The great H.L. Mencken was born on this day in 1880. No one ever came close to imitating Mencken's talent at lampooning statists, statism, and "democracy" as the Sage of Baltimore and grandson of a Confederate veteran did. Here are a couple of my favorite Menckenisms from Prejudices: A Selection:

"[A]good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth."

The average citizen is "exploited and injured almost without measure by the government itself -- in other words, by the very agency which professes to protect him. That agency becomes, indeed, one of the most dangerous and insatiable of the inimical foces present in the everyday environment. He finds it more difficult and costly to survive in the face of it than it is to survive in the face of any other enemy."

A man "can no more escape the tax-gatherer and the policemen, in all their protean and multitudinous guises, than he can escape the ultimate mortician. They beset him constantly, day in and day out, in ever-increasing numbers and in ever more disarming masks and attitudes. They invade his liberty, affront his dignity and greatly incommode his search for happiness, and every year they demand and wrest from him a larger and larger share of his worldly goods."

Politicians "are seldom if ever moved by anything rationally describable as public spirit; there is actually no more public spirit among them than among so many burglars or street walkers. Their purpose, first, last and all the time, is to promote their private advantage, and to that end, and that end alone, they exercise all the vast powers that are in their hands."Tyranny under democracy "wil come to an end when the victims begin to differentiate clearly between governemnt as a necessary device for maintaining order in the world and government as a device for maintaining the authority and prosperity of predatory rascals and swindlers. In other words, they will come to an end on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November preceding the Resurrection Morn."

With regard to the study of political economy or the "dismal science": "Its dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special and unmatchable talent for dullness; his centrla aim is not to expose the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity -- in brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors."

'I am in favor of free competition in all human enterprises, and to the utmost limit. I admire successful scoundrels, and shrink from Socialists as I shrink from Methodists. But all the same, the aforesaid doubt pursues me when I plow throught he solemn disproofs and expositons of the learned professors of economics."

Finally, here's Mencken on the government-subsidized "farmer," the one who is paid with tax dollars for not growing crops, given "emergency" grants and below-market loans, benefits from guaranteed (high) prices, etc. etc.:

"Let the farmer, so far as I am concerned, be damned forevermore! To hell with him, and bad luck to him! He is,unless I err, no hero at all, and no priest, and no altruist, but simply a tedious fraud and ignoramus, a cheap rogue and hypocrite, the eternal Jack of the human pack. He deserves all that he suffers under our economic system, and more. Any city man, not insane, who sheds tears for him is shedding the tears of the crocodile."

"No more grasping, selfish and dishonest mammal, indeed, is known to students of the Anthropoidea. When the going is good for him he robs the rest of us up to the extreme limits of our endurance; when the going is bad he comes bawling for help out of the public till. Has anyone ever heard of a farmer makng any sacrifice of his own interests, however slight, to the common good? Has anyone ever heard of a farmer practicing or advocating any political idea tht was not absolutely self-seeking -- that was not, in fact, delibertely designed to loot the rest of us to his gain? Greenbackism, free silver, government guarantee of prices, all the complex fiscal imbecilities of the cow state John Baptists -- these are the contributions of the virtuous husbandman to American political theory . . . . Yet we are asked to venerate this prehensile moron as . . . the foundation stone of the state!"

The great Mencken understood that there could never be such a thing as a "great statesman" under democracy, but only rascals and scoundrel and glorified thieves. Were he alive today, he would never be invited to the annual Abe Lincoln worship-fest and seance held by the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship. But oh, what fun he would have lampooning and ridiculing that particular gang of rascals.