Nobody ever told Mencken the First Amendment applied to the
states (via the 14th) or that state laws prohibiting teaching accounts
of human origins contradicting the Bible in public schools conflicted with the
establishment clause.
He thought that the people who paid for the schools had
every right to decide what would be taught therein.
And he insisted pleas of “academic freedom” have place only
at the college or university level, anyway.
He told Bryan on his first day in Dayton that he thought
Scopes had no right to teach evolution in defiance of state law.
He never wavered in that view.
Of course, that did not prevent him denouncing the law and
those who supported it in no uncertain terms, Bryan included and even Bryan
especially.
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