James Bovard
As a stampede of weasels seeks to con America into supporting another Mideast war, it is time remember America’s most underrated critic of bellicose folly. H.L. Mencken is famous for his smackdowns of politicians and ridicule of government and of much of American culture. But he also offered sage advice for citizens judging officialdom itching for carnage.
On May 9, 1939, the Baltimore Sun published Mencken’s essay on “The Art of Selling War.” This piece, included in the Second Mencken Chrestomathy published in 1995, deserves a far higher position in the Mencken and in the antiwar pantheon.
In words that are painfully relevant for today’s news, Mencken warned: “The fact that all the polls run heavily against American participation in the threatening European war is not to be taken seriously.” Mencken wrote:
“Wars are not made by common folks, scratching for livings in the heat of the day, they are made by demagogues infesting palaces…. The very unpopularity of war makes people ready to believe, when they suddenly confront it, that it has been thrust upon them… because their own demagogues have been pretending, all the while , to be trying to prevent it.”
Seven years later, the same points were echoed in an interview by Nazi kingpin Hermann Goering, who was on trial for war crimes in 1946 at Nuremberg: “Of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece…. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.” Goering explained why self-government was a mirage when rulers chose war: “Voice or no voice,
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