Background Information: The following excerpt is taken from H. L. Mencken's article entitled "On Liberty," published in the December 5, 1923 edition of the Nation Magazine. Mencken's work is highly acclaimed by scholars for its literary, social and political critique. Mencken is arguably the most distinguished journalist in United States history.

I believe in liberty. And when I say liberty, I mean the thing in its widest imaginable sense - liberty up to the extreme limits of the feasible and tolerable. I am against forbidding anybody to do anything, or say anything, or think anything so long as it is at all possible to imagine a habitable world in which he would be free to do, say, and think it. The burden of proof, as I see it, is always upon the policeman, which is to say, upon the lawmaker, the theologian, the right-thinker. He must prove his case doubly, triply, quadruply, and then he must start all over and prove it again. The eye through which I view him is watery and jaundiced. I do not pretend to be "just" to him - any more than a Christian pretends to be just to the devil. He is the enemy of everything I admire and respect in this world - of everything that makes it various and amusing and charming. He impedes every honest search for the truth. He stands against every sort of good-will and common decency. His ideal is that of an animal trainer, an archbishop, a major general in the army. I am against him until the last galoot's ashore (pp. 193-194).