Justice & Law Quote by H. L. Mencken

Mencken isn’t offering a civics lesson; he’s cutting the moral alibi out from under modern politics. “Rights” is the language of principle, the noble story a democracy tells itself: equal claims, universal protections, clean rules. Mencken’s jab is that, in practice, people don’t chase equality. They chase advantage. A “privilege” is a right with a velvet rope, a benefit that feels earned, natural, or invisible to the person holding it. The line works because it flips the self-image: the same voter who praises fairness often wants a tax break, a loophole, a gate kept for “people like us,” a special dispensation framed as common sense.

The intent is diagnostic and prosecutorial. Mencken is saying the public isn’t being merely fooled by demagogues; it’s complicit. “Rights” require restraint and reciprocity. They imply that if I get protection, so do you. Privileges, by contrast, are zero-sum and identity-soaked: my status, my exemption, my access. That’s why “rights” are always applauded in speeches and so often throttled in legislation; they make for great rhetoric and inconvenient governance.

Context matters: Mencken wrote in an America rattled by Prohibition, moral crusades, nativism, and the growing machinery of mass persuasion. His broader project was to puncture the pieties of the “booboisie” and the sanctimony of reformers. The cynicism here isn’t decorative; it’s a warning that the most durable political engine isn’t ideology but the promise of being the exception.