Dear Washington Times: Rhetoric of 'Doom'

Editor, The Washington Times

Dear Editor:

Joseph P. Carrigan is understandably disturbed that President-elect Obama predicts doom if a new "stimulus" plan isn't enacted (Letters [1], January 11). Alas, Mr. Obama is simply following his profession's code of conduct. What H.L. Mencken astutely observed back in 1918 is no less real in 2009: "Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."*

* H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York: Knopf, 1918), p. 53.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux