Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Notes on Democracy
    Unavailable
    Notes on Democracy
    Unavailable
    Notes on Democracy
    Ebook156 pages2 hours

    Notes on Democracy

    By H.L. Mencken

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    [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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateMar 20, 2013
    ISBN9780307830784
    Unavailable
    Notes on Democracy
    Author

    H.L. Mencken

    H. L. Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. Mencken is best known for The American Language, a multivolume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States.

    Read more from H.L. Mencken

    Related to Notes on Democracy

    Related ebooks

    Political Ideologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Memoirs Of A Microaggressor

      Nov 26, 2020

      TO UNDERSTAND OUr current moment, start with public apologies. Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, surely thought he was on safe ground when he came out in favour of delaying a Philip Guston exhibition because it included depictions of t

      5 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On...

      Jan 21, 2021

      I’m reading Camilla Townsend’s Fifth Sun, which won the 2020 Cundill Prize, the biggest literary prize anywhere for history. A boldly imaginative attempt to tell the story of the Aztecs from indigenous sources, it raises fascinating issues. The Spani

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Unholy Roman Empire

      Jan 31, 2024

      The Unholy Roman Empire
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Truth About Prohibition

      Jan 1, 2022

      The Truth About Prohibition
      4 min read

    • Article

      How New Gods Are Made

      Mar 24, 2022

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine Anna Della Subin Granta Books 2022 Hb, £20, 460pp, ISBN 9781783785018 Many of the subjects of this delightfully curious book had no

      11 min read

    • Article

      The New American Empire

      Jan 24, 2019

      The New American Empire
      5 min read

    • Article

      From Worms To Woke

      May 26, 2022

      HAVE WE BEEN HERE BEFORE? Now, in 2022, with war abroad and woke at home, we contemplate the bitter dissolution of the hopes of the late twentieth century. Five hundred years ago, in 1521, Martin Luther’s appearance at the Diet of Worms signalled the

      5 min read

    • Article

      1. The Brightside

      Jul 2, 2016

      1. The Brightside
      8 min read

    • Article

      Leonard Pitts Jr.: But he wasn’t Black

      Jan 17, 2021

      To the Republican Party: As the Trump administration stumbles through its final hours, it seems a proper time to offer a summation of the era just past. Ordinarily, this calls for analytical heavy lifting. One seeks to reconcile a mosaic of accomplis

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Return Of The Pagans

      Dec 25, 2023

      The Return Of The Pagans
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Dizzying Labyrinth Of Credulity

      Jan 27, 2022

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM From Oracles at Delphi to Spiritualism in America Loren Pankratz Prometheus Books 2021 Hb, £25, 472pp, ISBN 9781633886681 If you have ever asked yourself “How can an

      11 min read

    • Article

      Butchering the Mythic West

      Jan 5, 2021

      Butchering the Mythic West
      14 min read

    • Article

      Tom Paine’s Bones

      Aug 14, 2022

      Tom Paine’s Bones
      4 min read

    • Article

      Power

      Jul 30, 2018

      How mild, by comparison with the despatches in the daily newspapers, will seem this chronicle of women’s militant struggle against political and social injustice in one small corner of Europe. Yet let it stand as it was written, with peace – so-calle

      3 min read

    • Article

      Abraham Lincoln’s Warning

      Jul 4, 2018

      Abraham Lincoln’s Warning
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Vanishing of Reality

      Aug 1, 2018

      The Vanishing of Reality
      8 min read

    • Article

      Malthus Was Not a Malthusian

      Jan 1, 2020

      Malthus Was Not a Malthusian
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Vacuum At the Center

      Mar 5, 2018

      A Vacuum At the Center
      17 min read

    Reviews for Notes on Democracy

    4/5

    19 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken published in 1926 must be something of a hard sell these days. The inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States seems to stand as a shining example of how well democracy works. A system that can produce a leader of such stature must have something going for it. Mencken would probably beg to differ. And it may do us good to keep in mind democracy's failings even during such a hopeful time. After all, the same system that elected Barack Obama also passed Proposition 8.Notes on Democracy provides a clear-headed, skeptical view of American politics and the democratic system. Menken begins with this premise: "The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe." Mencken would not be at all surprised to hear the use of torture justified as necessary to keep ourselves safe from terrorists. He would expect us to willingly surrender our freedom rather than face even the slightest sense of danger. Would you allow government agents to randomly search people on the street who are neither charged with a crime nor suspected of committing a crime? Would you allow these random searches to include strip searches? What if the government told you these searches were necessary to insure safe air-travel? Mencken believes that the main motivating factor in democracy is fear. He believes that fear has been used since the founding of America to motivate the mass of voters, whom he calls the mob. Leaders have always and will always use fear to convince the mob to trade away its rights and to support causes that will harm it in the end and to enter wars it could have avoided. He is worth quoting at length about this:Fear remains the chiefest of them. The demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the corner-stone of their exact and puissant science. Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting "Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!" It has been so in the United States since the earliest days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Banks, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism. The list might be lengthened indefinitely; a complete chronicle of the Republic could be written in terms of it, and without omitting a single important episode. It was long ago observed that the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something. Add to this list civil rights activists, feminists, drugs, terrorists and gay marriage and you bring Mencken's thesis up to the present. Mencken wrote Notes on Democracy after seeing how the mob of voters could be manipulated into passing Prohibition, surely the single most hypocritical piece of legislation in the country's history. Anti-saloon leagues played upon the fears of the mob; religious leaders used their pulpits the pressure state legislatures into passing a law that took away property rights, closed businesses, and turned a majority of Americans into criminals. Mencken also covered the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee which charged a man with the crime of teaching evolution. (It would do us all well to remember that was a crime with a prison sentence as punishment less than 100 years ago.) These two events as well as his years as a Baltimore reporter provide the foundation for the views he expresses in Notes on Democracy. But his sense of humor and his way with words make the book a pleasureable read. He is like an acidy Mark Twain. Humorous, but as forgiving.Mencken would probably look around today, and find that not much has changed. Personally, I'm not sure I would agree, but reading Notes on Democracy forces one to take a hard look at the system, to see that what we hold as dear may not be as good as we want it to be. It's probably like going to a parent conference and finding out that your favorite child is really not all that nice to the other kids on the playground. How you react to the news will determine what kind of adult that child grows up to be. Disregard that sort of bad news at your peril. President Obama said in his inaugural address that America is a young country but that it is now time to put away childish things. Perhaps we can prove Mencken wrong and move beyond our fears towards our better natures. Surely, the time has come.
    • 5/5
      One need not agree with Mencken's bedrock belief -- that vast swathes of humanity are nearly subhuman, to be dismissed -- to judge this book a delight, and often perceptive. Really, it is one of those books that everyone should read, even if at least one of the threads that runs through the book is just plain wrong. A critical reader should be able to identify that thread, and untangle it from the tapestry woven here. Why, a person who does this might even learn something!