Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 47-48 of H.L. Mencken’s May 12th, 1940, Baltimore Evening Sun essay titled “The Suicide of Democracy,” as this essay is reprinted in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (1995):

No one can deny what is spread upon the minutes so copiously. The New Deal, only too plainly, is extending democracy to very remote places of decimals. Reaching out constantly for fresh fields and pastures new, it gradually takes over the entire business of living, including birth and death. It undertakes not only to carry on all the customary enterprises of government, with constant embellishment; it also horns into such highly non-political matters as the planting and harvesting of crops, the pulling of teeth, and the propagation of the species. In particular, it undertakes to succor every one who feels that he is suffering from injustice, whether at the hands of his fellowmen or of his own chromosomes. If there is something you want but can’t get, it will get that something for you. And, contrariwise, if there is something you want and have got, it will take it away.