Mencken Quote

[Piprus]

Well, getting back to the Mencken quote, anybody who has read my posts over the last nine months knows I admire HLM for what he had to say about organized christianity in this country. After all, he is my adopted avatar. But, after all, he was a human being with great talents, yet with his own views and prejudices. He was an outspoken critic of fundie christianity, using his acerbic wit to the fullest in his coverage of the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial" for the Baltimore Sun. But he was also very much a racist and anti-semitic, as were many, many Americans of that day. They distrusted negroes, jews, catholics, and just about any other "fringe" group you care to name. Mencken was, as a colleague so aptly observed, a product of his time. Although an eloquent critic of the fundies, he also maintained close friendships with catholic and episcopal bishops of his day. He was a libertarian and hardline conservative who hated liberalism, and absolutely despised Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

I liked the guy, not for everything he had to say, but some things he had to say.

 

That being said, if he were alive today he would be the kind of person I would like to sit down with over whiskey and a cigar and argue vociferously over what we disagreed on.

 

He was that kind of person. A classic curmudgeon.

[Dhampir]

I was going to reply to clerg, but I think this sums it up pretty well.

[Legion]

I am beginning to suspect that Mencken was a racist.

Beginning to suspect or just beginning to read Mencken?

To be honest, both. I'm not suggesting that he had nothing to contribute because he may have been racist. I think that I would have to look further into his writings before I could even begin to weigh the man.

[Clergicide]

Explain please.

 

Certainly

 

The Austrailian Aboriginees migrated from Africa some 50,000 years ago, they were first major wave of human migration. They share halogroup C with the mongols and Tingit American Indians.

Lake Mungo 3, and other clusters are proving to be counter examples to the 'Out of Africa' theory.

 

What you are insinuating is that people of Western European decent have advantages over other peoples. The fact is that Western Europeans, which make up most of the US, and which our society owes much of it's way of thinking, had geographical and political advantages that the rest of the world did not have, this propelled them to be in a position to conquer the world and adapt it to their way of life through slaughter, disease, and enslavement.

 

Slaughter, disease, and enslavement are not unique to western culture. What we're looking for is not the application of advantage, but the emergence of thought and subsequent technology that created an advantage.

 

For instance, Western Europeans had animals to domesticate that the rest of the world did not have like cattle in which a disease that affects cattle eventually transferred to humans. Their exposure to the disease built up an immunity. When the disease was introduced to the rest of the world during European arrival, it decimated populations where it was introduced. Thus, the Eurpeans were more easily able to conquer a decimated population ravaged by the effects of Small Pox.

This is all lovely, and accounts for environmental causes of genetic mutation. It also throws the light on the genetic factor, so thank you for that. Thousands of years of heredity and mutation is a game of chance, no question. That there 'are' genetic consequences to this, is not.

 

The Aboriginees of Austrailia, by the time Europeans arrived, had started to harness water power, engineering and building complicated dams. If the Europeans had not arrived, and left them alone, they would have advanced out of their hunter-gatherer stage.

 

How many thousands of years later? They hadn't managed written language by 1788, and wouldn't for another century, and only then 'because' of European influence. The same is true of Native Americans. The dominant civilizations all managed it roughly 4000 years before. How can you even speculate that these civilizations would advance without outside influence, and exposure? You can't. The truth is their evolution stagnated.

 

Similarly, China was an incredibly advanced society, while Eastern Eurpoeans were still a stone's throw from the bronze age. What did China in was the political climate that forced thier society backwards.

China is interesting because they achieved so much in relative isolation. This is the key, and the massive hole in the 'dumb luck' theory, where so much of that theory relies on multicultural influences. This may be racist to say, but if cognitive neuroscience is ever put to the test, I'll bet it's discovered that the Asian geographic cluster has a biological advantage in analytical thought capacities.

 

What makes a particular people "superior" to others is circumstance, timing, luck, and advantages that others do not have.

 

I forward that one of the advantages is an evolution in thought, without which all else is moot. Assimilation can take place within a generation or two, we have some wonderful examples of Native Americans wearing suits and bowler hats, but this is a forced and synthetic evolution...it's adaptation. Adaptation is all the multicultural theory can explain. It does nothing to explain a natural emergence of these traits. And those pussies in the Anthro departments don't care to examine this little flaw in their position because of the obvious ethical dilemna it poses. The same is true of the 'race gene myth', they've renounced it, even though biogeographic clustering is sound science. No one wants to approve research that could promote racism, or the wonderful things that go with it, like genocide. It's a Pandora's box....probably why I want a peek inside.

 

Mencken was, as a colleague so aptly observed, a product of his time

 

And it couldn't have been stated better. But I maintain that racism, nativism, and jingoism were/are majority positions and are America's heritage. There are two functional definitions of racism, the first, and the one the majority of those in Mencken's time, including most abolitionists, could be claimed of was a perceived inferiority of the African race. The other, and most commonly accepted today, is taken to mean an intolerant and ignorant hatred of a race. Of this latter definition, it cannot be applied to Mencken in regards to African Americans. Jews maybe, but not having read any of his works on the subject I would guess it is mainly their belief, and cultural structures under attack.

[currentchristian]

I'm resurrecting this topic because today is the 81st anniversary of the arrest of H.L. Mencken in Boston for violating obscenity laws. Here's the story:

 

MassMoments: Arrest of H.L. Mencken

 

-CC, out here in no-longer-Puritan Massachusetts

[trashy]

Well, getting back to the Mencken quote, anybody who has read my posts over the last nine months knows I admire HLM for what he had to say about organized christianity in this country. After all, he is my adopted avatar. But, after all, he was a human being with great talents, yet with his own views and prejudices. He was an outspoken critic of fundie christianity, using his acerbic wit to the fullest in his coverage of the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial" for the Baltimore Sun. But he was also very much a racist and anti-semitic, as were many, many Americans of that day.

I'm not sure that is so cut-and-dried......

 

this is a good read (especially if you read past the first couple of paragraphs)

 

H. L. Mencken's Wikipedia page