Mencken

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron," Mencken wrote in the Evening Sun in July 1920.

Mencken won vast popularity and its accompanying emoluments for doing what he loved to do most: to write vividly about the grand circus that for him was American life.

"In 2016 I attended the Mencken conference in question and delivered a stand-alone, academic talk titled 'The Intelligentsia and the Right.' I said nothing objectionable and stand by my remarks completely," Beattie said in the statement.

Two beliefs puffed up the righteous censor, according to Mencken: first, "that any man who dissents from the prevailing platitudes is a hireling of the devil," and second, "that he should be silenced and destroyed forthwith.

Let's prove Mencken wrong and insist that our representatives put people's health first.

Back in 1920, Mencken said: "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.

Henry Mencken was also right about our conscience being "the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking".

When Mencken wrote on Nietzsche he was still primarily a journalist, albeit one who had larger interests.

Mencken's observation in 1924: "Coolidge is simply a professional politician," he wrote, and a very "dull one" at that.

The success of the Beatles shows that Sir Noel Coward knew what he was talking about when he said that he found the potency of cheap music extraordinary, as did the American journalist H L Mencken when he wrote, as long ago as 1926, that he knew of no instance of anyone losing money by underestimating the intelligence of what he called "the great masses of the plain people".

"Under democracy" said political commentator H L Mencken, "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.

Mencken that I've used for years when giving talks to local groups.

Mencken, these folks are haunted by the fear that someone somewhere may be having fun.

Mencken; NOTES ON DEMOCRACY; Dissident Books (Political Science) $14.95 ISBN: 9780977378814