Mencken on the Democratic Man

Mencken on the Democratic Man

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the democratic man, pages 9-15. Below is an overview of his discussion on the democratic man; my comments are in brackets.
    Emerging “as Rousseau’s noble savage in smock and jerkin,” the democratic man came forth “to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands.” Being at the bottom of the social scale, i.e., being inferior, he acquired “a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude” that “by some strange magic became sort of superiority — nay, the superiority of superiorities.”
    Thus, enlighten countries have moved evermore “toward the completer and more enamoured enfranchisement of the lower orders.” For, in this democratic man “lies a deep, illimitable reservoir of righteousness and wisdom, unpolluted by the corruption of privilege.” Whatever baffles statesmen, the democratic man can solve “instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition.”
    Moreover, his “yearnings are pure.” Only he is “capable of a perfect patriotism,” and in him “is the only hope of peace and happiness on this lugubrious ball.” [If true, no hope exists for peace. The democratic man is as much of a warmonger as are the aristocrat and the upper class; only his wars are far more brutal and destructive as World War I and World War II demonstrate.] Thus, “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!”
    This notion of the democratic man “originated in the poetic fancy of gentlemen on the upper levels — sentimentalists who, observing to their distress that the ass was over-laden, proposed to reform transport by putting him into the cart.” These gentlemen were “the direct ancestors of the more saccharine Liberals of to-day, who yet mouth their tattered phrases and dream their preposterous dreams.”
    Then Mencken gives a description of the rise of the democratic man during the French Revolution. “Early democratic man seems to have given little thought to the democratic ideal, and less veneration. What he wanted was something concrete and highly materialistic — more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower taxes. He had no apparent belief in the acroamatic virtue of his own class, and certainly none in its capacity to rule.” [Thus, the democratic man seems to have shown more common sense than his aristocratic overlords and other members of the upper class who propelled him into governing.] Extermination of the baron was not his goal; his goal was “to bring the baron back to a proper discharge of baronial business.” In his attempt to force the barons back to baronial business, the baronage ended and others from among the democratic man took the barons’ place. The democratic man quickly showed his “opinion of them by butchering them deliberately and in earnest.” Once the blood began flowing, “it was a great deal more dangerous to be a tribune of the people than to be an ornament of the old order.” “[H]aving been misled into killing its King in 1793,” the democratic man “devoted the next two years to killing those who had misled” him. Then he got another king [Napoleon], “with an attendant herd of barons, counts, marquises and dukes, some of them new but most of them old, to guard, symbolize and execute his sovereignty.” So overjoyed was the democratic man at the return of a king, “that half France leaped to suicide that their glory might blind the world.”
    The blood flow in Europe slowed the rise of the democratic man. However, America had been spared such slaughters; thus, the popularity of the democratic man rose more quickly in the United States.
    Nevertheless, the conditions of the democratic man improved. “Once a slave, he was now only a serf. Once condemned to silence, he was now free to criticize his masters, and even to flout them, and the ordinances of God with them. As he gained skill and fluency at that sombre and fascinating art, he began to heave in wonder at his own merit. He was not only, it appeared, free to praise and damn, challenge and remonstrate; he was also gifted with a peculiar rectitude of thought and will, and a high talent for ideas, particularly on the political plane. So his wishes, in his mind, began to take on the dignity of legal rights, and after a while, of intrinsic and natural rights, and by the same token the wishes of his masters sank to the level of mere ignominious lusts. By 1828 in America and by 1848 in Europe the doctrine had arisen that all moral excellence, and with it all pure and unfettered sagacity, resided in the inferior four-fifths of mankind.” [In 1828, the supporters of Andrew Jackson formed today’s Democratic party got Jackson elected President.]
    Then in 1867, a philosopher [Marx] arose from the gutter and declared “that the superior minority had no virtues at all, and hence no rights at all — that the world belonged exclusively and absolutely to those who hewed its wood and drew its water.” Within a few decades, “he had more followers in the world, open and covert, than any other sophist since the age of the Apostles.” [Today, in the United States, his disciples dominate the Progressives, Liberals, Neo-conservatives, the Democratic party, and even the Republican party.] As the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union showed, this extreme philosophy had some problems. [Unfortunately, for Americans, the followers of the ruling elite have learned little from the experience of the Soviet Union, as the ruling elite is trying to turn the United States into its version of the United Soviet States of America.]
    The failure of the democratic man’s dictatorship of the proletariat did not slow the march of the democratic man. World War I was fought in the name of democracy, and all the defeated countries embraced it “with loud hosannas.” All Christendom now embraced the fundamental axioms of democracy: “(a) that the great masses of men have an inalienable right, born of the very nature of things, to govern themselves, and (b) that they are competent to do it.” [Viewing all the democratic and so-called democratic countries of the world brings into question that the democratic man is competent to govern. They present an argument much greater that he lacks the competence to govern.] When the democratic man is  “detected in gross and lamentable imbecilities,” it is because he is “misinformed by those who would exploit [him]: the remedy is more education.” [Education is the solution to all problems in a democratic society, even when, or especially when, education means indoctrination.] If, at times, he is “a trifle naughty, even swinish, . . . it is only a natural reaction against the oppressions [he] suffer[s]: the remedy is to deliver them.”
    Further, liberation of the democratic man is the “central aim of all the Christian governments of to-day,” which seek to augment his power. Moreover, a good government is one that “responds most quickly and accurately” to the desires and ideas of the democratic man. A bad government is one that “conditions [his] omnipotence and puts a question mark after [his] omniscience.”
    [Mencken’s description of the democratic man is a fairly accurate description of the typical supporters of the Democratic party and the typical supporters of RINOs {Republicans in name only}. Perhaps, this is because, as Mencken notes, the ancestors of Liberals and Progressives are the progenitors of democracy, i.e., ever expanding suffrage.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Allen.

