Tuesday 11 March 2014

Quote of the Day: On Elections

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

- H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, First Series

3 comments:

David MacGregor said...

I could agree more!

Mr Lineberry said...

On September 20th around 500,000 stupid, ignorant, useless poor people, and 8000 intelligent, hardworking rich people, will get to take a vote on whether -

1. The 500,000 poor people should engage in 'good honest toil'
2. Or simply help themselves to the rich people's money

Because -

3. 'Good honest toil' sounds too much like hard work

Especially when -

4. It may interrupt your smoking drugs, guzzling booze, battering your children, eating hamburgers and fornicating (to create more poor people) all day

And don't forget -

5. Anyone pointing this out is to be deriding as cruel, nasty, evil, mean spirited, greedy, selfish [write any pejorative term here].

And further don't forget -

6. "Democracy" means helping yourself to rich people's money under any and all circumstances, but things like tax cuts, state asset sales, spending cuts are "undemocratic" (especially when undertaken by democratically elected governments without the permission of socialists).

7. ...thus are all men created equal

Ben said...

@David

*couldn't