"Every normal man must be tempted at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
"The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy."
Many more examples of Mencken's brilliance exist, of course. Those are just some of my favorites. I even find myself more at ease with his militant agnosticism as I age (he believed that the liberation of the human mind was best furthered by those "who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving that doubt, after all, was safe -- that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud."). Mencken was fearless -- fearless above all. And he tolerated nonsense not at all.
He believed in the endurance of ego. I daresay that -- one way or the other -- eternity has shown him the error of his ways.
I love the guys stuff.
L
"The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy."Rush Limbaugh makes fun of conspiracy kooks and perpetual victims. I believe Rush performs a public service. We all need reminders not to succumb to lazy thoughts and easy excuses.