Written during the 1920s, an era that reflects much of our modern times 100 years later, this book by culture critic and scholar Mencken dissects what democracy is.
The book’s three parts are “Democratic Man,” “The Democratic State” that includes a chapter on popular will and a chapter on politicians, and “Democracy and Liberty” with a section on corruption under democracy, followed by a “Coda” that discusses the future of democracy.
The author places politicians into two camps: the demagogue, who “preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots” and the demi-slave, “who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.” He depicts politicians as “men who have sold their honor for their jobs.”
Mencken, who covered the 1920s’ Scopes Trial, has been called one of America’s greatest journalists. Here, with his cynical humor, he skewers big government, Puritanism, and sanctimony.
Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today's readers, including monogamy and polygamy, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining marriage rates. Written in Mencken's characteristic no-nonsense manner, In Defense of Women crackles with controversy and caustic wit.
"The truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor. Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naïve and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian, or a bank director. And woman, without some trace of that divine innocence which is masculine, is too harshly the realist for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of what we call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the best effects are obtained by a mingling of elements" (H. L. Mencken).
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