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Title : Mencken: A Retrospect
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Mencken: A Retrospect

H. L. Mencken

By Henry Hazlitt

[Newsweek column from Feb 20, 1956, together with reprinted inwards Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

H.L. Mencken, who died on Jan. 29, was the outstanding American literary critic of his generation, its most influential stylist, its most prominent iconoclast, the master copy scourge of the genteel tradition, together with a nifty liberating force.

I devote this column to him inwards the promise of correcting a persistent misunderstanding virtually his economical together with political ideas. The typical view, reflected inwards most of the obituaries, is that Mencken began every bit an arch-rebel together with idol smasher; but that when the New Deal came along, he could non proceed abreast of its “progressivism” together with its “new ideas”; hence the procession passed him by, exposing him every bit a mere “conservative.”

Those who stand upwards for this catch accept never understood either the existent nature of the New Deal, or the existent philosophy of Mencken. That philosophy never changed. Mencken was maiden of all together with foremost a libertarian. That explains his unceasing warfare against censorship together with prohibition, together with most of his assaults on “democracy” — insofar every bit that give-and-take was used to imply the right of a bulk to suppress or persecute a nonconformist minority.

I tin verbalize virtually his views amongst a certainly confidence, non exclusively because I devoured all his operate every bit it came out, but because of unopen personal experience. When Mencken nominated me inwards 1933 to

succeed him every bit editor of The American Mercury, he thought I understood his philosophy together with he mine good plenty to assure his readers that inwards the magazine’s “basic aims together with principles at that spot volition live lilliputian change.”

In his political together with economical opinions Mencken was from the beginning, to repeat, neither “radical” nor “conservative,” but libertarian. He championed the liberty together with dignity of the individual. Therefore he ever considered Socialism preposterous. He had never known a Socialist, he was fond of saying, who wasn’t crazy on other subjects every bit well. One of his rattling earliest books, Men vs. the Man, published inwards 1910, was a ground against a Socialist. His famous blast against “this Prof. Dr. Thorstein B. Veblen, caput Great Thinker to the parlor radicals, Socrates of the intellectual Greenwich Village, master copy star [at to the lowest degree transiently] of the American Atheneums,” appeared, it is of import to recall, inwards 1919, inwards the rattling maiden of all serial of the Prejudices, together with at the start of the nifty Mencken vogue.

Veblen remained the darling of the American intellectual left-wingers for at to the lowest degree 20 years longer. When the New Deal was at the superlative of its ability together with prestige, it was stylish to tell that Mencken had “missed” Veblen because he could non brand him out. Now that the ane time exorbitant reputation of Veblen is itself chop-chop fading, it is maybe permissible to signal out that whatever was audio inwards his celebrated The Theory
of the Leisure Class had already been said, inwards a few brief paragraphs, past times Aristotle; together with that Veblen’s attacks on “the cost system” came from a homo who had non the remotest agreement of that system, or of the purpose it plays inwards stimulating, directing, allocating, together with balancing production.

Mencken was non a technical economist. He did non possess the specialized intellectual implements necessary to dissect all the Veblenian fallacies. His ain essay, inwards fact, was published a pair of years earlier Veblen’s “The Engineers together with the Price System.” But Mencken had an almost unerring feel of smell. He could normally let on pretentiousness together with nonsense at the maiden of all whiff. True, his attempt begins amongst an onset primarily upon the professor’s “incredibly obscure together with malodorous style.” But when he got to his ideas he excoriated them irreparably, together with concluded: “From halt to halt y'all volition let on the same irksome torturing of obviously facts, the same relentless piling upwards of sparse together with overlabored theory, the same flatulent bombast, the same intellectual strabismus.”

In short, Mencken recognized from the start that Veblen’s ideas were “simply Socialism together with water.” He prized human liberty also highly to live carried away past times the growing academic mania for collectivism. Like Herbert Spencer, he sensed that “all Socialism involves slavery.” He brought inwards the minority report.

Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) was a well-known journalist who wrote on economical affairs for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek, amid many other publications. He is maybe best known every bit the writer of the classic, Economics inwards One Lesson (1946).

(via Mises.org)

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