H. L. Mencken against the gods

Posted on December 17, 2008 by David Hume

Richard Spencer, editor of Taki’s Magazine, has an excellent piece up, The Old Right and the Antichrist. A lot to chew on….

This entry was posted in philosophy and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to H. L. Mencken against the gods

  1. Kevembuangga says:
    December 17, 2008 at 5:06 am

    As much as I like Mencken I loathe simplistic “anti-state” ideas, for there is no way one can escape the state as soon as a group reaches beyond the size of a primitive tribe.
    The “happy primitivism” of Marshall Sahlins and Pierre Clastres is definitely lefto/anarchist bunk.
    Even if you “succeed” in removing (almost) all statemanship states built up by other people will come gunning for you, exterminate and plunder the “anarchists” just like the US has done with the natives.

    Plain rejection of some support for the lazy and incapacitated is also an idiotic stance because, given that they are the most numerous, they are welcome cannon fodder and cattle upon which the war lords wannabe and robber barons will prey and feed to establish their power.
    The real good reason for a few social measures is to undercut these scoundrels, I don’t think being “on the right” entails any sympathy for them.

    To quote Mencken himself:
    “For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

  2. Jacob Lyles says:
    December 17, 2008 at 7:32 pm

    @Kevembuangga

    I certainly think there is a need in any successful society for an organization of some sort that provides protection for its people and property. Whether the ideal protection organization should be run by a universal democracy is another question.

    If you believe that such an organization should have incentives to do its job well, then you are not a Democratist. If you believe the profit motive would encourage protection organizations to do their jobs well, then you are an anarcho-capitalist.

  3. Blode0322 says:
    December 17, 2008 at 10:55 pm

    Had he lived long enough, Mencken would have been demoralized and disgusted by the reign of political correctness and the multicultural dumbing down of American education. He’d have been truly mystified, perhaps even embarrassed, that these forces are weakest among the Protestant conservative “booboisie” that he loathed. Leftists conceive of themselves as being “the types of folks who’d’ve supported Darrow if we’d been alive at the time” despise and pillory modern evolutionists other than St. Stephen of Cambridge. (See The Blank Slate.)

Comments are closed.