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Paper Money and the Gold Standard

Paper Money and the Gold Standard

Thomas Allen

    Many people who are hostile toward the gold standard assert or imply that all purchases have to be made with gold coins or perhaps gold bars under the gold standard. Paper money, checks, and electronic transfers are not used. Some suggest that they would be prohibited. Some hold this view out of ignorance; others, out of hatred of gold as money. Unfortunately, even some proponents of the gold standard seem to hold this view.
    To the contrary, paper money and checks were used during the era of the gold standard. More purchases were made with paper money, checks, and token coins than with gold coins. When the gold standard returns, many more purchases will be made with paper money, checks, token coins, and electronic transfers than with gold coins.
    The primary purpose of gold coins is to keep everyone honest. It prevents an unsustainable expansion of credit. Redemption of paper money (bank notes, government notes, checkable deposits) on demand keeps credit under control and smooths the business cycle.
    Under the gold standard, people, especially business people, often deposed gold coins in checking accounts. Others exchanged their gold coins for paper money because paper money was more convenient to carry.
    A check under the gold standard is an order to the bank to transfer gold from the account on which it is drawn to the bearer of the check. A bank note is essentially a check that a bank draws on itself. It is an order to the issuing bank to pay the bearer of the note the amount of gold stated on the note when redeemed.
    The major problem with bank notes and checkable deposits is that banks can over issue them. It can do so either deliberately or accidentally. For example, when a bank buys treasury bills with bank notes or checkable deposits in excess of its unencumbered gold deposits, it is deliberately over issuing. When it converts a real bill of exchange to bank notes or checkable deposits and the person on whom the bill is drawn and the endorser of the bill go bankrupt, it inadvertently over issued (this lost should be covered by gold reserves set aside for this purpose).
    Thus, as banks do today, banks under the gold standard can, often did, practice unsound banking — borrowing short and lending long. Also, when banks use the same money (gold) for multiple loans, it is practicing unsound banking. However, unlike the current fiat monetary system that enables unsound banking to be used for an extended time, the gold standard ends such practices fairly quickly with bank runs — the conversion of bank credit money (bank notes and checkable deposits) into gold.

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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The Southerner, the Black, and the Yankee

