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[As H. L. Mencken wrote, “The American people get the government they deserve, good and hard.”]

You're using one of my favorite Mencken lines.

Actually, he's misusing/misquoting it.

The source, of course, is H.L.Mencken and George Jean Nathan's A Book of Burlesques in the section entitled The Jazz Webster. The quote itself comes from the definition of Democracy: Democracy is the theory that two thieves will steal less than one, three thieves will steal less than two ... and so on; the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Nonetheless, Billybob mangled the quote, losing much of Mencken's deftness with the language, and confuses it with portions from other famous quotes:

"Every country has the government it deserves"
-Joseph de Maistre (1753 - 1821) Written on August 15, 1811
"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

If you're going to "quote" someone by name, use their actual words, or else drop the quotation marks and indicate that it's a paraphrase or your own restatement inspired by the original.

Ichneumon: I'm not sure why you had to make the point - which I made rather gently by supplying the original quote (as well as I can remember it, which is why the ellipsis) - in such confrontational manner. Billybob's a good guy and I'm sure he wasn't trying to get it wrong, in fact he probably heard it that way somewhere. Not too many people actually have copies of A Book of Burlesques to confirm the exact quote. My copy is at home, not at the office. And, of course, since the book was a collaboration with George Jean Nathan (Mencken's then co-editor of the American Mercury), it's not really clear who wrote that particular line.