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Notes on Democracy

by H.L. Mencken

4.07 · rating details · 46 ratings · 14 reviews

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...moreNOTES 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 theenlightenment 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 thatnaturally 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...(less)

Hardcover, 232 pages

Published November 4th 2008 by Holmes Press (first published 1977)

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Feb 05, 2010

Dissident Books rated it

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Recommends it for: Libertarians and heretics

Recommended to Dissident Books by: Adam Parfrey (indirectly)

Shelves: dissident-books

We are so proud that this was Dissident Books' first release and that it turned out so well. H. L. Mencken's words are as shocking and challenging--perhaps more so--as they were when Notes was first published in 1926. It's hard to think of anything more holy to the American mind than democracy. (Maybe capitalism, and Mencken rips that apart too.) Mencken dissects universal suffrage and the notion of the masses' limitless wisdom with a razor-sharp Ginsu. The introduction and extensive annota...more

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Oct 21, 2010

Robert Cettl rated it

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HL Mencken’s Notes on Democracy, recently republished in a sterling new paperback edition by Dissident Books, was originally published in 1926. Mencken was then a respected columnist and was considered one of the most progressive voices speaking in favour of “liberty”. Though recent years have seen labels of “un-American” pelted against him, Mencken remains, on the evidence of Notes on Democracy, one of the most strident voices of opposition against the religious – specifically Christian – dom...moreHL Mencken’s Notes on Democracy, recently republished in a sterling new paperback edition by Dissident Books, was originally published in 1926. Mencken was then a respected columnist and was considered one of the most progressive voices speaking in favour of “liberty”. Though recent years have seen labels of “un-American” pelted against him, Mencken remains, on the evidence of Notes on Democracy, one of the most strident voices of opposition against the religious – specifically Christian – domination of so-called “democracy”, at least in its American form. Notes on Democracy was planned as the first volume in a trilogy of works in which he would state his political, religious and humanist views, its writing perhaps affected by Mencken’s coverage of the Scopes trial, in which Creationist Christians lobbied strongly to have the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution banned from schools. The evangelical opposition to scientific progress evidently struck Mencken and Notes on Democracy is riddled with ironic asides about the Christian control of morality and censorship within American democracy, observations which no doubt contributed to his alienation and the comparative unpopularity of the book in contrast to his other writings of the period, though those who did not attack and condemn it as shallow were wont to consider it as verging on the satiric.

Mencken divides the work into three sections, “Democratic Man”, “The Democratic State” and “Democracy and Liberty”. He is in no doubt that democracy is in essense little more than mob rule, spending much time on the delineation of the fight as he saw it between the Nietzschean “superior man” (of intellect and education) and the mob, being driven by the determinates of religion, especially the Creationist lobby observing and asserting early in the piece that the mob would compromise its liberty for its safety, sentiments that, ironically enough, would be echoed by a new generation some 80 years later as America faced the Bush government’s fear-mongering, Christian agenda. From the outset, Mencken is bitter, almost vitriolic, fully contemptuous of the idea that the will of the people is in any way a superior means of determining government agenda, sceptical even of the then much-vaunted ideals of the French Revolution. Indeed, he concludes of democracy in the early pages of his work that it is the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and seldom departs from that sentiment as he proceeds to mock much of the Christian morality by which the American proletariat as he saw it was defined, often against its own will. Of this, he offered the following rather astutely satirical barb:

“The central aim of all the Christian governments of today, in theory if not in fact, is to further their liberation, to augment their power, to drive even larger and larger pipes into the great reservoir of their natural wisdom. That government is called good which responds most quickly and accurately to their desires and ideas. That is called bad which conditions their omnipotence and puts a question mark after their omniscience.” (p. 32)

He went further in his vitriolic attack on the Christian agenda behind American democracy “(d)on’t they defend the rubbish of Genesis on the theory that rejecting it would leave the rabble without faith, and that without faith it would be one with the brutes, and very unhappy, and what is worse, immoral?” (p.33). And of the supposed morality of the Christian agenda, Mencken was furiously indignant, littering the first section, “Democratic Man” with example after example of what he considered the mind-numbing hypocritical idiocy of the moralistic (and inevitably ineffective) laws established by Christian politicians in the name of “democracy”, such as the Mann Act, all the while reminding the reader that such laws were enacted by people who still believed in the literal truth of the Genesis myth. With so many in America still believing in this Biblical nonsense today it is hardly surprising to learn that Mencken was increasingly labelled “un-American” following the original publication of Notes on Democracy. But that is not to say that Mencken’s vitriolic attacks lack substance, for they do not, just to reveal that they are barbed with the bitter ironic wit of one of America’s most iconoclastic columnists.

Mencken is critical too of psychology, particularly of behavioural, or “mob” psychology as he sees it, insisting on its subservience to the popularization of demagoguery, the mob driven into action in order to suppress that which its leaders determine to be its other. Seeing the power of the democratic government as being able to lead the mob into a panic in order to preserve its values – or rather, those values that are fed to it – Mencken is scathing of America’s foreign and war policy. After a brief discussion of the liberating nature of Freudian psychology, Mencken is led back to his condemnation of the “mob”, of the American people themselves, of whom he can conclude but “the yokel has room in his head for only one (thought)… that is the idea that God regards him fondly, and has a high respect for him – that all other men are out of favour in heaven and abandoned to the devil” (p. 47) leading him to label a subsequent section “envy as a philosophy” in a further assault on the American alliance between democratic “liberty” and the so-called will of God, which Mencken concludes is a construction of the few in order to manipulate the masses into accepting their moral agenda – finding democracy thus to be in effect the exact opposite of liberty (at least when run on Christian principles). Finding that liberty is “a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man’s mind” (p.53) Mencken increasingly goes beyond ironic humour into almost fearful horror at the hypocrisy of humankind manifest in the creation of American democracy and its mainly Christian adherents, concluding with inescapable irony that “the whole progress of the world, even in the direction of ameliorating the lot of the masses, is always opposed by the masses” (p.58). Mencken is eloquent in the defence of his stance, concluding of the effectiveness of the Christian stranglehold over morality and ideology that its origin in the Genesis myth was simple enough for the understanding of the average American dolt.

In The Democratic State Mencken asserted that no politician could remain a politician and be an honourable man, no matter what qualities of wisdom were bestowed on him by the mob. With legislation determined by election results, Mencken was sceptical that any truly democratic progress could be made, arguing even against America’s electoral college system as enabling merely a system of disproportional representation. It is in this section that Mencken expands his theory of the Christian mass to contemporize why the religion should exert such force over the leaders of so-called “democracy”, essaying here the difference between representative and direct democracy. Though Mencken feels that the hallmark of both is the will of the mob to “employ agents to execute its will” (p. 73) the mob remain unable to fully comprehend the magnitude of the issues before them, concluding that “the popular will” is in effect the self-interest of a small but determined minority (religious) to sway the mob into accepting its decrees. Thus, he concludes, using Christian terminology, that the American people are simply “sheep”, led and “bamboozled” by those they believe they have elected to act in their own best interests. It is here that Mencken’s attack on democracy extends into satiric vitriol and one is never sure of how much is heartfelt intention and how much is the constructed rhetoric of a most ironic wit. No matter perhaps, for the thread throughout remains the critique of the Christian underpinnings and control of so-called democracy in America.

Many of his arguments in this chapter conclude with Mencken’s observance that the victories of so-called democracy have always constituted an infringement of individual liberty in the name of improving personal safety which in turn is thought to make the workings of the democratic process smoother and more representative. Mencken sees such attainments as purely at the whim of the mob mentality at a given epoch and spends much time exposing, as he sees it, the corrupt nature of the politicians claiming to represent democracy but in practice favouring such as the law of property over individual freedom. Mencken’s rhetorical flourish is here reserved for the notion of the politician, or democrat, as statesman who holds such power not by any individual nobility of intention or democratic virtue but solely “in their inability to grasp any issues save the simplest and most banal, in their incurable tendency to fly into preposterous alarms, in their petty self-seeking and venality, in their instinctive envy and hatred of their superiors – in brief, in their congenital incapacity for the elemental duties of citizens in a civilized state” (p. 88). By the time he then asserts that the bosses own the mob “simply because they can be bought for a job on the street or a load of coal” Mencken has viciously, and with alarming, shrew vitriol, eroded any possible faith in American democracy as a superior political system.

