All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.
Interpretation
This quote criticizes America's foreign wars as being fought against weak opponents or under unfair conditions.
H. L. Mencken's quote reflects a cynical view of American foreign policy, suggesting that the nation's military engagements have often been against adversaries that could not genuinely resist, rendering them more akin to acts of aggression than honorable warfare. He implies that wars against nations like Mexico and Spain lacked the characteristics of true conflict, instead characterizing them as acts of violence against the defenseless.
In practice
This quote would be impactful in a debate about the ethics of war in a public forum.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman.
The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters.
We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, Aug. 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.
Americans are struck by lightning with greater frequency than they commit voter impersonation fraud, and that's the only kind of fraud that photo ID requirements could have any hope of preventing.
It's not normal that, when you close your eyes and listen to the news, too often the political back-and-forth in America sounds too much like it does in the kinds of countries that the State Department warns Americans not to travel to.
The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.
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