NOTES ON DEMOCRACY by H. L. MENCKEN JONATHAN. Contents include: I DEMOCRATIC MAN 1 HIS APPEARANCE IN THE WORLD 9 2 VARIETIES OF HOMO SAPIENS 15 3 THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 21 POLITICS UNDER DEMOCRACY 29 5 THE ROLE OF THE HORMONES 35 6 ENVY AS A PHILOSOPHY 42 Jx LIBERTY AND DEMOCRATIC MAN 51 THE EFFECTS UPON PROGRESS 58 9 THE ETERNAL MOB 7 2 II THE DEMOCRATIC STATE 1 THE TWO KINDS OF DEMOCRACY 79 2 THE POPULAR WILL 85 3 DISPROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION 97 4 THE POLITICIAN UNDER DEMOCRACY 1 07 5 UTOPIA 115 6 THE OCCASIONAL EXCEPTION 124 7 THE MAKER OF LAWS 131 8 THE REWARDS OF VIRTUE 139 9 FOOTNOTE ON LAME DUCKS 148 5 CONTENTS PAGE III DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 1 THE WILL TO PEACE 157 2 THE DEMOCRAT AS MORALIST 1 62 3 WHERE PURITANISM FAILS 1 77 4 CORRUPTION UNDER DEMOCRACY 187 IV CODA 1 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 2O7 2 LAST WORDS 2l8. DEMOCRATIC MAN: HIS APPEARANCE IN THE WORLD. DEMOCRACY came into the Western World to the tune of sweet, soft music. There was, at the start, no harsh bawling from below there was only a dulcet twittering from above. Democratic man thus began as an ideal being, full of ineffable virtues and romantic wrongs in brief, as Rous seaus noble savage in smock and jerkin, brought out of the tropical wilds to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands. The fact continues to have important consequences to this day. It remains impossible, as it was in the eighteenth century, to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude, in the man at the bottom of the scale - that inferiority, by some strange magic, becomes a sort of superiority - nay, the superiority of superiorities. Everywhere on earth, save where the enlightenment of the modern age is confessedly in transient eclipse, the move ment is toward the completer and more enamoured enfranchisement of the lower orders. Down there, one hears, lies a deep, illimitable reservoir of righteousness and wisdom, unpolluted by the corruption of privilege. What baffles statesmen is to be solved by the people, instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition. Their yearnings are pure they alone are capable of a perfect patriot ism in them is the only hope of peace and happi ness on this lugubrious ball. The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy This notion, as I hint, originated in the poetic fancy of gentlemen on the upper levels - senti mentalists who, observing to their distress that the ass was over-laden, proposed to reform trans port by putting him into the cart. A stale Chris tian bilge ran through their veins, though many of them, as it happened, toyed with what is now called Modernism. They were the direct ancestors of the more saccharine Liberals of to-day, who yet mouth their tattered phrases and dream their pre posterous dreams. I can find no record that these phrases, in the beginning, made much impression upon the actual objects of their rhetoric. Early democratic man seems to have given little thought to the democratic ideal, and less veneration. What he wanted was something concrete and highly materialistic - more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower taxes. He had no apparent belief in the acroamatic virtue of his own class, and certainly none in its capacity to rule. His aim was not to exterminate the baron, but simply to bring the baron back to a proper discharge of baronial busi ness. When, by the wild shooting that naturally accompanies all mob movements, the former end was accidentally accomplished, and men out of the mob began to take on baronial airs, the mob itself quickly showed its opinion of them by butchering them deliberately and in earnest. Once the pikes were out, indeed, it was a great deal more dangerous to be a tribune of the people than to be an ornament of the old order...

Product Description: Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today's readers, including monogamy and polygamy, prostitution, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining birth and marriage rates...read more

Product Description: A refute of dogmatic Christianity, said best in his own words: "An action demanded by the instinct of life is proven correct by the pleasure that accompanies it; yet Christian dogma considers pleasure an objection. What could destroy us more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without pleasure as an automaton of duty?" Nietzsche challenges the ethical-moral value system that the West has so deeply inherited from the belief and practice of Christianity, maintaining that the Christian emphasis on sympathy and pity multiplies the experience of suffering, which has weakened, rather than strengthened its followers...read more

Product Description: Few writers roiled the American cultural scene like Henry Louis Mencken. Pathbreaking journalist, trenchant social observer, and unbridled humorist, Mencken was the most provocative and influential cultural critic of the last century...read more

Product Description: Perhaps the first truly important book about the divergence of American English from its British roots, this survey of the language as it was spoken-and as it was changing-at the beginning of the 20th century comes via one of its most inveterate watchers, journalist, critic, and editor HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956)...read more

Product Description: Liberty, like equality, is a word that is more often used than understood. Perfect and absolute liberty is as incompatible with the existence of society, as equality of condition. It is impracticable even in a state of nature, since without the protection of the law, the strong would oppress and enslave the weak...read more

Product Description: Illustrated by Thomas H. Benton

Product Description: This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Product Description: This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc...read more

Product Description: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience...read more

Product Description: In Defense of Women might well be considered a libertarian compliment to George Bernard Shaw's Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. As with Shaw's book this volume is an admixture of feminism tinged with masculine concern for the survival of marriage and love in a twentieth century already witness to rapid change and the social breakdown of conventions that accompany such changes...read more

Product Description: This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Product Description: Perhaps the first truly important book about the divergence of American English from its British roots, this survey of the language as it was spoken-and as it was changing-at the beginning of the 20th century comes via one of its most inveterate watchers, journalist, critic, and editor HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956)...read more

Product Description: This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Product Description: He was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, and the six collections of his essays and reviews published between 1919 and 1927 as his *Prejudices* are among his most entertaining reading. American satirist and critic HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956) believed that criticism rose to the level of art when it was used as a springboard for the critic's own philosophizing on art and culture...read more

Product Description: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience...read more

Product Description: Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, and acerbic critic of American life and culture. Mencken, known as the "Sage of Baltimore", is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century...read more

Product Description: Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, and acerbic critic of American life and culture. Mencken, known as the "Sage of Baltimore", is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century...read more

Product Description: Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Product Description: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience...read more

Product Description: George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) who also wrote under the pseudonym Owen Hatteras, was an American drama critic and editor. Together with H. L. Mencken, he co-edited the magazine The Smart Set from 1914 and co-founded The American Mercury in 1924...read more

Product Description: James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. He worked from 1898 to 1900 as a newpaper reporter in New York City, but returned to Richmond in 1901, where he worked several months on the staff of the Richmond News...read more

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