Matt Taibbi on fighting Monothe Ism. Little did H L Mencken know that 80 years after Dayton, the supporters of William Jennings Bryan's point of view would still outnumber the supporters of [Clarence Darrow]'s opinion by a ratio of about five to one; not just in Tennessee, but in the country at large... Progress Ive-s in this country have always maintained a kind of fuzzy belief that Fundamental Ist-s will eventually just disappear, as if by magic, that the phenomenon of grown men and women believing in devils and witches and angels will inevitably be outgrown, the way children outgrow [Santa Claus], the [Easter Bunny] and Marx... Because of this, nothing like an organized resistance to this buffoonery has ever taken root in America... This is a mistake, and it is the same mistake people have made for centuries: underestimating the American zeal for superstition, for boobism, for living the intellectual lives of farm animals. A large statistical majority of Americans would rather live their whole lives in perpetual fear of the devil than listen to ten minutes of common sense.

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