… is from page 428 of H.L. Mencken’s indispensable 1949 collection, A Mencken Chrestomathy; specifically, it’s the final paragraph of Mencken’s spectacularly good May 27, 1935, essay in the Baltimore Evening Sun entitled “The New Deal”:
Of such sort are the young wizards who now sweat to save the plain people from the degradations of capitalism, which is to say, from the degradations of working hard, saving their money, and paying their way. This is what the New Deal and its Planned Economy come to in practice – a series of furious and irrational raids upon the taxpayer, planned casually by professional do-gooders lolling in smoking cars, and executed by professional politicians bent only upon building up an irresistible machine. This is the Führer’s inspired substitute for constitutional government and common sense.
