- H.L. Mencken, on Baltimore, Maryland

I live in the shadow of these ruins, raised initially, at the very end of the Late Middle Ages, at the behest of a certain Lord Baltimore, an English catholic. One of my ancestors—the Irish one—belonged as chattel to either Lord Baltimore or one of his cronies.

I likewise write in the shadow of H. L. Mencken's opinion, who I quote at length below. In 2001 I spent perhaps 10 Wednesday nights interviewing housing inspectors for a retired Baltimore housing inspector, who asked me to record interviews with his former colleagues, as part of a research project that never turned into the book he hoped for, as he was taken by illness not many years later. Mister Bob, was a fine gentleman, who was an English literature major who got into housing inspection because he “loved architecture.” The job broke his heart, and every time I saw him he seemed to be getting drunk sooner, and quoting Mencken's famous quip above more frequently.

Since meeting Mister Bob I have written over a dozen books on violence in Baltimore, which I have often called Harm City, which used to make Bob weepy. Having fairly well covered every method and circumstance by and in which one human might fall prey to the not so tender mercies of another in Baltimore, it is time that someone writes the Post Mortem for Modernity. I can see no better place to set the story than Baltimore.

As I write, I promise to read Mencken weekly, and try to see the concrete realization of his prophetic vision as much through his eyes as mine. All the while Mister Bob will be sitting in the corner of this room swilling his Myers Dark Rum and ginger ale pondering the death of the world of ideals he was initiated into just before it was slain.

As I write, the Baltimore Police Department helicopter circles over my neighborhood, at eighteen minutes after noon.

“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply cannot tolerate the thing. In order to keep any coherence in the governmental process, to prevent the wildest anarchy in thought and act, the government must put limits upon the free play of opinion. In part, it can reach that end by mere propaganda, by the bald force of its authority — that is, by making certain doctrines officially infamous. But in part it must resort to force, i.e., to law.

“One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. Always they condition it with the doctrine that the state, i.e., the majority, has a sort of right of eminent domain in acts, and even in ideas — that it is perfectly free, whenever it is so disposed, to forbid a man to say what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming "dangerous," i.e., of being heard and attended to, it exercises that prerogative. And the overwhelming majority of citizens believe in supporting it in the outrage. Including especially the Liberals, who pretend—and often quite honestly believe—that they are hot for liberty. They never really are. Deep down in their hearts they know, as good democrats, that liberty would be fatal to democracy—that a government based upon shifting and irrational opinion must keep it within bounds or run a constant risk of disaster. They themselves, as a practical matter, advocate only certain narrow kinds of liberty—liberty, that is, for the persons they happen to favor. The rights of other persons do not seem to interest them. If a law were passed tomorrow taking away the property of a large group of presumably well-to-do persons—say, bondholders of the railroads—without compensation and without even colorable reason, they would not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it."