Allen Browning

“Their minds had balked. And when the mind balked like that, the reality became more dreamlike than the nightmare.”
― James Jones, The Thin Red Line

“. . .under democracy” he writes “. . .Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called…the demaslave. . .The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself. Every man who seeks elective office under democracy has to be either the one thing or the other, and most men have to be both . . .No educated man, stating plainly the elementary notions that every educated man holds about the matters that principally concern government, could be elected to office in a democratic state, save perhaps by a miracle.”
― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

“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

“Imagine what might happen if you could honestly strip away every label and scrap of tribal identity? What if you were not a Baptist, but simply someone who loved Jesus? What if you weren’t a Republican or a Democrat anymore, but simply a follower of Christ? What if you abandoned your identity as an American and saw yourself simply as a citizen in the Kingdom of God?”
― Keith Giles, Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb