In Praise of Irreverence (Mark Twain quotes)
Jon Roland
by Gary M. Galles
[Posted June 21, 2002]
The name Mark Twain evokes fond memories in many Americans,
primarily for stories most of us read as teenagers. But Samuel
Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) not only wrote far more than we
commonly read today; he was at one time the most famous living
American. And he gained and maintained much of his fame and
following through his humorous reflections about government.
If those reflections could be said to have a motto, it would have
been, in Twain's own words, "Irreverence is the champion of liberty
and its one sure defense."
Since we are entering into the "serious" part of a congressional
election year, consider some of the things Twain had to say about
politics and legislatures. It will help defuse some of the
contributions candidates' hot air will be adding to global warming.
"...when you are in politics you are in a wasp's nest with a short
shirt-tail..."
"When politics enter ... government, nothing resulting there from in
the way of crimes and infamies is then incredible. It actually
enables one to accept and believe the impossible."
"In ... politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost
every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from
authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue
but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose
opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."
"The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles
artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very
capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or
two."
"Right here in this heart and home and fountain-head of law, in this
great factory where are forged those rules that create good order
and compel virtue and honesty in the other communities of the land,
rascality achieves its highest perfection."
"What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector?
The taxidermist takes only your skin."
"History has tried to teach us that we can't have good government
under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of
government couldn't be wise."
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
Congress. But I repeat myself."
"In my experience, only third-rate intelligence is sent to
Legislatures to make laws, because the first-rate article will not
leave important private interests go unwatched to go and serve the
public."
"Few men of first class ability can afford to let their affairs go
to ruin while they fool away their time in Legislatures.... But your
chattering, one-horse village lawyer likes it, and your solemn ass
from the cow countries, who don't know the Constitution from the
Lord's Prayer, enjoys it, and these you always find in the
Assembly."
"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots,
and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and
heredity."
"... one of the first achievements of the legislature was to
institute a ten-thousand-dollar agricultural fair to show off forty
dollars' worth of pumpkins in."
"If you are a member of Congress (no offense) and one of your
constituents who doesn't know anything, and does not want to go into
the bother of learning something, and has no money, and no
employment, and can't earn a living, comes besieging you for help.
.. you throw him on his country. He is his country's child, let his
country support him. There is something good and motherly about
Washington, the grand old benevolent Asylum for the Helpless."
"Our Congress ... In their private life they are true to every
obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them all, and
do it without shame.... In private life those men would bitterly
resent -- and justly -- any insinuation that it would not be safe to
leave unwatched money within their reach; yet you could not wound
their feelings by reminding them that every time they vote ten
dollars to the pension appropriation, nine of it is stolen money and
they the marauders."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no
distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
"I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring in higher prices than any in the world."
"Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time."
"To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature
Congressman."
"I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch of hell in
the District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry
it on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though
the Constitution were bristling with articles forbidding hells in
this country.... What a rotten, rotten, and unspeakable nasty
concern this nest of departments is, with its brainless battalions
of Congressional poor-relation-clerks and their book-keeping,
pencil-sharpening strumpets."
"No one's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature
is in session."
Mark Twain's view of the reality of government seems to be summed up
by his modification of Abraham Lincoln, that "Wherefore being all of
one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the
grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth."
And he saw problems with that reality for a nation founded in
liberty:
The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private
affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble ...
and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence
of thought and action ... and sink into the helplessness of [one]
who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when
naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die,
and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to
the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission
to paradise.
Mark Twain wrote long ago. But he seems at least as insightful about
the government abuses we experience today as he was of those he
observed directly. And the defense of liberty in modern America,
with a government that has ballooned far beyond anything he could
have anticipated, would certainly benefit from a healthy new dose of
the same patriotic irreverence that animated Twain.
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University.
Send him MAIL, and see his Mises.org Articles Archive. See also
Twainquotes.com.
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512/257-2606 Date: 06/21/02 Time: 11:16:16
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