Half the board has a b'day this week or next.
We posture as apostles of fair play, as good sportsmen, as professional knights-errant-- and we throw beer bottles at the umpire when he refuses to cheat for our side...We save the black-and-tan republics from their native [statesmen]--and flood them with "deserving" democrats of our own. We deafen the world with our whoops for liberty--and submit to laws that destroy our most sacred rights...We play policeman and Sunday-school superintendent to half of Christendom--and lynch a darky every two days in our own backyard.
H.L. Mencken, 1914
