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Vintage Mencken
The Zoo
Published by Editor on January 25, 2011
by H.L. Mencken (pictured) I OFTEN WONDER how much sound and nourishing food is fed to the animals in the zoological gardens of America every week, and try to figure out what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much [...]
America Needs a New Ingersoll
Published by Editor on January 3, 2011
Robert Ingersoll (pictured) was a lantern of reason in a nation of fools by H.L. Mencken WHAT the country lacks is obviously an Ingersoll. It is, indeed, a wonder that the chautauquas have never spewed one forth. Certainly there must be many a jitney Demosthenes on those lonely circuits who tires mightily of the standard [...]
Daytonians Full of Sickening Doubts About Publicity
Published by Editor on July 22, 2010
A Report on the Scopes Trial by H.L. Mencken Illustration: Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan (The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 9, 1925) ON THE EVE of the great contest Dayton is full of sickening surges and tremors of doubt. Five or six weeks ago, when the infidel Scopes was first laid by the heels, [...]
Homo Neanderthalensis
Published by Editor on July 21, 2010
A Report on the Scopes Trial by H.L. Mencken (pictured) (The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925) I SUCH OBSCENITIES as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume [...]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: An Obituary
Published by Editor on May 17, 2010
by H.L. Mencken April 13, 1945 THE BALTIMORE Sun editorial on Roosevelt this morning begins: “Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man.” There are heavy black dashes above and below it. The argument, in brief, is that all his skullduggeries and imbecilities were wiped out when “he took an inert and profoundly isolationist people and [...]
Meet General Grant
Published by Editor on April 30, 2010
by H.L. Mencken A review of Meet General Grant by W. E. Woodward (Horace Liverwright, publishers); The American Mercury, 1928 THE DREADFUL title of this book is not the least of its felicities. If they had been saying such things in his day it seems unquestionable that Grant would have said, “Meet the wife.” He [...]
The Calamity of Appomattox
Published by Editor on April 29, 2010
by H.L. Mencken The American Mercury, September 1930 NO AMERICAN historian, so far as I know, has ever tried to work out the probable consequences if Grant instead of Lee had been on the hot spot at Appomattox. How long would the victorious Confederacy have endured? Could it have surmounted the difficulties inherent in the [...]
H.L. Mencken on Governments and Politicians
Published by Editor on April 22, 2010
by Chris Leithner THE VOLUMINOUS writings (nineteen books and thousands of essays, articles and reviews) of H. L. Mencken, one of America’s finest writers and perhaps its greatest journalist and chronicler of American English, are a virtually-forgotten treasure trove of sparkling wit and deep wisdom. Like knowledge of their own history and respect for their [...]
Last Words on Democracy
Published by E.C. Ashenden on April 14, 2010
by H.L. Mencken (1926) I HAVE ALLUDED somewhat vaguely to the merits of democracy. One of them is quite obvious: it is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, [...]
US News »
America: Economic Disaster Looms
May 8, 2011
by Bob Chapman Publisher of The International Forecaster. AS THE ECONOMY STUMBLES the American standard of living recedes. Forty-four million people are using food stamps and in one year that figure will be 60 million. Washington and Wall Street say “what, me worry?” Of course not; they are the “masters of the universe.” We are [...]
Europe »
Italian Court Increases Sentences for 23 CIA Agents
January 4, 2011
AN ITALIAN COURT UPPED the sentences for 23 CIA agents convicted in absentia of abducting an Egyptian imam in one of the biggest cases against the US “extraordinary rendition” programme. The 23 CIA agents, originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison, had their sentences increased to seven to nine years [...]
Social Sciences »
The Happiness Hypothesis
May 8, 2011
Of Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, and Historical Narratives by A. Helian JONATHAN HAIDT IS ONE OF THE MOST coherent thinkers in the social sciences today. A Professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, he specializes in the study of morality and emotion, and how they vary across cultures. He describes himself as an [...]
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Vintage Mercury »
Sensitivity International: Network for World Control
February 6, 2011
by Ed Dieckmann, Jr. from The American Mercury, Winter, 1969 EARLY IN MAY of this year, a courageous mother, Mrs. Lois Godfrey of Garden Grove, California, succeeded in getting sensitivity training outlawed, at least temporarily, in the Garden Grove Unified School District. Mrs. Godfrey withdrew two of her children from a class in which the [...]
History, Opinion »
Whittaker Chambers: Ghosts and Phantoms
December 11, 2011
by David Chambers WHITTAKER CHAMBERS died 50 years ago at the age of 60. Much in the world has changed since then. What might he think about world affairs today, were he still alive? Before commenting, he would catch up on history with books like Tony Judt‘s Postwar. Another would be Timothy Snyder‘s Bloodlands, which [...]
Literature »
Head of the Whole Business
January 25, 2011
Red Conspirator: J. Peters and the American Communist Underground by Thomas Sakmyster; University of Illinois Press, March 2011 $50.00, 312 pages, including 6 black & white photographs reviewed by David Chambers FROM AUGUST 3, 1948, until today, America has had to wait to learn more about the head of Soviet espionage in Washington during the [...]
