Just imagine what he had to go throu in the early 1900's and 20's. Does anyone feel this is just history repeating itself. Look at the quotes from then. Aren't we dwelling on a time that never existed? Honestly when were the media not whores. When have Americans not been the dumbest people on the planet? Warning he is a libertarian cynic. But Even I can agree to the truth he speaks. In these times it has to be a tad easier than world war 1, where you were jailed 10 years for speaking out against the war or convincing people not to buy war bonds, yes in america, Speaking out against ww1 got you a decade, or in some cases the death penalty. Now he is a hero, America is anti intellectual now, but then it had to be hell, I respect intellectuals that are imprisioned by thier own time. I encourage you to google and read some of his works (he was a writer/mainly a journalist/essayist who slamed everything.)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard19.htmlhttp://www.io.com/~gibbonsb/mencken.htmlhttp://www.mencken.org/ Quotes
Henry Louis Mencken 1880-1956 In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Liberals have many tails and chase them all.
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
A celebrity is one who is known by many people he is glad he doesn't know.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts
Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place
...the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom respectable. No virtuous man--that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense--has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading...
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable.
...school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of menial workers.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.
The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.
Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.
Jealousy: The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
Self-respect: The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked...
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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