Alexis de Tocqueville Revisted

Walking the corridors of history there are seminal historical books that define an era or epoch as ultimate standards of historical insight and clarity – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons and The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant, and a third to complete this trinity of historical works is Democracy in America written by Alexis de Tocqueville.

The two volume trenchant tome of the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, remains today the greatest and most influential study ever written on the United States of America. Democracy in America is a classic work of political science, social science, as well as history. It is assigned reading for American college students majoring in the political or social sciences, and is part of the political theory curriculum at Oxford University.

The profundity of history is best stated by Tocqueville himself, a man whose wisdom is memorialized in a myriad of sagacious quotes – “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” So much for the study of history as being an amalgamation of interminable dates, people and places.

Just how then did this man of French nobility at age twenty five, as an apprentice magistrate at Versailles, embark on a nine month journey to produce a masterpiece of such perspicacity and prescience that it is occupies the lofty status as “the greatest book written by anyone about America?”

The Making of History

The European world that existed in the 19th century was vastly different politically, sociologically, and economically from today. France was a strong America ally. Second only to George Washington, America’s most loved military hero was France’s Marquis de Lafayette, who served as a general under Washington. Throughout Europe, and most of the civilized world, there were three classes within the population – aristocrats, clerics, and commoners. Consequently, The United States arguably a nation of commoners or middle class, was viewed with various levels of curiosity by the rest of the world, and particularly by Europe.

Alexis de Tocqueville was born a child of privilege and title in prerevolutionary France, which included all the accoutrements of wealth, property, education, and most importantly a noble lineage of government and military service. The “de” preceding Tocqueville means “of ” a distinction assigned to nobility in France, i.e. “of Tocqueville family lineage.” A brilliant and energetic young man, Alexis emerged from his study of law in Paris and was appointed as an apprentice magistrate at Versailles. At Versailles, Alexis developed what would become a lifelong friendship with another apprentice magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont.

It is unlikely that Democracy in America would have ever been written by Tocqueville had not a life changing event occur for him in 1830 – in a vertiginous series of draconian decrees, Charles X dissolved the legislature, limited voting, and abolished freedom of the press. In this unsettled political climate, Tocqueville took advantage of the opportunity to accomplish his goal of achieving something great. Tocqueville and Beaumont devised a strategy that would allow them to leave France during the political turmoil while performing official government business.

Tocqueville and Beaumont proposed that they be dispatched to America to study the penitentiaries of this new nation. Prisons in France were nothing more than en masse holding bins with no separation of the sexes, all the while crime continued to rise. America had introduced a new system of large “penitentiaries” where inmates were separated and given productive work to perform. Alexis and Gustave were authorized by the French government to undertake a nine month expedition at their own expense.

To be sure, Alexis de Tocqueville had a much larger vision in mind before sailing to America. “We’re going with the intention of examining, in detail and as scientifically as possible, all the workings of that vast American society that everyone talks about but no one knows.”

A fascinating historical footnote of the journey is the juxtaposition with yet another journey in the same year of 1831. In April, the vessel Havre embarked on a journey that would return nine months later from which the twenty five year old Tocqueville would write his magnum opus on the science of society and government, Democracy in America. In December, eight months after Tocqueville’s departure, the twenty two year old Charles Darwin would embark on a five year journey on the HMS Beagle from which he would write his masterpiece, a theory on the science of nature, On the Origin of Species.

A Brave New World

The unstable France that Tocqueville was sailing from was the antithesis of the comparably stable America. In the previous forty years France had experienced a monarchy, a radical democracy, back to a monarchy, and the current, at the time of sailing, semi-democracy. America had become in less than 100 years the cynosure of egalitarianism, albeit flawed, individualism, capitalism, and of course, democracy surpassing in these areas, all cultures in the previous centuries of western civilization.

Tocqueville the consummate interviewer/writer, traveled by steamboat, keelboat, stagecoach, horseback, canoe, and by foot to traverse 17 of the 24 states of the nation and three territories that would later become the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. In the process, he interviewed over two hundred people – farmers, bankers, lawyers, Indian chief, prison officials, prisoners, women, rich, poor, the powerful and the powerless in a uniquely American mosaic that included interviews of John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Sam Houston, and Andrew Jackson. Tocqueville considered his foreign status enormously beneficial, “A foreigner often learns important truths at the hearth of his host, who might conceal them from his friends.”

An extraordinary journey in an extraordinary time required an extraordinary writer, beyond the penetrating power of observation, the incisive interviews, it was a probing intellect that was able to pierce the very psyche of America and democracy as no other author had done before or since, “In America I saw more than America; I sought there an image of democracy itself …” As author Leo Damrosch stated, “What Tocqueville eventually created was not an account of “Americans” as a unique national type, but a structural explanation of some profound reasons why democracy, by its very nature, tends to produce certain characteristics in its citizens.” Tocqueville himself was remarkably prescient when he observed, “There is not a country in the world where man takes possession of the future more confidently, or feels with more pride that his intelligence makes him master of the universe, which he can reshape to his liking.”

Comparisons are Critical … to Understanding

A quote that has endured over the centuries despite offering faux wisdom and insight is “comparisons are odious” by John Lydgate in his Debate between the horse, goose, and sheep, circa 1440. Unfortunately, the quote has been perpetuated over the years by writers Miguel de Cervantes, Christopher Marlowe and John Donne. Even Shakespeare, in Much Ado About Nothing, uses the quote satirically as “comparisons are odorous.”

