A conversation I had this weekend reminded me of a wonderful quote from Mencken. I first cited it nearly 2 years ago in a post and I want to reprint it again because it describes my views so perfectly. In this essay, Mencken was actually commenting on what he, the arch-cynic who seemingly believed in nothing, really held out as true. Many critics had bashed him as one who merely casts aspersions on the views of others, a man with no positive beliefs. His reply could well have been written about me as well:
What do I primarily believe in, as a Puritan believes in Hell? I believe in liberty. And when I say liberty, I mean the thing in its widest imaginable sense - liberty up to the extreme limits of the feasible and the tolerable. I am against forbidding anybody to do anything, or say anything, or think anything, so long as it is at all possible to imagine a habitable world in which he would be free to do, say and think it. The burden of proof, as I see it, is always upon the lawmaker, the theologian, the right-thinker. He must prove his case doubly, triply, quadruply, and then he must start all over and prove it again. The eye through which I view him is watery and jaundiced. I do not pretend to be "just" to him - any more than a Christian pretends to be just to the Devil. He is the enemy of everything I admire and respect in this world - of everything that makes it various and amusing and charming. He impedes every honest search for the truth. He stands against every sort of good will and common decency. His ideal is that of an animal trainer, an archbishop, a major-general in the Army. I am against him until the last galoot's ashore.
This simple and childlike faith in the freedom and dignity of man - here, perhaps, stated with undue rhetoric - should be obvious, I should think, to every critic above the mental backwardness of a Federal judge. Nevertheless, very few of them, anatomizing my books, have ever showed any sign of detecting it...
For liberty, when one ascends to the levels where ideas swish by and men pursue Truth to grab her by the tail, is the first thing and the last thing. So long as it prevails the show is thrilling and stupendous; the moment it fails the show is a dull and dirty farce.
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Sounds great, but then should he (or we) really advocate a "simple and childlike faith" in anything?
The recent fuss over the Mohammead cartoons also kept reminding me of a Mencken quotation, one which I only remembered in part. Something about dead cats. I'm sure you already know it, but I was happy to find the full quote:
"The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians--and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by such learned dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe--that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power, and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent."
Amen. So the cartoonists heaved a dead cat into the sanctuary, and as expected they have been hissed at for being rude. Yet I say blessed are the rude, for they are the ones that shall wake up the smug and self-righteous.
Sastra wrote:
Or at the very least, have shown that the smug and self-righteous can only win the argument for their views by threatening violence.