-- "Liberty and Democracy" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (13 April 1925), also in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy : New Selections from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (1994) edited by Terry Teachout, p. 35
The URL of this blog comes from a no longer published newspaper from my old home town in Massachusetts. "The Evening Chronicle" was owned and published by an old family friend and long time leader of the Republican Party from the Roosevelt Administration through the Eisenhower Administration, Joseph W. Martin Jr. I hope you all enjoy what you find here.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Liberty and Democracy
"Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever
given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to
venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply
cannot tolerate the thing. In order to keep any coherence in the governmental
process, to prevent the wildest anarchy in thought and act, the government must
put limits upon the free play of opinion. In part, it can reach that end by mere
propaganda, by the bald force of its authority — that is, by making certain
doctrines officially infamous. But in part it must resort to force, i.e., to
law. One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens
upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to
penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions.
At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is
honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that
there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of
liberty. Always they condition it with the doctrine that the state, i.e., the
majority, has a sort of right of eminent domain in acts, and even in ideas —
that it is perfectly free, whenever it is so disposed, to forbid a man to say
what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming
"dangerous," ie, of being heard and attended to, it exercises that 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, bondholders of the
railroads — without compensation and without even colorable reason, they would
not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold
property is not one they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy,
hate and loot the man who has it.
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