middle Ages began. The curious thing is that no one knew it. People went about their business as if nothing had happened. They complained that the times were hard, but that was all. Not even the learned were aware that a great epoch in history had come to a close, and another begun.

  We of today may be just as blind. It may be that the so-called Modern Period is falling into chaos around our heads—that an entirely new epoch is beginning for mankind. It may be that the capitalistic system is blowing up, as the Roman system blew up. It may be that the new era is beginning in Russia, or somewhere else, or even here at home. If so, I can only say that I regret it extremely. The capitalistic system suits me precisely. I am aware of its defects, but on the whole it agrees with my prejudices and interests. If Communism is on the way I hope to be stuffed and on exhibition in the Smithsonian before it hits Maryland.

  But all this is beside the point. The simple question is, can capitalism survive its present appalling attack of boils? Will it prevail against Bolshevism, or will it succumb? The question is by no means easy to answer. Capitalism is plainly wobbling, but is Bolshevism really any stronger? If it were as hard hit, wouldn’t it wobble too? Only time can tell, and time tells slowly, even in a frantic age. Meanwhile, let us ponder two facts. The first is that in England the greatest trading corporation in history, the very pearl and model of the capitalistic system, is plainly bankrupt. The other is that in the United States, where capitalism has been elevated to the august estate of a national religion with fifty Popes and 10,000 gaudy Cardinals, the whole pack of these inspired brethren, though the God of Rotary is in hourly communication with them, face a similar bankruptcy with blank faces, and haven’t the slightest notion what to do.

  The Suicide of Democracy

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, May 12, 1940

  No one can deny what is spread upon the minutes so copiously. The New Deal, only too plainly, is extending democracy to very remote places of decimals. Reaching out constantly for fresh fields and pastures new, it gradually takes over the entire business of living, including birth and death. It undertakes not only to carry on all the customary enterprises of government, with constant embellishment; it also horns into such highly non-political matters as the planting and harvesting of crops, the pulling of teeth, and the propagation of the species. In particular, it undertakes to succor every one who feels that he is suffering from injustice, whether at the hands of his fellowmen or of his own chromosomes. If there is something you want but can’t get, it will get that something for you. And, contrariwise, if there is something you want and have got, it will take it away.

  It would be hard to imagine a simpler system, or, in its first stages, a more successful one. Nearly all of us, in some particular or other, are have-nots, and here is an invitation to every have-not to step up to the bar and give it a name. The response is naturally large, and not only large but vociferous. The rejoicing of the beneficiaries is so loud that the groans of those who are mulcted can hardly be heard. The Hon. Mr. Roosevelt, the impresario of the riot, becomes the most popular politico ever known. So long as the money holds out, he can have not only a third term, but also a fourth, fifth and nth. The only question before the house is whether he will condescend to accept.

  Meanwhile, theory keeps step with practise, and the career mendicant is supported and encouraged by the official metaphysician. It is the natural and bounden duty of democracy, we are told, to take care of its customers in all situations, at all times, and everywhere. If one of them lacks a job, then democracy must find it for him, and if the yield thereof is less than satisfactory to him, then democracy must adjust it to his desires. If he goes into business—say, farming—and makes a botch of it, his losses must be made good. If he craves a house beyond his means, then money to pay for it must be provided. If he has too many children, the supernumeraries must be lifted off his hands, and his energies released for the generation of more.

  As I have said, the system is simple, and for a while it works well enough. The shrill gloats and exultations of A, who has got something for nothing, drown out the repining of B, who has lost something that he earned. B, in fact, becomes officially disreputable, and the more he complains the more he is denounced and detested. He is moved, it appears, by a kind of selfishness which is incompatible with true democracy. He actually believes that his property is his own, to remain in his keeping until he chooses to part with it. He is told at once that his information on the point is inaccurate, and his morals more than dubious. In an ideal democracy, he learns, property is at the disposal, not of its owners, but of politicians, and the chief business of politicians is to collar it by fair means or foul, and redistribute it to those whose votes have put them in office.

