H.l. mencken and the scopes trial

They, like most people, were ignorant, ignoble, and cowardly. Moreover, fundamentalists lacked the intelligence to understand their own follies and superstitions. Mencken differed from other critics of fundamentalism, however, in his insistence that science and Christianity in general could not be reconciled. For Mencken, the Scopes trial was the journalistic opportunity of a lifetime.

In a letter from Dayton, the iconoclastic editor of American Mercury and columnist for the Baltimore Sun told a friend that he found the chaotic scene in Dayton almost too good to be true.

Before journeying from Baltimore to Dayton, Mencken worried that he might have to create humorous material for his trial dispatches rather than just wander about and observe. Chubb will allow himself to be bitten by any poisonous snake, gila monster, or other reptile. He will also drink any poison brought to him. Tennesseans, he soon discovered, found the promises of Dr. Chubb to be much like those of another dozen or more publicity-seeking evangelists roaming Rhea County.

They simply shrugged and went about their business. Mencken shaped, as well as reported, the Scopes trial. On May 14, , he met Darrow in Richmond, and—according to one trial historian—urged him to offer his services to the defense.

He becomes a paid propagandist of certain definite doctrines…and every time he departs from them deliberately he deliberately swindles his employers. Following his chance meeting with Bryan, Mencken completed his stroll through town, and then retreated to his hotel room, where four quarts of scotch awaited him. July 15 the fourth day A preacher of any sect that admit the literal authenticity of Genesis is free to gather a crowd at any time and talk all he wants.

More, he may engage in a disputation with any expert. I have heard at least a hundred such discussions, and some of them have been very acrimonious. But the instant a speaker utters a word against divine revelation he begin to disturb the peace and is liable to immediate arrest and confinement in the calaboose beside the railroad tracks July 16 the fifth day In view of the fact that everyone here looks for the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty, it might be expected that the prosecution would show a considerable amiability and allow the defense a rather free play.

Instead, it is contesting every point very vigorously and taking every advantage of its greatly superior familiarity with local procedure.

There is, in fact, a considerable heat in the trial. Bryan and the local lawyers for the State sit glaring at the defense all day and even the Attorney-General, A. Stewart, who is supposed to have secret doubts about fundamentalism, has shown such pugnacity that it has already brought him to forced apologies. The high point of yesterday's proceedings was reached with the appearance of Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf of the John Hopkins. The doctor is a somewhat chubby man of bland mien, and during the first part of his testimony, with the jury present, the prosecution apparently viewed his with great equanimity.

But the instant he was asked a question bearing directly upon the case at bar there was a flurry in the Bryan pen and Stewart was on his feet with protests.

Another question followed, with more and hotter protests. The judge then excluded the jury and the show began. What ensued was, on the surface, a harmless enough dialogue between Dr. Metcalf and Darrow, but underneath there was tense drama. At the first question Bryan came out from behind the State's table and planted himself directly in front of Dr.

Metcalf, and not ten feet away. The two McKenzies followed, with young Sue Hicks at their heels. Then began one of the clearest, most succinct and withal most eloquent presentations of the case for the evolutionists that I have ever heard. The doctor was never at a loss for a word, and his ideas flowed freely and smoothly.

Darrow steered him magnificently. A word or two and he was howling down the wind. Another and he hauled up to discharge a broadside. There was no cocksureness in him. Instead he was rather cautious and deprecatory and sometimes he halted and confessed his ignorance.

But what he got over before he finished was a superb counterblast to the fundamentalist buncombe. The jury, at least, in theory heard nothing of it, but it went whooping into the radio and it went banging into the face of Bryan This old buzzard, having failed to raise the mob against its rulers, now prepares to raise it against its teachers. He can never be the peasants' President, but there is still a chance to be the peasants' Pope. He leads a new crusade, his bald head glistening, his face streaming with sweat, his chest heaving beneath his rumpled alpaca coat.

One somehow pities him, despite his so palpable imbecilities. It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon. But let no one, laughing at him, underestimate the magic that lies in his black, malignant eye, his frayed but still eloquent voice. He can shake and inflame these poor ignoramuses as no other man among us can shake and inflame them, and he is desperately eager to order the charge.

July 17 the sixth day Malone was in good voice. It was a great day for Ireland. And for the defense. For Malone not only out-yelled Bryan, he also plainly out-generaled and out-argued him. His speech, indeed, was one of the best presentations of the case against the fundamentalist rubbish that I have ever heard.

It was simple in structure, it was clear in reasoning, and at its high points it was overwhelmingly eloquent. It was not long, but it covered the whole ground and it let off many a gaudy skyrocket, and so it conquered even the fundamentalist. At its end they gave it a tremendous cheer--a cheer at least four times as hearty as that given to Bryan.

