H. L. Mencken (1880–1956)

As Mencken says toward the end of the book, these people won't be going away. Evangelicals are on a mission, and that mission is to force down other people's throats their anti-science religion. Anyone who embraces a literal interpretation of scripture is destined to be considered a nutcase by rationalists. Demagogues such as Bryan still litter our landscape, herding the thought-challenged for their own purposes. Mencken is ruthless here, and one could say even cruel in his disgust. The show more trial was certainly a farce and I suppose not worthy of detailed descriptions of the day-to-day antics of the fundamentalist zealots. What is especially amusing to me is that anti-evolutionists were so blatantly obvious in trumpeting the foregone conclusion (i.e. conviction) that no one could mistake the proceedings as anything other than a mockery of the justice system, at least as practiced in a backwater town in Tennessee. show less

S.T. Joshi's anthology of Mencken's work on religion is a terrifically entertaining read. Mencken was an equal-opportunity infidel, skewering Evangelicals, "mainstream" Protestants, Catholics, Theosophists, and Christian Scientists entirely without theological favoritism. He did have a special animus toward Methodists, for having been the greatest motive force behind the enactment of Prohibition, which was in effect during nearly all of these writings. He applauds religious diversity and show more argues for freedom and privacy: "Man will never be wholly civilized until he ceases to intrude his snout into the shy mysterious, highly private recesses of his brother's soul" (135). He argues (with tongue deeply in cheek) in favor of the Spiritualist hypothesis of survival, on the grounds that if he himself were to return from beyond the veil, he would be as mischievous, dishonest, and irresponsible as most seance apparitions seem to be (141).

While unpersuaded regarding metaphysical verities, Mencken in these writings never argues for atheism outright. In fact, he pleads for "religious" functions stripped of theological baggage in his fine essay on "Services for the Damned" (78 ff.). He is also willing to credit the great poetic power found in such places as the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, as descended from the poetry of the ancient Hebrew texts (64). He further opines that the poetic force in scripture and liturgy had allowed religion to survive its own intellectual bankruptcy and would continue to do so.

The largest section of the book is dedicated to Mencken's first-hand reportage on the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. In his first writing on the topic, Mencken held out for the regulatory authority of the state over rogue pedagogues, no matter how benighted that state's decision might be. Quickly, however, he developed a clear revulsion for William Jennings Bryan and the Fundamentalist cheerleaders for the prosecution. With the event of Bryan's death just after the verdict, Mencken's writing passed into impressively hostile obituary concerning a man who "couldn't be President, but he could at least help magnificently in the solemn business of shutting off the presidency from every intelligent and self-respecting man" (223).

Twenty-first century readers are likely to be taken aback at first by Mencken's repeated references to the "darkies" of the American South and his own Baltimore. His clearest positions on race relations are however set forth in some of the last essays collected here, where he earnestly remarks himself as "a sincere friend of the colored people .... In many and obvious ways they are superior to the whites against whom they are commonly pitted. They are not only enormously decenter; they are also considerably shrewder" (285). In a different, earlier "Venture into Therapeutics" he even suggested with startling prescience that Islam would be a desirable tonic for African-American culture (269 ff.)

Joshi very helpfully provides a glossary of names which Mencken drops and hurls, but whose now expired contemporaneity will make them obstacles to today's reader, and he supplies the text of biblical citations that would otherwise go unappreciated by most readers without scripture at their elbows. Joshi makes a few misses in his efforts to clarify Mencken's cultural references though, such as mis-identifying "September Morn" as "a translation of a German song ... by Joseph Marx" (305), rather than the scandal-provoking painting by Paul Émile Chabas. Joshi would have been better off not to note "The Girl with the Whooping Cough" as "unidentified, possibly fictitious" (273, 305) when it was an actual stage comedy suppressed on Broadway in 1910. Still, his work in organizing and presenting this material is good on the whole, and I'm in debt to his editorial labors for my chance to read this book. show less

Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken published in 1926 must be something of a hard sell these days. The inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States seems to stand as a shining example of how well democracy works. A system that can produce a leader of such stature must have something going for it. Mencken would probably beg to differ. And it may do us good to keep in mind democracy's failings even during such a hopeful time. After all, the same system that elected Barack show more Obama also passed Proposition 8.

Notes on Democracy provides a clear-headed, skeptical view of American politics and the democratic system. Menken begins with this premise: "The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe." Mencken would not be at all surprised to hear the use of torture justified as necessary to keep ourselves safe from terrorists. He would expect us to willingly surrender our freedom rather than face even the slightest sense of danger. Would you allow government agents to randomly search people on the street who are neither charged with a crime nor suspected of committing a crime? Would you allow these random searches to include strip searches? What if the government told you these searches were necessary to insure safe air-travel?

Mencken believes that the main motivating factor in democracy is fear. He believes that fear has been used since the founding of America to motivate the mass of voters, whom he calls the mob. Leaders have always and will always use fear to convince the mob to trade away its rights and to support causes that will harm it in the end and to enter wars it could have avoided. He is worth quoting at length about this:

Fear remains the chiefest of them. The demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the corner-stone of their exact and puissant science. Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting "Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!" It has been so in the United States since the earliest days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Banks, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism. The list might be lengthened indefinitely; a complete chronicle of the Republic could be written in terms of it, and without omitting a single important episode. It was long ago observed that the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something.

Add to this list civil rights activists, feminists, drugs, terrorists and gay marriage and you bring Mencken's thesis up to the present. Mencken wrote Notes on Democracy after seeing how the mob of voters could be manipulated into passing Prohibition, surely the single most hypocritical piece of legislation in the country's history. Anti-saloon leagues played upon the fears of the mob; religious leaders used their pulpits the pressure state legislatures into passing a law that took away property rights, closed businesses, and turned a majority of Americans into criminals. Mencken also covered the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee which charged a man with the crime of teaching evolution. (It would do us all well to remember that was a crime with a prison sentence as punishment less than 100 years ago.) These two events as well as his years as a Baltimore reporter provide the foundation for the views he expresses in Notes on Democracy. But his sense of humor and his way with words make the book a pleasureable read. He is like an acidy Mark Twain. Humorous, but as forgiving.

Mencken would probably look around today, and find that not much has changed. Personally, I'm not sure I would agree, but reading Notes on Democracy forces one to take a hard look at the system, to see that what we hold as dear may not be as good as we want it to be. It's probably like going to a parent conference and finding out that your favorite child is really not all that nice to the other kids on the playground. How you react to the news will determine what kind of adult that child grows up to be. Disregard that sort of bad news at your peril. President Obama said in his inaugural address that America is a young country but that it is now time to put away childish things. Perhaps we can prove Mencken wrong and move beyond our fears towards our better natures. Surely, the time has come. show less

Mencken is always a delightful stylist, and his level of Angst was comforting to my adolescent soul. This is a collection of short snappers as, usual quite informative of the liberal American mind. The format is a tidy up of the notebooks dealing with ideas for his future explorations, and the effect is that of a casual conversation. Disjointed, but very interesting.