As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.(Letter to C.L. Moore (August 1936), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 574)
HT: The Elder Son, who sent me this link
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Dismissing Republicans or Democrats based on a 70 year old quote is a bad idea. Ideologies change in the 1860s the Rep would have garnered the support of black Americans and been thought of as the caring party. In reality both parties care what happens to the country and the people. They just have different views as to how to achieve that more perfect union.
ReplyDeleteOh, but it's such a _fun_ old quote, and I'm having to get my political fun where I can these days or I'll died of the sadness.
ReplyDelete