For these rustics delight in speechifying, and know when it is good. The devil's logic cannot fetch them, but they are not above taking a voluptuous pleasure in his lascivious phrases..

July 18 All that remains of the great cause of the State of Tennessee against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of bumping off the defendant. It is my hope that a concentrated but fairly wide-ranging study of this short period, of its thought and literature and politics, may tell us something about the old America and something about the beginnings of our own times.

In Nietzsche Mencken found, for one thing, a way of combing his naturalism and aestheticism. Despite his misunderstandings, Mencken really could draw from his early master much that he needed: nobody else was so deeply versed in European tradition and yet, without being at all an uplifter, so revolutionary.

Nobody else could be quoted so aptly against women, Christianity, progress, and Anglo-Saxondom. More completely than anybody else so far, Mencken had by the early and middle teens raised the standard of battle against all three of the main elements of the dominant American culture. His dislike of the assumptions of practical idealism was central and pervasive. Mencken, the Young Intellectuals and the other Modernists agreed that religion and morality were a farce and that Americans could along just fine without the Victorian cultural consensus on national identity, religion and morality.

This is what makes them Moderns. Moderns value self-expression, self-liberation and self-realization above collective ties. They value cultural liberation and cultural egalitarianism. In contrast, Victorians valued self-denial, religion and morality and racial and cultural hierarchies above aesthetic self-expression.

From the Compromise Generation born through the Missionary Generation born , Americans were Victorians. From the Lost Generation born through the Millennials born , Americans have been Moderns. One reason?

The establishment Protestants, while promising reforms, just ruled exactly like the former Catholic aristocracy — and their Court Jews — had ruled.

What did we set up? A decentralized, libertarian, sovereign system…. The movie came out in Yes, but I bring tidings of good news today. There have been several stories on Zero Hedge and other sites that the re-opening plan for Broadway has been postponed until May 31, Good luck with that, re-opening in May, would be some kind of miracle the way things are going.

The White, normal i. Ironically, many of the audience members at the shitty Broadway plays like Rent were Babbits from the despised flyover country who went to one of the overpriced shows because they were doing the tourist thing in NYC.

To loosely quote that spiteful mutant H. Southern as an identity is not monolithic, never has been. Southern Society was always a caste system. The remnant of the South, of which we are arguably comprised, is descended of the lower classes, the yeomanry and the barbarians of Appalachia and the swamp lands of the deep South. The upper class of that caste system no longer exists. They either lost everything they had in the war and joined the yeomanry in disenfranchisement, or they betrayed the South and went North or to Europe and cached out of their culture.

None of this shit applies to me or my family. Why not at least talk about modernism and the labor movement. Fuk the pre enlightenment reactionaries. They failed and here we are. Fuk the victorians for the same reason. Get to the fucking point already. In the s, the overwhelming majority of White Southerners shared Victorian values and beliefs. They saw themselves as White, Christian and Southern as identitarians like yourself do today.

They practiced their Christian faith and took traditional moral values for granted. Southern communities even in your neck of Appalachia were based on kinship and shared religious and moral values which is why Tennessee passed that state law that led to the Scopes Trial. Well, obviously, something changed between and that has transformed the South beyond recognition. There is no longer a consensus about these things. Millions of Southerners now reject your identitarianism and your values.

They share basically the same Modern values, beliefs and lifestyles as people who live elsewhere in the country. This is what is stupid about identitarianism. It has been just as impacted by this transformation as the North. It only happened somewhat later here in the s and s because the South urbanized and industrialized later than the North in the s and s. You can anywhere in the 21st century West and you will find the same set of values that have been homogenizing the world.

To be sure, there are still regional differences in American culture, but there are far more similarities than there used to be. A majority of White Southerners now support liberalism, modernism, cosmopolitanism and antiracism particularly in the cities and the suburbs. Why are we talking about modernism? Because millions of White Southerners have seceded from our traditional identity, values and culture and their sense of identity, values and beliefs has everything to do with modernism whether they are conscious of it or not.

Right-libertarian H. Mencken could live with that. He was also an outspoken denigrator of the commons and their our rights. Mencken was no socialist either. In some ways evolution itself was just a side show to what Bryan saw as the real issue of the trial: who decides what is taught in public schools?

Supporters of Scopes tended to say the teachers, not the parents. Bryan thought that was absurd; teachers were simply employees of the parents, whose authority was exercised through institutions of democratic accountability, such as state legislatures and local school boards. Government run schools are run for the benefit of the administrators first, teachers second and students third.

Union dues and voting power buy lots of politicians, especially at state level to try to keep at bay parental oversight and competition from home schooling. HW is a smart and deep thinking man. I know, I live close by. I have a second degree in art history and even I find your historical articles to be boring.