Concluding with Democracy and Liberty, Mencken asserts little hope for the future of American Democracy, consumed as he has endeavoured to show it in the preceding sections, by Christian more so than secular belief – at least on the level of policy application and the inherent morally bankrupt hypocrisy of the politicians who espouse it. Here, Mencken is so bitter as to risk alienating those who have so far been appreciative of his wit or thrilled by the acumen of his satire, beginning his condemnation of American democracy as having any role in liberty that:

“the common man’s love of liberty, like his love of sense, justice and truth, is almost wholly imaginary… he is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. He longs for the warm, reassuring smell of the herd, and is willing to take the herdsman with it. He cannot enjoy it rationally himself, and he can think of it in others only as something to be taken away from them… the average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.” (p117)

Mencken indeed argues that throughout Notes on Democracy and by the time he reasserts it here has been overcome with his own despairing irony, from the wry to the wretched. In this, Mencken is led full circle to return to Nietzsche and the idea of the “will-to-power” as behind all political systems, including – despite all protestations to the contrary – American democracy, the rule of the mob by the moral interests of the religious few. In this, law is charlatanry in support of the deceit of the common man, his appropriation into religious determinism, thus rooting democracy in the development of American Puritanism in which morality is reduced to irony and contempt. It is a stern conclusion to the preceding satiric indictment, finding opposition between democracy and even such a concept as decency. Indeed, Mencken by this point seems driven to heap upon democracy every single snide association he can and it is little surprise that this work fated as poorly with the American populace as it did and that he developed the reputation of being “un-American” that would dog his later reputation.

With his ultimate conclusion of corruption running rife throughout American democracy in theory and practice, the vigilance of the observer and writer was the best defence as he saw it – the duty to admonish those in power when they have done wrong or have acquiesced to the religious agenda of the mob. But as to Mencken’s real view of democracy – in the useful introduction to the superb Dissident Books edition, Mary Elizabeth Rodgers offers the following admission from Mencken late in his life – “I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.” And perhaps that is the ultimate triumph of Mencken’s Notes on Democracy – the wry, vitriolic humour with which he consistently undermines America’s belief in itself as the bastion of liberty. Just as Mencken exposed the religious moral agenda behind so called American democracy so Notes on Democracy makes informed retrospective reading for a generation whose views have been qualified not just by the War on Terror but by the writings of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris: American Democracy from a deconstructive atheist wit. Satiric perhaps, but with added relevance for an America responding to a Born-Again Christian War on Terror that has seen increasing calls for war criminal prosecution for those who claimed that their democracy was in fact doing God’s will.
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Oct 12, 2009

Greg rated it

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Shelves: politics

Another reviewer made a point that everyone who reads this will agree and think that they are part of the non-mob / rabble that makes democracy so terrible. That is probably true. The same reviewer, or maybe it was another, blames this book for not offering a viable solution to the problems of democracy, which is kind of weird to damn Mencken for since he is pretty clear about not offering anything better, and going against the current that holds that if you can't come up with some way to fix ...moreAnother reviewer made a point that everyone who reads this will agree and think that they are part of the non-mob / rabble that makes democracy so terrible. That is probably true. The same reviewer, or maybe it was another, blames this book for not offering a viable solution to the problems of democracy, which is kind of weird to damn Mencken for since he is pretty clear about not offering anything better, and going against the current that holds that if you can't come up with some way to fix whatever is broken then shut your mouth and live with it.

Democracy might be the best system that we have, but it also has some terrible sides to it. This is kind of the thesis in this book, and Mencken goes about pointing out where the masses of America fuck things up constantly, or to paraphrase Mencken, if there is a choice between two things the masses will inevitably pick the worse of the two. This sounds cynical, but maybe it's true in Mencken's day. In ours though it's most certainly not, just look at health care, a whole portion of uninsured, underemployed people living in areas that have been economically wiped out in the past 15 years or more are violently opposed to getting their health care needs taken care of by someone other than rich insurance companies that generally won't cover them anyway. Obviously the masses are choosing correctly in supporting big business over their own self-interest and health. Oh Mencken if only you could see how far we have come.

In Mencken's day there were these lunatics who were trying to tell schools they couldn't teach science when myth was more pleasing to the palate. If only you could see us now when over 50% of the country knows that the Earth was created about 6000 years ago, and no facts in the world are going to change that truth they believe. Again we have come so far. You silly critical goose Mencken, can't you just enjoy the ride and not be so damning with all of your facts and moral outrage at things like prohibition and busy-body religious folk who want to regulate what you do in the privacy of your own home. If the majority of the people want a morality police then it must be a good thing. But saying things like this are just being critical and the charge of elitist is hanging around when you want to point out that there are too many fucking stupid people, and they get the same right as anyone else at making decisions.

