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.
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Contents
I. Democratic Man
1. His Appearance in the World1
2. Varieties of Homo Sapiens4
3. The New Psychology8
4. Politics Under Democracy11
5. The Role of the Hormones15
6. Envy as a Philosophy18
7. Liberty and Democratic Man23
8. The Effects Upon Progress27
9. The Eternal Mob34
II. The Democratic State
1. The Two Kinds of Democracy37
2. The Popular Will40
3. Disproportional Representation46
4. The Politician Under Democracy51
5. Utopia55
6. The Occasional Exception60
7. The Maker of Laws64
8. The Rewards of Virtue68
9. Footnote on Lame Ducks72
III. Democracy and Liberty
1. The Will to Peace76
2. The Democrat as Moralist79
3. Where Puritanism Fails86
4. Corruption Under Democracy91
IV. Coda
1. The Future of Democracy100
2. Last Words106
H. L. Mencken by Walter Lippman110
Afterword by Ulrich Baer116
Biographical Timeline132
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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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