New Design: 3D2A: Can’t Take It If We Can Make It + H.L. Mencken Quotes

“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believe.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) is the kind of guy you wish you could become whenever you’re confronted by a vociferous pinhead. Few wits as crystal as his are bestowed among men. More abrasive dispositions are even scarcer. But no worries – just memorize a few H.L. Mencken quotes to pass off as your own, and you’ll be able to trounce ninnies with the best of them.

Henry Louis Mencken was a “literary fella” (to borrow a term coined by one of his contemporaries) who wrote essays, satire and cultural critiques. As a journalist Mencken worked for The Herald, The Baltimore Sun and The American Mercury, the last of which he co-founded. He famously covered the Scopes Monkey Trial, and indeed is the one who gave it that name.

Mencken was cynical about religion, especially the Elmer Gantry brand of Christianity which commonly bred under giant striped tents during his day. (He was good friends with Sinclair Lewis, who wrote it.) Mencken was cynical about a lot of things, including quackery like chiropractic, American involvement in both World Wars, and democracy in particular. The Nietzschean scholar called democracy “the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” To him, democracy was a thing which impotent dolts mistook for actual power as they welcomed a succession of crooks to rule over them. Music to a libertarian’s ears.

Mencken’s writing is remarkably similar to that of Mark Twain, of whom he was a great fan, as well as Ambrose Bierce whose faux dictionary entries he paid frequent homage to. If you’d like to dip your big toe into Mencken’s staggeringly large body of work, you’d best start with The Vintage Mencken complied by Alistair Cooke. If you’d like to spend just a few minutes with Mencken at his very best, please proceed.

H.L. Mencken Quotes for the Cynical Soul

“Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”
“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”

New Design: 3D2A: Can’t Take It If We Can Make It

SHOP 2ND AMENDMENT COLLECTION

The year is 21XX. The United States government has now confiscated over 27 billion firearms as part of its never-ending War on Freedom – but despite its army of GunGrab-R 9000 Betobots, new guns appear in the hands of Americans every day.

President Hunter Biden IV orders a special investigation into why the government’s mission to make Americans safe by eliminating their ability to defend themselves is failing. The investigation costs $3 trillion (with 90% of the funding going directly to foreign countries that send President Biden IV presents on his birthday, per the 98th Amendment).

The special investigators produce their full report only seven years later, and their findings are devastating: Americans are using 3D printers to make their own guns! A 58,000-page bill is written and signed into law the next day. In addition to giving congresspeople 340 days of paid vacation every year and allocating $200 billion to the construction of a third congressional orgy-torium, the Permanent Freedom From Freedom Act bans the manufacture of all new 3D printers.

This does nothing to solve the problem, because Americans simply use their old 3D printers to print new 3D printers. And those new printers are even better, with the ability to print infinite-capacity magazines and barrels that electromagnetically accelerate bullets to velocities which exceed the speed of light. The government has lost. Freedom has won. Americans have won. Santa Claus defeats President Biden IV by a landslide during the next presidential election and everyone gets a girlfriend.