GK: In the fall, as the school year begins and the nights get longer and we try to get a grip on things, I like to go visit my old friend Henry Louis Mencken, the old curmudgeon from Baltimore, whom I've been reading since I was in high school. Mr. Mencken, have you been following the presidential campaigns so far?
TR (MENCKEN): I have indeed. A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in. And I must say --- in this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; and I rejoice that I am not a Republican. The men the American people admire most are the most daring liars; the men they detest most are those who try to tell them the truth. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will get their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
GK: You sound like a cynic, sir.
TR: I am not a cynic. I am a newspaperman. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
GK: So you have no faith in democracy.
TR: Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorances.
GK: But what about the press?
TR: A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
GK: And what about the schools?
TR: The aim of public education is to put down dissent and originality.
GK: And what about the courts?
TR: A judge, sir, is a law student who grades his own examination papers.
GK: And the church?
TR: A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
GK: But what do you say to idealistic young people who are out to save the world?
TR: The urge to save humanity is almost always the urge to rule humanity. Idealism --- not materialism ----is the chief curse of the world. People get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
GK: But surely you believe in love?
TR: My boy, love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. It is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
GK: But you were married. You loved your wife. Marriage is a great institution.
TR: It is --- a wonderful institution ---- and who would want to live in an institution? No, the happiest people are married women and single men. Because in the battle between the sexes, woman fights from a submarine and man from an open raft. And let me just add this: no matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
GK: So what do you believe in, Mr. Mencken?
TR: I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. Liberty and equality are noble ideals that can never be realized, because what men value in this world is not rights but privileges. The average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
GK: Well, that's not how I see human history----
TR: History! Ha! A historian, sir, is an unsuccessful novelist. All we know is that we are here and it is now. Other than that, all human knowledge is nonsense. Time stays, and we go. Life is a dead-end street.
GK: So how would you like to be remembered, Mr. Mencken?
TR: If you wish to remember me and please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
GK: Thank you, Mr. Henry Louis Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore.