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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who derives several advantages from marriage?
(a) Only the state.
(b) Men and women equally.
(c) Women only.
(d) Men only.

2. What comparison does Mencken make between man and animal in Chapter 1?
(a) The faculties of animal and man precisely balance when taken as a whole.
(b) The only thing man cannot do that animal can is fly.
(c) Man in every way has faculties that are superior to animals.
(d) Many animals have superior faculties to man.

3. Per Chapter 2, what kind of person has Mencken never met?
(a) A moral man that was honorable.
(b) An altruist who actually did good for anybody.
(c) A metaphysician who was intellectually curious.
(d) A quack with a conscience.

4. What is Mencken's opinion of the American South?
(a) He believes that southerners are intellectually superior to northerners, but rarely show it.
(b) He thinks highly of it because of its emphasis on grassroots values.
(c) He thinks it is a spiritually enlightened place.
(d) He loathes it and believes it to be a crude and uncultured place.

5. What is Mencken's hope for democracy?
(a) It is a self-limiting disease.
(b) It may lead to monarchy someday.
(c) Mencken has absolutely no hope for democracy.
(d) It will finally deliver much-needed assistance to the poor.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Mencken dub "The Lady of Joy"?

2. Which Southern state does Mencken particularly mourn in his obituary on the American South?

3. What is the chief problem with political theorists?

4. What or who rules the American South?

5. How would George Washington fare in today's political climate?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the origin of morality according to Mencken?

2. What is the average person's opinion of government, according to Mencken?

3. What is Mencken's view of monogamy/marriage?

4. What is Mencken's opinion of government? What is the role of government? Is one system of government preferable to another?

5. Is morality necessary in Mencken's view? How many people are moral people? Is there a good and evil, or is that a human-created concept?

6. Who is Professor Thorstein Veblen, and what is Mencken's opinion of him and his work?

7. Describe Mencken's thought experiment, in which he imagines if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.

8. What is the degree of women's "civility" according to Mencken? How does emotion factor in to civility?

9. Discuss Mencken's history of democracy. Before it arrived, what did people think of democracy? How was it conceived? How did it evolve?

10. What is Mencken's view of romantic love?

(see the answer keys)

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