But in our present unregenerate epoch Mr. Mencken is quite right in holding that it is generally the specific evils of government or society which bring about reform waves, which in turn crystallize themselves into general principles. It is a shockingly practical process, I admit; but then, we are a shockingly practical people, who prefer sordid results to inspired theories. And at that we are not in such bad company. For in no country in the world is there such a thing as a “revealed” civilization. On the contrary, civilization has always been for the most part purely empirical, and progress will ever remain so.
There is, therefore, cause not for shame but for pride when a newspaper reveals some specific iniquity, and by not merely expounding its isolated character to the public intelligence, but also by interpreting its general menace to the public imagination and bringing home its inherent evil to the public conscience, arouses that public to social legislation, criminal prosecution, or political reform.
Mr. Mencken next assaults once more his unfortunate “man in the street” by declaring that “it is always as a game, of course, that the man in the street views moral endeavor.... His interest in it is almost always a sporting interest.” On the contrary, here at last we have a case where a class distinction can fairly be drawn. “The man in the street” is a naïve man who takes his melodrama seriously, who believes robustly in blacks and whites without subtilizing them into intermediate shades, for whom villains and heroes really exist. He is the last person on earth to view the moral endeavor of a political or social campaign as a game. It is the supercilious class, with its sophistication and attendant cynicism, to whom such campaigns tend to take on the aspect of sporting events and games of skill.
But it is not necessary to go into the details of Mr. Mencken’s theory as to the depraved nature of popular participation in political reform. Its gist is contained in his truly shocking statement that the war on the Tweed ring and its extirpation was to the “plain people” nothing but “sport royal”! Any one who can take one of the most inspiring civic victories in the history, not alone of a city, but of a nation, and degrade the spirit that brought it about to the level of the cockpit or the bull ring, supplies an argument that needs no reinforcing against his prejudices on this whole subject.