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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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September 12, 2002
Our Hero!
HL Mencken was born September 12, 1880. An American person of letters could hardly hope to equal the style and substance of HL Mencken, his insight, his way with the language, his savage wit, his forgiving heart. He had the best BS meter you could ask for, and he's the most quotable writer you could ask for. Oh, OK, sample quote on democracy: "It remains impossible...to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mysterious merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude, in the man at the bottom of the scale - that inferiority, by some strange magic, becomes a kind of superiority..."
We could be here dropping Mencken quotes all day, or talking about his impish involvement in the Scopes Monkey Trial. HL is the man.
Mencken's Creed:
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
Read Mencken's book In Defense of Women
posted by Al at 9/12/2002 05:29:00 AM
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