As a thought experiment, picture the last time you went to Wal-Mart. Picture all those shoppers. The last time I went there was on Black Friday last year in the afternoon, it was pretty crowded. Picture those people, picture those malnourished yet obscenely obese people who can't even figure out how to feed themselves properly, those people running to get bargains, the 40 year-old grandmothers who are only a few years older than you who haven't even had one kid yet (if you happen to be in your mid-thirties and single like myself), picture the cashiers, and the zombified senior citizen greeting you at the door, and the guy wearing all NASCAR clothing, and all of the other people. Now let these people make all of your decisions for you by vote, what you are going to buy or not buy on your trip to Wal-Mart, just something simple like that, like you are an American Idol contestant, but instead a shopper who is letting this segment of the population make your decisions for you. Would you want these people to even pick what you are going to buy on one trip to the store? Do you trust them? (Maybe this is coming across as super-elitist, but whatever, my point is I have lived near these people, I have worked with them, I have had conversations with them and I can say that many I've known are really nice people, but I wouldn't want them making any decisions for me, never mind decisions on larger scales, why? Because they are not educated and aware, they are led by rhetoric and are uncritical, and it's not necessarily their faults, but they don't know any better).

To be honest though I don't fucking know much. I don't know anything about global warming, I hear things from some scientists, and then the right-wing people have their scientists, and it all comes out as sound-bytes, and I have no fucking idea which side is right, because I have never gone to really look into the information. I believe that the scientists that are saying global warming is happening and is bad, and we need to do something about it are right, but I'm not going to get into an argument with my parents about it who believe it's all a sham because some right-wing radio DJ says it is because of some studies that neither me nor my parents have seen. I'm not informed enough to really know about this topic, and my guess is that I'm in a majority of 99% of the population that doesn't fucking really know, but takes someones word at it.

This is one example, but I could pick lots of other issues and make a similar point. We are a bunch of ignorant fucks and we have been given this power to let our ignorance reign, by just being quick witted enough to not get ourselves killed before we become 18 years old, and restrain ourselves from committing a felony.

Anyway, this book is very good. Mencken is an entertaining writer, kind of in the same vein as Christopher Hitchens is. I'm happy to have finally read Mencken, someone I've admired from afar for quite awhile, but whom I have kept putting off reading for one reason or another. (less)

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Sep 04, 2009

Evan rated it

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There's the urge, while reading "Notes on Democracy" to underline Mencken's words and star them and say, "That's so true! People are idiots!" He was a snappy writer, and he uses some turns of phrase that make it seem like he must be right. But then, if you take a step back, you see that Mencken's argument is rather shallow, for all of its ornamentation.

I give this book three stars rather than two, because as a historic document, it's of some extra interest. To see...moreThere's the urge, while reading "Notes on Democracy" to underline Mencken's words and star them and say, "That's so true! People are idiots!" He was a snappy writer, and he uses some turns of phrase that make it seem like he must be right. But then, if you take a step back, you see that Mencken's argument is rather shallow, for all of its ornamentation.

I give this book three stars rather than two, because as a historic document, it's of some extra interest. To see a voice that was so publicly opposed to prohibition, McCarthyism, and the early creationist movement as embodied by William Jennings Bryan is interesting and worthwhile. The footnotes and introduction are well-done, and they provide helpful historical context.

However, I can understand why the book passed into obscurity before Dissident's revival of it. To be honest, it is rambling, despite being quite short, and the same theme is repeated incessantly throughout without any essentially new arguments to accompany it. The argument goes like this: The common man is stupid and wholly self-interested; therefore, democracy is stupid and destructive; therefore we need the social elites, the "gentlemen" Mencken refers to, to rule over the idiotic, puritanical, hedonistic, envious "mob."

This is an attractive argument even if it's not true, because everyone believes him or herself to be a part of that gentlemanly elite and thinks everyone else must therefore be a part of the idiotic, heaving mob. Further, the argument has a grain of truth. Democracy does need some checks on it, which is why our government is set up so inefficiently and redundantly. We occassionally need the elites, like supreme court judges, to curb the will of the people.

But it's a vastly unhelpful argument. It's the literary equivalent of an old man on a porch swing saying, "Govmint don't know nothin. If I ruled this country, we'd get things going right." It's a sentiment almost everyone has had, but it's also a sentiment that is untrue, because all but the most prideful among us must realistically admit that if we ruled the country, things would not get going right.

There is no way to argue that a monarchy or oligarcy or meritocracy cannot be more efficient and effective than a democracy. A truly benevolent ruler with a good head on their shoulders can do wonderful things for a country in a very short time (Mussolini got the trains running on time). Unfortunately, unless the leader is both benevolent and intelligent, they can also do horrible things to their country in just as short a time (But yeah, Mussolini was still Mussolini).