  The Fathers of the Republic, who seem to have been men of suspicious minds, apparently foresaw that the theory of democracy might develop along such lines, and they went to some trouble to prevent it. Their chief device to that end was the scheme of limited powers. Rejecting the old concept of government as a kind of primal entity, ordained of God and beyond human control, they tried to make it a mere creature of the people. So far it could go, but no further. Within its proper province it had all the prerogatives that were necessary to its existence, but beyond that province it had none at all. It could do what it was specifically authorized to do, but nothing else. The Constitution was simply a record specifying its bounds. The Fathers, taught by their own long debates, knew that efforts would be made, from time to time, to change the Constitution as they had framed it, so they made the process as difficult as possible, and hoped that they had prevented frequent resort to it. Unhappily, they did not foresee the possibility of making changes, not by formal act, b
ut by mere political intimidation—not by recasting its terms, but by distorting their meaning. If they were alive today, they would be painfully aware of their oversight. The formal revisions of the Constitution have been relatively few, but at this moment it is completely at the mercy of a gang of demagogues consecrated to reading into it governmental powers that are not only wholly foreign to its spirit, but categorically repugnant to its terms.

  Such is the net effect of the Hon. Mr. Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme—a failure in law but a dizzy success in fact. On matters which do not impinge upon the New Deal programme, his sardines of the Supreme Court still stick, more or less, to the Constitution as written, but when questions of policy come up they go with the politicians who made them, leaving the Constitution to lick its wounds. In brief, they reject the fundamental theory that governmental powers are strictly limited, and align themselves with the doctrine that the mountebanks who happen, at any moment, to be in office are quite free, within very wide limits, to attempt any experiment and inflict any injustice that will get them votes and safeguard their jobs.

  A good many thoughtful men, I suppose, have been asking themselves of late a natural question: how are we to get rid of this nefarious imbecility? By what means are we to restore government to its constitutional functions, and put an end to its crazy and costly invasions of forbidden fields? I must say that I have no answer to offer. The Fathers, though they were well aware of the infamy of politicians, devised no really effective way to curb them. By resigning matters, in the last analysis, to a count of noses, they opened the door to demagogues, and after a century and a half of ardent practise those demagogues have attained to a magnificent virtuosity, and all of us are now under their hooves.

  Whether or not they can be curbed by constitutional means remains to be seen. As for me, I begin to doubt it. There is obviously no way to get rid of Roosevelt and company so long as they are free to buy votes out of the public treasury, and there is no apparent way to prevent that buying of votes so long as they and their client-judges remain in office. Thus democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

  The alternatives all look unpleasant enough, God knows. No rational man can fail to see that the totalitarianisms so far invented abroad, if translated here, would be even worse, in many important ways, than Rooseveltian democracy, swinish though it may be. Perhaps we’ll gradually work out something better than either. Or it may come by catastrophe. But, however it comes, come it must, for a series of Roosevelts stretching over fifty years, or even over twenty-five years, would plainly reduce the country to chaos, with the Chandala in the saddle and all decent people in the status of ferae naturae. Democracy may not be actually dying here, as it only too plainly is in Europe, but it is certainly very sick.

  The Last Ditch

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, April 2, 1923

  It seems to me that monarchy, even of the most absolute and intransigent kind, is appreciably superior to democracy here. A monarch elected and inaugurated by God, having no need to play the clown to the mob, can devote himself whole-heartedly to the business of his office, and no matter how stupid he may be he is at least in a better position to give effective service than a President who is likely to be quite as stupid as he is, and certain to be ten times as dishonest. It is not to the monarch’s self-interest to be dishonest; he is more comfortable, like any other man, when he does what he genuinely wants to do. Moreover, the subordinate officers of the state, working under him, share his advantages. They do not have to grimace and cavort before the mob in order to get and hold their offices; the only person they have to please is the monarch himself, who is, at all events, a relatively educated man, with some notion of family honor and tradition in him, and uncorrupted by the habit of abasement.

  Liberalism

  A hitherto unpublished note

  A Liberal is one who is willing to believe anything twice.

