Notes on Democracy by enormously influential journalist and cultural critic H. L. Mencken is an incisive and astonishingly timely critique of democracy. Mencken is not opposed to democracy but in his powerful, unabashed polemic, he calls out its inherent and unavoidable fragility. His bracing realism reminds us that naive faith in the inevitable triumph of democracy over all other forms of government is a dangerous delusion, and warns that democracy will not be saved by more democracy. In today’s fraught political moment when democracies around the world are under threat from within and without, Mencken’s book exposes some of the underlying tensions that must be understood by anyone committed to protecting democracy now and in the future. Includes a noteworthy review of the original 1926 edition by Walter Lippmann, an afterword by Ulrich Baer, and a biographical timeline.
Tabella dei contenuti
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 Role 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
H. L. Mencken by Walter Lippman
Afterword by Ulrich Baer
Biographical Timeline
Circa l’autore
Ulrich Baer is University Professor at New York University and has been awarded Guggenheim, Getty, and Humboldt fellowships. He has written introductions to numerous classic works of literature and philosophy.
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