I was thinking about Tocqueville and the amazing impact his treatise about America had on me when I first read it in college and I thought I would re-acquaint myself with some of his writings given my belief and fear that the “pop culture” guided generation have grown now unwittingly to a tyrannous majority in our country.  Those in the majority appear to believe that it is self-evident that big government is good and that the role of big government it to take care of its people.  They believe that our government should take care of its people while demanding nothing in return from other than the “wealthy.”  They seem to be unwittingly gathering in force and growing exponentially.   Those same people appear to believe that there is no unfortunate and undesirable event or circumstance that cannot be obviated by new rules authored by the pen of a legislator.  I believe that this new generation of American has taken over voting results and that their hope is borne by a valuation of false promises and false premises of politicians who make those promises in exchange for their votes.  The assumptions of the vote pandering politicians: wealth exists regardless of the behavior and actions of citizens;  such wealth should be and can be simply redistributed without threatening its existence and availability;  volumes of proper rules and regulations (never mind the restrictions on individual freedoms) will ultimately insure a path to a utopian paradise.  It is amazing to me that Alexis de Tocqueville  (a Frenchman!) visited America so very long ago (well before the time of radio, television, the internet, social media and the power of pop culture) and could see the dangerous path that we would walk as a Democratic Republic threatened by the tyrannous majority and it’s popular opinions.

Below are some amazing Tocqueville quotes and passages that are even more powerful and meaningful in our present time of electronic media, where the majority or popular view will seemingly always carry the day in favor of any rigorous examination requiring meaningful thought.  Democracy in America is standard reading for college students but I have always been particularly impacted by the amazing wisdom and foresight of that treatise.

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

 

“Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once. They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with popular sovereignty. This gives them some respite. They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors. Each individual allows himself to be clapped in chains because that the other end of the chain is held not by a man or a class but by the people themselves.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

 

“It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?”

“There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.”
When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Tocqueville left us a tremendous gift.  As a Frenchman he was an objective researcher and observer.  He could see the power of public opinion and how it could be an almost invincible harnessed political power.

We proceed now it seems that with our new “fairness” model (authored by President Obama and his contemporaries) and the belief that we can ultimately conquer the un-pleasantries in the forces of nature and natural selection.   There is no problem too big and abstract that a new law cannot solve and there is no human struggle that cannot be extinguished by simple reallocation of our vast resources.  If we are smart and have a “fair” allocation of our nation’s wealth and resources we can rise above nature and insure that no fellow man will suffer, after all we are not animals!  We now seem to follow a belief that fairness dictates that our natural differences should not produce different results.  This new found call for “fairness” (the defining issue in President Obama’s presidency) suggests that we should ultimately all have equal results.  Why are we fooled into thinking that we can only be at our best when no one man struggles at the same time that one man has as luxury beyond his need?

What will come of us if this idea succeeds and if we are finally so “equal” that we are indistinguishable?    What will come of us if our growing body of laws and rules actually succeed in eliminating any danger or hardship from our lives (nor more guns, pressure cookers and not concern for want of food and shelter.)  Would that be a sustainable model?  That which does not kill you makes you stronger, right?  I am sorry to remind you but we will all die ultimately regardless of how much risk we attempt to eliminate from our lives.  Real strength and vitality is borne from the hardship that threatens the very life we attempt so feverishly to preserve, isn’t it?  We are now a culture and society where we, almost universally, buy the chance at hardship in a gymnasium in order to stay physically strong and buy subscription to challenging mind games to keep our mental abilities sharp.   Why, then,  do we think we are doing a fellow citizen a favor by favoring a government that will endeavor to eliminate hardship for all as long as any one has it economically better than another.  Every animal on the planet that survives is strong because of the very struggle that threatens to eliminate it and yet we would deprive our own kind of that important struggle and individual story in the name of “fairness.”