Mencken on liberty

H.L. Mencken had many faults. He was a cynic, too often, about people, because of his aversion, that I share, to the mob and to other average people, especially people of average intellect, limiting his freedom. He demonstrates enough racism and anti-semitism, for all of the mixed legacies he leaves, in this respect, to leave me uninspired. He opposed, wrongly, World War I and World War II. World War I was built on the tragic, faulty, and unnecessary premises of imperialism but which was, nonetheless, a confrontation with aggression from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. World War II was a war of self-defense for civilized nations and for the future of freedom and democracy against the naked force and aggression of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

But for all of his many faults, Mencken was at his best when he was speaking on behalf of liberty. This is one of my favorite quotations in this vein because it illustrates the possibilities that come with liberty, alone, and the logical limits of the case against liberty.

"Liberty, at bottom, is a simple thing, whatever its outward forms. It is common faith in man, common good will, common tolerance and charity, common decency, no less and no more. Translated into political terms, it is the doctrine that the normal citizen of a civilized state is actually normal, that the decency which belongs naturally to homo sapiens, as an animal above the brutes, is really in him. It holds that this normal citizen may be trusted, one day with another, to do the decent thing. It relies upon his natural impulses, and assumes them to be sound. Finally, it is the doctrine that if these assumptions are false, then nothing can be done about it and if human beings are actually so bad, then none is good enough to police the rest. [Editorial in American Mercury, February 1929]"

It is the last sentence that resonates with me, today. It is the assumption of those who trust liberal democratic values and liberal democracy less which troubles me most.

If most people cannot generally be expected to do good and to have their liberty respected, even as the world will now and forever harbor tragedies that come from peoples' free will, then why would we think that some of us might realistically be expected to better police the rest of us when we profess to not trust their capacity to do such good?

And sadly, all the most serious tragedies of history - genocide, imperialism, slavery, despotism, sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all the rest - have derived from this premise that people are better repressed, suppressed, and otherwise ruled for their own good than learning to govern themselves better with greater freedom and the responsibility to do good that comes with it.

Humanity will forever make mistakes, often very serious and tragic ones. But to premise our repression of and aggression with one another on the idea that it will somehow prevent or avoid those errors is both foolish and a serious misreading and blindness to a long history of human error despite and often because of much repression and its related ills.

There is only one path out of this ugly labyrinth. It is from darkness to light, from ignorance to understanding, and from slavery to freedom.

Every other road is illusion or deliberate deception. And a bitter legacy to be left behind.