Notes on Democracy (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781406741360)

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 Rousseau's 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.

Author: H. L. Mencken
ISBN-10: 1406741361
ISBN-13: 9781406741360
Publisher: Holmes Press
Language: English
Published: 09/18/2007
Pages: 228
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.52d