Falando de Mencken

"There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage…Democracy provides swarms of such men." H.L. MENCKEN, A Mencken Chrestomathy

e a quem Murray N. Rothbard chamou de "joyous libertarian" e cita com frequencia, neste caso no seu tratado "The Ethics of Liberty" :

H.L. Mencken tells a charming and instructive story of the contrast between “corruption” and “reform”:

He [Mencken’s father] believed that political corruption was inevitable under democracy, and even argued, out of his own experience, that it had its uses. One of his favorite anecdotes was about a huge swinging sign that used to hang outside his place of business in Paca Street. When the building was built in 1885, he simply hung out the sign, sent for the city councilman of the district, and gave him $20. This was in full settlement forevermore of all permit and privilege fees, easement taxes, and other such costs and imposts. The city councilman pocketed the money, and in return was supposed to stave off any cops, building inspectors, or other functionaries who had any lawful interest in the matter, or tried to horn in for private profit. Being an honorable man according to his lights, he kept his bargain, and the sign flapped and squeaked in the breeze for ten years. But then, in 1895, Baltimore had a reform wave, the councilman was voted out of office, and the idealists in the City Hall sent word that a license to maintain the sign would cost $62.75 a year. It came down the next day. This was proof to my father that reform was mainly only a conspiracy of prehensile charlatans to mulct taxpayers.

H.L. Mencken, Happy Days: 1880–1892 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1947), pp. 251–52.

PS: Deve-se ter em conta que os espiritos "libertarians" como Mencken e outros, criticam a democracia politica no sentido em que no fundo pretendem o que eu chamo de "democracia civil", uma sociedade natural (de direito natural) com base em direitos de propriedade, contrato. e livre arbitrio. A democracia politica como conceito, confere atraves do voto e do sistema de "centralismo social-democrata partidocratico", um direito igualitario sobre toda propriedade e livre arbitrio de todos os outros, para alem de se transformar numa elitocracia nao de merito e natural (como na sociedade civil) mas (porque o sistema de incentivos estabelecidos assim conduz) a quem usa com mais eficacia da mais pura demagogia e apelo aos instintos de redistribuicao coerciva ("roubo" no mundo civil).