Un-Conventional

I didn't watch Barack Obama's acceptance speech last week and I have no intention to watch John McCain's this week. How people can get all giddy about such things is beyond me. What scares me the most is the hagiographic praise that is thrust upon these men (especially Obama). Why does it scare me? I think H.L. Mencken said it best:

"It is the popular theory, at least in America, that monarchism is a curse fastened upon the common people from above - that the monarch saddles it upon them without their consent and against their will. The theory is without support in the facts. Kings are created, not by kings, but by the people. They visualize one of the ineradicable needs of all third-rate men... and that is the need of something to venerate, to bow down to, to follow and obey."

As I said in a previous blog post, "creating myths around men who wield the power of government only distorts history and turns us into what John Adams feard - a nation of men, not of laws."

HT: Don Boudreaux for the Mencken quote.