The Southerner, the Black, and the Yankee

Thomas Allen

    [Note: This article has been inspired by A Glance at Current History by John Cussons (1899). Most of the description of the Yankee is his.]
    Southerners have been told to put the past behind them and devote their energy to building a common country. This they have been doing since Lincoln’s  War to Suppress Southern Independence.
    While Southerners have devoted themselves to building the country, the Yankee has devoted himself to vilifying the South. The Yankee is the Puritan of New England and his descendants in New England, New York, and along the Great Lakes and on the West Coast and his philosophical kin, mostly European radical immigrants and their descendants. To the Yankee, the South represents everything wrong with the country and every evil on earth.
    Public schools teach children, especially Southern children, to hate the South and Southerners and to hate, or at least ignore, the great accomplishments of Southerners. Southerners are demonized as traitors and harbingers of everything evil with the Yankee defining evil.
    Until recently, many historians have presented the South as a region of savagery and the North as the land of great virtue. Now these historians portray Whites, both Southerners and Northerners, as wicked monsters of oppression and Blacks as virtuous oppressed saints.
    Although the South has been accused of seeking to destroy the government of the United States with secession, it did not. If the South had won the War, the U.S. government would still have existed. It would just have ruled over a smaller area.
    Lincoln was the one who destroyed the U.S. government as established by the Constitution when he called forth troops to invade the South. Contrary to the Constitution, he concentrated political power into the U.S. government and much of it into the office of the President. Thus, he converted the United States from a federation of States to a consolidated empire. Moreover, he partnered the U.S. government with big business and bankers.
    The issue of secession reveals the hypocrisy of the Yankees. After the expiration of John Adams’s term, the New England States threatened secession several times. However, when the Southern States followed their example in 1861 and even used some of the same arguments that the New England States had used, their acts were treasonous.  Yet, the Yankee had called the Union “a league with hell” and denounced the Constitution as “a covenant with death.” Nevertheless, when the Yankee came to power in 1861 and the hell part of the league, the Southern States, decided to leave, the Yankee threw off his disguise. He launched a war of conquest in the name of defending the principles and symbols that he had bitterly denounced. (Of course, the real reason for the War was to destroy the South and Southerners and to transfer their wealth to the Yankees.)
    Contrary to the popular myth, then and now, that Southerners were traitors and guilty of treason, they were not. However, if Lincoln were right and the Southern States had not left the Union, then Northerners were guilty of treason. According to the Constitution, treason is levying war against the United States, which would include any one of them. If the Southern States had left the Union as the South claimed, then Southerners could have not been guilty of treason as they were no longer part of the United States. However, if they had not left the Union, then Lincoln and his fellow Northerners would have been guilty of treason for levying war against the United States by levying war against States within the Union.
    More of the Yankee’s hypocrisy is revealed during the War and Reconstruction. While mutilating the States, he declared them to be indestructible. Lincoln’s War was fought under the banner that the Union was indissoluble, yet the Yankees disbarred the Southern States from the Union. While claiming to be the only class to revere the Constitution, the Yankees shredded it. As he elevated himself as the only true champion of “the sacred principle of government by consent,” the Yankees reduced the Southerner States to conquered provinces where Southerners were denied the right to govern themselves.
    As the North won Lincoln’s War to pillage and enslave the South, to the Yankee fell the privilege of writing history. Mostly, his histories from the colonial era to today glorify the North and the Yankee and vilify the South and Southerners. Consequently, the Southerner is debased, and the Yankee is exalted.
    Moreover, the Yankee presents himself as a noble saint. He, and he alone, is the great egalitarian who has strove to elevate Blacks, and now all people of color and all perverts, to the level of equality with the vile White man — nay, to raise them even above the White man. Only the depraved racist Southerner thwarts this equality. Any Black possessing any ability of critical thinking knows that the Yankee lies. (Unfortunately, not only do most Blacks lack the ability to think critically, so do most Whites.) Blacks would soon discover that the Yankee wants to remake them in his, the Yankee’s, own image, just as he wants to remake Southerners in his, the Yankee’s, own image. The last thing that the Yankee wants is for the Black man to be his own man. Consequently, the Yankee has been a heavy promoter of the Marxist civil rights movement, the War on Poverty, and the welfare state. Such programs enslave Blacks to the government and prevent them from being their own man. (With his War and Reconstruction policies and programs, the Yankee showed his real love for Blacks. About a quarter of the freed slaves died between 1862 and 1870 as a result of the Yankee’s War and Reconstruction did not matter to him as long as the South was utterly destroyed.)
    One of the many things that the court historians conceal is that the Confederacy fought against the Yankee who had denounced the Union and reviled the Constitution. Moreover, the Yankee believed his passion was his conscience, and his freakish fancies were abiding principles. When the patriotic appeal for the Constitution and Union was made, the Yankee replied, “The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it ought to be.” No compact could bind the Yankee, nor could any obligation restrain him. While the Yankee dedicated himself to “equal rights,” he fervently declared, “We haven’t got any niggers, and we don’t mean that you should have any.” Resisting all pleas for peace, he proudly and savagely proclaimed, “The Union would be improved by a little bloodletting.” While claiming that he was fighting for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the Yankee denied Southerners of their government of, by, and for the people. Moreover, the Yankee inaugurated his reign of peace, Reconstruction, by instituting terrors more horrible than the terrors of the War. His peace overthrew the courts and constitutions of the Southern States and converted them to military satrapies as he disfranchised every Southerner who was not a scalawag. Furthermore, he made ownership of property by Southerners a crime. Worse, he placed suddenly freed slaves, who knew nothing about governance, in the governments and positions of authority. (Nevertheless, these newly freed slaves were merely puppets of the Yankee — just as are most Blacks today.) Furthermore, he instilled Blacks with the sinful doctrine of miscegenation. Thus, the Yankee genocides Blacks to genocide Southerners. To justify genocide via miscegenation, the Yankee brings forth a new Bible and a new God. Thus, the Yankee has replaced a constitutional federation of republican states with a consolidated, imperial, opulent, irresponsible, oligarchic empire controlled by the Yankee where liberties have become governmentally granted privileges instead of natural God-given rights. All these and more do the court historians conceal to protect the Yankee.
