Quote of the Day

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was one of the most astute journalists of the first half of the twentieth century, offering insightful, and generally cutting, commentary on the American scene. Here's a passage from his book Notes on Democracy from 1926:

"The fact is that liberty, in any true sense,
is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach
of the inferior man's mind. He can imagine,
and even esteem, in his way, certain false
forms of liberty-- for example, the right to
choose between two political mountebanks,
and to yell for the more obviously dishonest--
but the reality is incomprehensible to him.
And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands
of its votaries a quality he lacks completely,
and that is courage. The man who loves it must
be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is
its natural manure. More, he must be able to
endure it-- an even more arduous business."