To clarify, the problem is not that Mencken is wrong. At times, he is right. The problem is that his arguments don't go anywhere. They boil down to simple sentiments that, according to the book jacket, are very relevant to today. But that's because they've been relevant since books were written: People as a whole are motivated by fear; People are envious; Government officials are more concerned with maintaining their role than fulfilling it well. Are these really critiques of democracy, or just complaints about the nature of any government?

And for all the examples Mencken gives of why democracy is laughable and bad, he fails to propose a viable alternative. Are we to only allow ivy-leaguers to vote? Just city people, perhaps? Whoever gets a say must be the mythical, untouchable gentleman that Mencken adores.

Beyond this, there are some very dated sentiments here. Mencken at one point argues that, "If the blacks in the backwaters of the South keep away from the polls to-day it is only because they do not esteem the ballot highly enough to risk the dangers that go with trying to use it. That fact, it seems to me, convicts them of unfitness for citizenship in a democratic state..." Uhm, yeah. At this point, you may feel a little weird about underlining and starring Mencken's word's.

When I told my girlfriend about this book, I referred to it as "the angry man book" and really, that's pretty much what it is. And just like with your grandparents' complaints about the neighbors who keep parking on their side of the street, no matter how eloquent or impassioned the argument is, you can really only smile and nod along for a short while before it's forced.

All in all, an interesting read, but not necessarily a valuable one. For a more balanced look at similar themes, I recommend Fareed Zakaria's "The Future of Freedom."(less)

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Sep 10, 2009

Casey rated it

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Shelves: first-reads

Trying to read "Notes on Democracy" now and see past the early 20th century scientific conclusions to its supposed brilliance is like trying to watch Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" for the first time and not be distracted by all the dated gay jokes. "Notes on Democracy" has some good stuff in it for sure, but it's also very disjointed, it's arguments imperfect and hard to read for insights with so much talk of "inferior man" and other ideas that just seem sil...more

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Mar 20, 2010

Lise rated it

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Recommends it for: political junkies, lovers of rhetoric

Shelves: first-reads

I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads Firstreads.

H.L. Mencken was always one of my father's favorite writers, but until now I'd never read his works. I found he was witty, snarky, sarcastic, educated, iconoclastic and always willing to exaggerate a point for maximum impact (much like my father). Even now, some fifty years after his death, Mencken is still a controversial figure, capable of raising strong emotions in his readers.

"Notes on Democracy"...more

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Dec 12, 2009

Erin Sipes rated it

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Shelves: first-reads

Who is H.L. Mencken and why am I just now reading him!? This book is genius! I started highlighting passages I liked but then realized nearly every page was marked in florescent pink.

I'm not going to say this book is for everyone but it is definitely for those of us out there that watch the news and listen to certain groups or leaders thinking, "Seriously are there people out there buying this?" Then we come into contact with those who are in fact subscribing whole-heartil...more

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Jan 07, 2009

David rated it

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Shelves: american-history, politics

Here the enfant terrible Mencken takes on democracy, the ostensible rule of the "common man."

A bit tongue in cheek, of course, but clever and bitingly written. We won't see newspapermen this great again, alas!

This edition is nicely annotated. Some of the period references are obscure.

And democracy is highly overrated. Just watch some of Jay Leno's interviews with men-in-the street, and then tell me with a straight face how great universal suffrage is...more

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Nov 29, 2009

herstory21 rated it

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I would recommend this book to anybody interested in reading about theories of democracy or early 20th century U.S. History. This particular book is brilliantly annotated. I genuinely enjoyed reading the annotations as much as the book and I can't recall another book I have ever felt that way about. Mencken's writing is accessible and interesting. Nothing is sacred to him and that is refreshing at times. However, he also writes with scathing generalizations and in the end comes off as a jou...more

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Jun 13, 2009

Marie added it · review of another edition

http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2009/02...

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Jan 30, 2011

Kathryn Muratore rated it

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Fun to read and food for thought. What's not to like about the Sage of Baltimore?

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Sep 23, 2010

Craig J. added it · review of another edition

Notes on Democracy by H. L. Mencken (2008)

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Jan 25, 2010

Esther rated it

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I've just started reading the book and already I'm really enjoying it. Good thing I have a pencil and not a pen in my pocketbook so I can highlight parts I like.

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Aug 18, 2009

Megan rated it

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Won through first-reads August 16, 2009. Passed along to my politically active philosopher friend for her enjoyment.

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About H.L. Mencken

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."...more

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A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial

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“Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavored and colored, and put into cans.” — 8 people liked it

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