Allen Browning

“Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show,democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is,by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel.In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity.”
― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

“It was of the essence of the courtier's art and mystery that he flattered his employer in order to victimize him, yielded to him in order to rule him. The politician under democracy does precisely the same thing. His business is never what it pretends to be. Ostensibly he is anal truist devoted whole-heartedly to the service of his fellow-men, and so abjectly public-spirited that his private interest is nothing to him. Actually he is a sturdy rogue whose principal, and often sole aim in life is to butter his parsnips.”
― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

“Patriotism is for the ruled a renunciation of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish submission to those who are in power. Patriotism in its simplest significance is for the rulers nothing but a tool for attaining their ambitious and selfish ends. Patriotism is slavery.”
― Keith Giles, Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb

“I’m a literal reader of the Scriptures, and so I see the difficulties. And yet every Sunday morning I walk up there, over a cobble of quibbles. I am, I suppose, a difficult man. I am, maybe, the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for as I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow