{"id":1364,"date":"2009-04-04T20:01:55","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T03:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2009\/04\/04\/notes-on-democracy\/"},"modified":"2009-04-04T20:01:55","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T03:01:55","slug":"notes-on-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2009\/04\/notes-on-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;The democratic politician, confronted by the dishonesty and stupidity of his master, the mob, tries to convince himself and all the rest of us that it is really full of rectitude and wisdom.\u00a0 This is the origin of the doctrine that, whatever its transient errors, democracy always comes to right decisions in the long run.\u00a0 Perhaps&#8211;but on what evidence, by what reasoning, and for what motives!\u00a0 Go examine the long history of the anti-slavery agitation in America: it is a truly magnificent record of buncombe, false pretenses, and imbecility.\u00a0 This notion that the mob is wise, I fear, is not to be taken seriously: it was invented by mob-masters to save their faces.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H.L. Mencken, <em>Notes on Democracy<\/em>, 1926.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The democratic politician, confronted by the dishonesty and stupidity of his master, the mob, tries to convince himself and all the rest of us that it is really full of rectitude and wisdom.\u00a0 This is the origin of the doctrine that, whatever its transient errors, democracy always comes to right decisions in the long run.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-the-mob","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}