It’s a system thing. We can’t vote ourselves out of it. H.L. Mencken explains why democracy is doomed in 10 points:
1. People don't want freedom but safety: "The average man wants the peace of a hog in a comfortable sty."
2. Democracy INTENSIFIES groupthink: "Democratic man is quite unable to think of himself as a free individual; he must belong to a group, or shake with fear and loneliness."
3. Democracies are plutocracies; they're run by the aristocracy of money. But the plutocracy "lacks all the essential characters of a true aristocracy: a clean tradition, culture, public spirit, honesty, honor, courage—above all, courage. It is transient and lacks a goal."
4. The plutocrats lack "an aristocratic disinterestedness born of aristocratic security." He submits. He can be bullied and broken.
5. Democracies birth their intellectual apologists - Mencken calls them "pedagogues." These are not genuine thinkers; they’re "men chiefly marked by their haunting fear of losing their jobs." This describes most journalists.
6. Democracy is anti-excellence. Freud said we repress our sex drive as it’s frowned upon...but there’s nothing that democracy frowns upon more than a CLEAR proof of superiority. Democracy says "the most worthy & laudable citizen is that one who is most like all the rest."
7. Mencken explains how this era demands we repress our greatness: "A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies. But a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed. Yet this great Republic swarms with such men, & their sufferings are under every eye."
8. Mencken on the two worst crimes in a democracy: "There is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it."
9. Mencken: "The democratic politician, confronted by the dishonesty and stupidity of his master, the mob, tries to convince himself and all the rest of us that it is really full of rectitude and wisdom." To gain power in a democracy, men sacrifice their self-respect...
10. Mencken believed democracy will cancel itself out: "Democracy may be a self-limiting disease, as civilization itself seems to be. There are thumping paradoxes in its philosophy, and some of them have a suicidal smack."
-a tweet from @oldbooksguy
Oddbean new post about login | logout 