    Just as the Yankee used Blacks during Reconstruction to annihilate the South and Southerners, so today, the Yankee is again using Blacks to finish annihilating what little is left of the South and the few remaining Southerners. Blacks gained little from the First Reconstruction, so they will gain little from the Second Reconstruction. When their usefulness is over and the South no longer exists, the Yankee will suppress Blacks to the lowest rungs of society. (Most likely, he will use Third World immigrants from Latin America and Asia to suppress Blacks so that his, the Yankee’s, hands will not get dirty. Moreover, the Yankee cares not who fights his battles if he gets to record them.)
    Moreover, the Yankee considers himself free of any hate, bias, bigotry, and prejudice, which the Yankee claims to be the greatest of all evils, except the sin of being a Southerner, which is the greatest of all. As long as Blacks obey the will of their Yankee master in the war to annihilate the South and Southerners, they are free of hate, bias, bigotry, and prejudice. On the other hand, the Southerner can never be free of these sins until he ceases being a Southerner and becomes a Yankee.
    In his effort to destroy the South, the Yankee has worked Blacks into a frenzy over Confederate monuments. All visible reminders of the Confederacy must be eradicated. Next, come the burning and banning of all books and articles that do not present the South and Southerners as evil incarnated. Then comes the destruction of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and all the other founding fathers from the South, including the physical destruction of the Constitution (Lincoln destroyed it in principle, but not its words) and the Declaration of Independence except the clause “all men are created equal,” except Southerners, who are not even human. Also, everything in the South before the civil rights movement must go. (Does this mean burning down and burying most universities and colleges, including Black universities and colleges, in the South since they were built by slave owners and racists?)
    This frenzy to destroy Confederate monuments is typical Jacobinism, Marxism, and Communism. One of the first things that communists do when they gain control is to destroy the country’s history and culture. Its monuments and historical sites must be eradicated, and its books and art must be burned. This destruction is only the start. All that the Yankee through his Black puppets deems  Southern, must be eradicated, including the founding fathers and their work.
    To the Yankee mind, any writing or oration that fails to depict the Southerner as odious slime and the Yankee as an admirable saint deserves censorship and suppression. The truth must not be known.
    Southerners should not solely blame Blacks for the way they misbehave, for the Yankee is controlling and manipulating them. Moreover, the Yankee’s control and manipulation of Blacks far exceed that of any slaveholder, who frequently relied on slaves to oversee his slaves. Although the Yankee is responsible for the misbehavior of Blacks, nevertheless, Blacks should be held accountable for their actions. If they are as intelligent as the negrophiles claim, they are intelligent enough to realize that they are being prostituted. If they continue to allow themselves to be used, then they agree with their prostitution and should be held accountable. (Such willingness to prostitute themselves to the Yankee appears to support the racist notion that Blacks are intellectually inferior. The Yankee is counting on the truthfulness of this notion of Black inferiority to maintain his control of Blacks. They are truly his slaves.)
    Being crafty, the Yankee exhibits simulated zeal and sweetness with placid saintliness. Moreover, he always disguises his tyranny and greed with special claims to holiness. He is an intrusive meddler, who passionately seeks to control other people’s affairs. Claiming to be the apostle of liberty, he persecutes all who disagree with him. While appointing himself as the champion of harmony and unity, he causes discord and strife everywhere he goes. Exalting himself as the defender of freedom of thought, he tries to suppress all whose thoughts differ from his. Presenting himself as the only true disciple of the living God, he long ago rejected and abandoned the true God. Opposing law and order, the Yankee seeks to abolish all law, human and divine, which does not meet his approval. By virtue of his “superior tolerance,” he is a law unto himself and proceeds to make himself a law unto others. Only the Yankee has that inner divine light to guide him, so no appeal from the justice of his judgments or the righteousness of his decrees can occur. His conceit leads him to be the world’s self-appointed conscience. To this character, Blacks owe their allegiance!
    To the Yankee mind, the Yankee is God’s chosen, God’s representative and spokesman on earth, although he no longer recognizes God. Nevertheless, the Yankee’s calling is to remake mankind in his, the Yankee’s, image, for only the Yankee carries the divine spark. With his inner light, the divine spark, the Yankee transcends mere Christianity. It empowers the Yankee’s soul to ignore the Bible, which condemns most of his great works. Moreover, it empowers him to achieve his own salvation — usually by some great work, such as the acquisition of wealth, abolition of slavery (to punish the South), prohibition, equality for Blacks (especially in the South), socialism, communism, fascism, feminism, war on poverty, political correctness, annihilation of the South, etc. — of which the most important is the acquisition of wealth and annihilation of the South. With his great works, he believes that he will accomplish what Christ had failed to do. Always, he is ready to achieve his great goals with other people’s blood. Furthermore, of all mankind, only the Yankee has ever been regenerated. Moreover, being superior to everyone else, especially Southerners and Blacks, he is beyond reproach and cannot be judged by mere mortals. All who become like the Yankee will be saved.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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