Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote:
> I was reading the excerpt from the National Letters by Mencken in
> W.Kiernan's site (yank lefties love to refer to him, so I thought I'd
> see what the fuss was all about). Lemme get this straight - the great
> problem with America is...(drum roll)... that it lacks a properly
> careless, decadent, idle aristocracy!? Give me a break. Hey, all you
> had to do was ask Spain, and we would have been happy to send you ours,
> free of charge. As is, no returns allowed, though. Problem solved, two
> of them, in fact.
>
> I mean, unless one is pissed because wasn't promoted to Count of the
> Entrenched Fold himself, how can anybody read this gem without throwing
> up?
>
> "All progress goes on at the higher levels. It is there that salient
> personalities, made secure by artificial immunities, may oscillate most
> widely from the normal track. It is within that entrenched fold, out of
> reach of the immortal certainties of the mob, that extraordinary men of
> the lower orders may find their city of refuge, and breathe the clean
> air. This, indeed, is at once the hall-mark and the justification of an
> aristocracy - that it is beyond responsibility to the general masses of
> men, and hence superior to both their degraded longings and their no
> less degraded aversions"
>
> Didn't this Mencken dude turn out to be quite the Tory in the 30's, when
> FDR dared (gasp!) raise his taxes to feed the "nether nine tenths of
> humanity" (as he charmingly puts it) that washed his shirts and catered
> his parties? Why the cult, then?
>
> The pictures were great, though. Thanks!
>
> Enrique