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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. How does Mencken feel about the overall capacity for virtue in the human race?
(a) Most people are virtuous, but a few people spoil it for everyone.
(b) Very few men are virtuous.
(c) Virtue is a nonsense term, because everything is relative.
(d) Everyone is virtuous, it's just a matter of uncovering it.

3. How has Mencken organized his book?
(a) By date.
(b) By author.
(c) By subject.
(d) By length.

4. What kind of promises do politicians make?
(a) Ones they can fulfill.
(b) Ones they cannot deliver.
(c) Ones they have no intention of fulfilling.
(d) Ones they have polled voters about.

5. What aspect of human nature fuels the democratic system of government?
(a) Charity.
(b) Grace.
(c) Murderous violence.
(d) Envy.

6. Why is Mencken unable to embrace democratic political theory, as he himself states it in Chapter 9?
(a) He is incapable of being envious of others.
(b) He is not poor, and so cannot see democracy's benefits.
(c) He is simply too cultured and sophisticated.
(d) He is morally superior to democrats.

7. What "call" does Mencken make to America's poets in Chapter 7?
(a) He wishes them to write a funeral service for the damned.
(b) He wishes them to speak upon the beauty of the female figure.
(c) He wishes them to rewrite Ode to a Grecian Urn.
(d) He wishes them to burn all of their poems and drown themselves.

8. What is the "average man's" opinion of government?
(a) The government is an unknown phenomenon the average man knows nothing about.
(b) The government is a source of great good.
(c) The government is made up of people like him.
(d) The government is deceitful and contrary to his interests.

9. What is the consequence of someone believing in God, according to Mencken in Chapter 1?
(a) That person must ascribe all of Man's faults to God as well.
(b) That person must make offerings to his or her God.
(c) That person must be prepared to suffer eternal damnation for believing in the wrong god.
(d) That person must pray on a daily basis.

10. Why is the "pretty man" hated?
(a) The pretty man reminds us of all of our own faults.
(b) The pretty man is almost universally also very dumb.
(c) Women care less for beauty than men do.
(d) Women are jealous of pretty men.

11. What aspect of Lincoln's historical persona does Mencken doubt, or at least question?
(a) His status as an outsider and a "dark horse."
(b) His adherence to Christianity.
(c) His reputation for being a great orator.
(d) His pragmatic, practical approach to political problems.

12. What is the problem with trying to punishment a government for not working well?
(a) Voting is usually rigged.
(b) Punishing the government will lead to revenge tactics.
(c) The government itself is in control of the means of punishment.
(d) There are too many bureaucracies and it is impossible to determine who to punish.

13. Privately, politicians are what kind of people?
(a) Lying wretches.
(b) Charming individuals.
(c) Criminals.
(d) Exceedingly eccentric.

14. What or who rules the American South?
(a) A love for automobiles and technology.
(b) Secular liberals.
(c) An aristocratic class.
(d) Baptist and Methodist "barbarism".

15. What group of people has been "overestimated" throughout the course of human history?
(a) Egyptians.
(b) Russians.
(c) Greeks.
(d) Barbarians.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Mencken's assessment of Abraham Lincoln?

2. What does the "romantic" type of person inevitably do?

3. At what event did Mencken first personally encounter William Jennings Bryan?

4. What was the most damning effect of the Civil War, in regard to the South?

5. New England owes much of its history to what group of people?

(see the answer keys)

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