Mencken Monday

Miscellaneous Rambling

Professor Charles Rice used to comment during jurisprudence class that a person didn't need long hair and sandals to be a radical. A person just needed to be a good Catholic. I've long sympathized with that observation.

It was brought to mind when I read these words by a person from the other side of the theological spectrum, the agnostic H.L. Mencken: "It always amuses me to be denounced as a conservative. I am actually an extreme radical, and if I had (or desired) the job of making over the world most of its existing institutions would be destroyed." Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (Harper Collins, 2002), p. 127.