Today is H.L. Mencken’s 130th birthday, and we commemorate it here with two important and seldom seen essays by the Master of the Pen himself. –Ed. by H.L. Mencken THE RECURRENT EFFORT to eliminate criminal stocks by sterilizing criminals is opposed violently by sentimentalists, and also by the pseudo-scientists who argue fatuously that character is not inheritable. Common experience shows Continue Reading →
by H.L. Mencken First published in The American Mercury, August 1937 DISCUSSING IN THE PLACE a few months ago the sorrows roweling the great Republic we live in, I ventured to throw out a double-headed suggestion. The first part of it was to the effect that an easy way to reduce those sorrows today, and almost obliterate them tomorrow, would Continue Reading →
by Albert Jay Nock from The American Mercury, vol. XLI, no. 164 (August 1937), pp. 485-90. THERE IS NO question that the Liberals and Progressives are in the political saddle at the moment, fitted out with bucking-straps and a Spanish bit, and are riding the nation under spur and quirt. Liberalism became the fashion in 1932, so for six years Continue Reading →
by Ralph Linton The American Mercury vol. 40 (1937) THERE CAN be no question about the average American’s Americanism or his desire to preserve this precious heritage at all costs. Nevertheless, some insidious foreign ideas have already wormed their way into his civilization without his realizing what was going on. Thus dawn finds the unsuspecting patriot garbed in pajamas, a Continue Reading →
by Albert Jay Nock This classic essay on freedom was published in The American Mercury in 1927. I. The Majesty of the Law When I was seven years old, playing in front of our house on the outskirts of Brooklyn one morning, a policeman stopped and chatted with me for a few moments. He was a kindly man, of a Continue Reading →