From H.L. Mencken’s Second Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 35, 48:
“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflections to the matter.” (Baltimore Evening Sun, April 13, 1925).
“[T]he system [of democracy] 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 Smart Set, July 1923).
The Constitution is of no help in limiting democracy (a.k.a., legal plunder), as it is supposed to, said Mencken, because the document “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.”
Exactly as John C. Calhoun predicted in his 1850 Disquisition on Government.
6:27 pm on January 20, 2004
