More Mencken Mania

Jack Shafer's excellent review of Terry Teachout's H.L. Mencken biography is up on Reason Online's home page. For those wanting more on the topic, here's Russell Baker's take in The New York Review of Books. A short excerpt:

Was Mencken really a political conservative, as some of the rightist persuasion now say? Impossible by today's conservative standards, says Teachout: Mencken's contempt for religion would outrage the Christian fundamentalists so vital to conservatism's political success. Only libertarians might feel comfortable with his politics, he says. Whatever else libertarians may be, they are certainly a small minority.