Free Second Mencken Chrestomathy by H.L. Mencken Page A

disposed, to forbid a man to say what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming “dangerous,”
i.e.
, of being heard and attended to, it exercisesthat prerogative. And the overwhelming majority of citizens believe in supporting it in the outrage.
    Including especially the Liberals, who pretend—and often quite honestly believe—that they are hot for liberty. They never really are. Deep down in their hearts they know, as good democrats, that liberty would be fatal to democracy—that a government based upon shifting and irrational opinion must keep it within bounds or run a constant risk of disaster. They themselves, as a practical matter, advocate only certain narrow kinds of liberty—liberty, that is, for the persons they happen to favor. The rights of other persons do not seem to interest them. If a law were passed tomorrow taking away the property of a large group of presumably well-to-do persons—say, the bond-holders of the railroads—without compensation and even without colorable reason, they would not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold property is not one that they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it.
Leaves from a Note-book
1
    From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, Feb. 12, 1923
    The fact that amateurs, at least transiently, so often defeat the professional politicians is due simply to the fact that an amateur, when he becomes a candidate, is nearly always brought into the combat by indignation—that he seeks office because he is violently against something. But it is just as hard to hold an amateur status in politics as it is in sports. The moment an amateur gets into office his indignation is diluted by solicitude, to wit, solicitude for his own job. He then begins to slide down the chute navigated by the late Bonaparte.
2
    From the same
    It is often urged, as a remedy for the obvious evils of democracy, that the citizens who now eschew politics should spit on their hands and horn in. But would this remedy really afford a cure? I can scarcely imagine anyone believing that it would. The moment the present outsiders became public-spirited they would begin to seek public office, and the moment they began to seek public office they would face the necessity of exposing themselves to the mob, and of trying to dance to its taste. In brief, the moment they become public-spirited they would become precisely the same flatterers and mountebanks that the existing politicians are.
3
    From the same
    To advocate free speech is quite useless: the thing itself would be fatal to democracy. But in advocating it one at least enjoys the satisfaction of exposing the hypocrisy and swinishness of those who oppose it.
4
    From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, Nov. 18, 1929
    The danger in free speech does not lie in the menace of ideas, but in the menace of emotions. If words were merely logical devices no one would fear them. But when they impinge upon a moron they set off his hormones, and so they are justifiably feared. Complete free speech, under democracy, is possible only in a foreign language. Perhaps that is what we shall come to in the end.Anyone will be free to say what he pleases in Latin, but everything in English will be censored by prudent job-holders.
5
    From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, March 5, 1923
    The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the “good sailor” who stalks past him on deck 100 times a day, ostentatiously smoking a large, greasy, ammoniacal cigar. In precisely the same way the good democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy—the long and short of democracy. It is also the long and short of Puritanism.
The True Immortal
    From the
Smart Set
, Oct., 1919, pp. 84–85
    If, in the course of long years, the great masses of the plain people gradually lose their old faiths, it is only to fill the gaps with new faiths that restate the old ones in new