Thursday, September 17, 2009

H.L Mencken's time has come - again

From National' Review's Corner

Feast of Gloom [John Derbyshire]

Paleocons, malcontents, and curmudgeons please note: the annual meeting of the H. L. Mencken Club on Halloween weekend is shaping up to be a magnificent feast of gloom, despair, cynicism, and rancor! Why would you not want to attend? I shall of course be giving an address, in the schedule there somewhere between the burning in effigy of Irving Kristol and the handing-out of suicide capsules

In our present straits … it is Mencken's loathing and contempt for our political classes that should most appeal. Mencken loved liberty and perceived that any politician more active than Coolidge — which is to say, wellnigh any politician at all — seeks to take liberty away from us, either in pursuit of some mad ideology, or, more often, just from the desire to be seen always busy at something. Public adoration of wonder-worker politicians like FDR excited Mencken's fiercest diatribes. He called FDR "the Führer," "the greatest president since Hoover," etc.

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