Reply #7: Glad I'm not the only one

[Dogmudgeon]

I posted about him some months ago.

Flawed, as all past presidents have been. The accounts of his racism are particularly unpleasant to read through. But he is still revered in Belgium and Holland, where the post-WWI famine hit hard; he single-handedly organized the early relief effort.

The Hoover Institute website has made a big chunk of his papers and academic writing available online. Sadly, it's been overrun by neo-cons.

H. L. Mencken was similar in many ways -- both were polymaths, both were well-self-educated before and after college. And like Hoover, Mencken trusted the "magic market" over human intelligence, though he lacked most of the racism, and trust of the upper class.

Conservatives fawn over both men, and merit the association with neither.

--d!