Notes on Democracy
Published on 20. March 2013
224 pages
978-0-307-83078-4 (ISBN)
Description
[Democracy] is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man... It is based on propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true...
H.L. Mencken, America's greatest journalist and critic, wrote Notes on Democracy over 80 years ago. His time, the paranoid and intolerant years of World War I, Prohibition and the Scopes trial, is strikingly like our own. Notes isn't just a blast from the past, but also a perceptive and unsentimental report on contemporary life.
H.L. Mencken, America's greatest journalist and critic, wrote Notes on Democracy over 80 years ago. His time, the paranoid and intolerant years of World War I, Prohibition and the Scopes trial, is strikingly like our own. Notes isn't just a blast from the past, but also a perceptive and unsentimental report on contemporary life.
More details
Person
H.L MENCKEN was born in Baltimore in 1880 and died there in 1956. He began his long career as a journalist, critic, and philologist on the Baltimore Morning Herald in 1899. In 1906 he joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun, thus beginning an association which lasted until a few years before his death. He was co-editor of the Smart Set with George Jean Nathan from 1908 to 1923, and with Nathan he founded The American Mercury, of which he was sole editor from 1925 to 1933. He was the author of many books, most notably The American Language, Prejudices, Happy Days, Newspaper Days, Heathen Days, and Minority Report.
Content
- Intro
- Other Books by This Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- I. Democratic Man
- 1. His Appearance in the World
- 2. Varieties of Homo Sapiens
- 3. The New Psychology
- 4. Politics Under Democracy
- 5. The Rôle of the Hormones
- 6. Envy As a Philosophy
- 7. Liberty and Democratic Man
- 8. The Effects Upon Progress
- 9. The Eternal Mob
- II. The Democratic State
- 1. The Two Kinds of Democracy
- 2. The Popular Will
- 3. Disproportional Representation
- 4. The Politician Under Democracy
- 5. Utopia
- 6. The Occasional Exception
- 7. The Maker of Laws
- 8. The Rewards of Virtue
- 9. Footnote on Lame Ducks
- III. Democracy and Liberty
- 1. The Will to Peace
- 2. The Democrat as Moralist
- 3. Where Puritanism Fails
- 4. Corruption Under Democracy
- IV. Coda
- 1. The Future of Democracy
- 2. Last Words