  III. WAR

  The War Against War

  From the Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1927

  OF ALL the varieties of uplifters who now sob and moan through the land, the most idiotic, I begin to suspect, are the pacifists. Not even the sex hygienists, the movie censors, or the reconcilers of science and religion show a more romantic and fantoddish spirit. At least half the devices they propose for ending war appear to have been borrowed from the gaseous armamentarium of the New Thought, that pink and spongy nonsense. Worse, they seem to have an unpleasant capacity for corrupting the logic and scattering the wits of otherwise sensible men. Here, for example, is Ambassador Houghton, our eminent agent at London, arguing solemnly that the way to end war is to resort to the referendum—that is, to put it to a vote every time it threatens. What could be more nonsensical? Call the scheme a scheme to make war certain, and you have very accurately described it. For it must be plain that a referendum would take time, and it must be equally plain that during that time the warlocks would have everything their own way. Imagine their gaudy tales about the prospective enemy’s preparations. Imagine their pious, inflammatory talk about protecting the home from his hordes. And then try to imagine a referendum going for peace.

  I am surely no admirer of politicians. Least of all do I admire the puerile, paltry shysters who constitute the majority of Congress. But I confess frankly that these shysters, whatever their defects, are at least appreciably superior to the mob. They are restrained in their excesses, if for no other reason, because they fear the sober second thought of the mob. But the mob itself is in no terror of its own second thought. Once it is on the loose, it slashes around like a wild animal. It cannot be stopped until it is exhausted.

  Next to the referendumeers, the most absurd of the pacifists now in practice among us are those who propose to put an end to war by setting up ironclad agreements between the principal predatory nations. To this lodge belongs another American ambassador, Monsieur Herrick, though it is somewhat difficult to determine, in the present negotiations, whether he represents the United States or France. His plan is for the two countries to agree to keep the peace forever hereafter, whatever the temptation to go to war. As I understand him, he is willing to go the whole hog. Even in the event that the French gendarmerie round up all the American drunks in Paris and chop off their heads, the United States is to refrain from doing anything beyond writing a sharp note.

  To state this scheme is to provide a sufficient answer to it. No man who has read history can have any confidence in such grandiose agreements. They last until there is a good excuse for war, and then they blow up. In the late World War every participating nation, absolutely without exception, broke some treaty or other; most of them broke dozens. Even the United States, which, as every one knows, is extremely virtuous, engaged in this time-honored sport. It had a treaty with the Germans, honored by more than a century of life, which protected the merchant shipping of the two high contracting parties in case of war between them. It repudiated that treaty in order to grab the German ships interned in American harbors. No agreement with France would be worth a depreciated franc if that country and the United States ever came to a serious clash of interests. If the United States didn’t repudiate it, then the French would repudiate it. Naturally enough, the party doing the repudiating would swathe the business in a great deal of moral rhetoric. All the blame would be unloaded on the other fellow. But it would be a repudiation nonetheless, and it would be followed by a grand attempt, in the ancient Christian manner, to let the other fellow’s blood and grab his goods.

  But must we have wars forever? I greatly fear so. Nevertheless, it should be possible to diminish their number, and even abate some of their ferocity. How? By a device that is as simp
le as mud, and has been tried often in the past, and with excellent success. In brief, by the device of the Pax Romana. Let the United States, which is now richer and stronger than any other nation, and perhaps richer and stronger than all of them put together, prepare such vast and horrible armaments that they are irresistible. Then let it launch them against France, or some other chronic trouble-maker, and proceed to give the victim a sound beating. And then let it announce quietly that war is adjourned, and that the next nation which prepares for it will get another and worse dose of the same medicine.

  This scheme would more nearly approximate the course of justice within civilized states than any of the world courts, leagues of nations, and other such phantasms that now entertain sentimentalists—many of them with something to sell. The courts are obeyed among us, not because there is any solemn pact among litigants to respect their fiats, but simply and solely because they have force behind them. No individual—save he be, of course, a Prohibition agent or a heavy contributor to the funds of the Republican National Committee—is strong enough to defy them. If he loses he has no recourse: he must submit. Let him refuse and he is instantly laid by the heels and punished with great barbarity.

  It seems to me that there can be no permanent peace among nations until some such system is set up among them. Of what avail are the mandates of a world court unable to enforce them—a world court that must seek help, when help is needed, among the body of litigants standing before it? Many of these litigants will inevitably sympathize with the worsted party; others will see no profit in tackling him. The effects of that lack of adequate police power, if a world court were actually in operation, would simply be to make the whole process of international justice ridiculous. Every powerful litigant would be free to defy the court, and so would every weak litigant with powerful friends.