The meaning of “comparisons are odious” is simply that comparison of anything to another, particularly people, is not useful and can have unpleasant consequences, things should be judged on their own merits. An admonition that truncates full analysis and understanding. Comparisons are indeed critical to understanding.

Hardly a thorough analysis of anything is limited only to the thing itself. The Aristotelian tradition of analysis requires comparison and contrast for a fuller understanding of the subject under analysis. Tocqueville understood this from his Aristotelian tutelage – “It is one of the singular weaknesses of our mind that we can’t judge objects and see them in the clear light of day unless we place other objects next to them.” Leo Damrosch, author of Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, said it well, “Always Tocqueville tried to clarify his analysis by posing large concepts - ideal types, as sociologists would later call them – against each other: North and South, America and France, aristocracy and democracy, past and present.”

In France’s Chamber of Deputies, of which Tocqueville would be elected a member, the origin of “left wing” and “right wing” was formed because of where liberals and conservatives sat in relation to the Speaker’s placement in the center of the Chamber. Today, in America one need not know where their congressman or senator sits to know whether they are left wing or right wing, the comparison between their position on issues is critical to understanding their ideology.

Tocqueville observed interesting differences in temperament between Southerners and Northerners, “The Southerner is wittier, more spontaneous, more open and generous, more intellectual, and more brilliant. The Northerner is more active, better reasoned, better educated, and better skilled. John Quincy Adams complained that cotton planters “devote themselves to physical exercise, hunting, and horse racing.” After the Civil War, his grandson Henry Adams remarked that from Southerners “one could learn nothing but bad temper, bad manners, poker, and treason.” It would appear Tocqueville offers the more insightful analysis, while John Q. Adams opinion seems based on resentment or envy, and his grandson’s observation is probably the natural, albeit unpleasant, resultant behavior of a vanquished foe.

An especially prescient comparison by Tocqueville was on the nations of America and Russia: “The American’s conquests are made with the farmer’s plowshare, the Russian’s with the soldier’s sword. To achieve his goal, the former relies on self-interest and permits the strength and intelligence of individuals to act without direction. The latter concentrates, in a sense, the whole strength of society in a single man. For the former the chief means of action is liberty; for the latter servitude. Their starting points are different and their ways are diverse, yet it seems called by a hidden providential plan to hold one day the destiny of one half of the world.”

Democracy’s Apologist and Advocate

Tocqueville declared in his introduction to Democracy in America “In America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself.”

The genius and paradox of Tocqueville is that as a born aristocrat he was able to view democracy objectively and wrote with a candor rarely seen today, “I have an intellectual attraction to democratic institutions, but by instinct I am an aristocrat, which is to say I despise and fear the crowd. I passionately love liberty, legality, and respect for rights, but not democracy.” As a major French literary historian once said about Tocqueville’s ambivalence, “He got married to democracy with deep reservations; it was a marriage of reason and necessity, not inclination.”

His traveling partner, Beaumont remarked, “Alexis de Tocqueville, even though his reason embraced democratic ideas, retained the aristocracy of feelings; now, there’s nothing so aristocratic as contempt for money.” Tocqueville came to admire the ubiquitous entrepreneurship he encountered. “The Americans bring a sort of heroism to the way they conduct commerce.”

Being an apologist and advocate of democracy was a daunting task during Tocqueville’s time, “I’ve tried to show those for whom the word ‘democracy’ is synonymous upheaval, anarchy, despoilment, and murder that it could succeed in governing a society while respecting fortunes, recognizing rights, preserving liberty, and honoring beliefs.”

Tocqueville cut to the core on how and why American democracy works in his doctrine “I’intérêt bien entendu”, (Interest properly understood). “The principle of republics of antiquity was to sacrifice individual interests to the common good, and in that sense one could say they were virtuous. But it seems to me that the principle of this republic is to make individual interest merge with the common interest. A sort of refined and intelligent egotism is apparently the pivot on which the whole machine turns.”

Tocqueville continued, “The doctrine of interest properly understood does not produce great sacrifices, but day by day it prompts little ones. By itself it cannot make a man virtuous, but it shapes a multitude of citizens who are orderly, temperate, moderate, foresighted, and masters of themselves. And if it doesn’t lead directly to virtue through the will, it advances gradually closer to virtue through the habits.”

Hardly a wide eyed intellectual enamored of all things American, the flaws of young America were all too apparent to Tocqueville – the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, the tragic treatment of Indians, dispossessing them of their native land, and the fundamental threat that slavery posed to democracy. But, as no chronicler, writer, author, or journalist, either domestic or foreign, had done previously or since, Tocqueville plumbed the depths of democracy in America revealing the connective tissue of freedom and liberty that is patently the American phenomenon.

The importance of ownership of property was clear to Tocqueville, since most Americans owned property or were expecting to be an owner, “There is no country on earth where the feeling for property is more lively or anxious than in the United States, or where the majority shows less inclination for doctrines that threaten to alter in any way how goods are acquired.” Simply stated, Americans are wedded to their property and desire no redistribution of it or their other possessions.

Tocqueville understood despotism well from his experience in France. “Despotism creates, in the souls of those who are subjected to it, a blind passion for tranquility, a debased liking for obedience, and an incredible kind of self contempt that ends by making them indifferent to their own interests and enemies of their own rights.” Tocqueville sought to describe a “new despotism”, which also has been described as a “soft despotism”, in a manner that was as chilling as anything George Orwell has written:

“Above them rises an immense tutelary power that alone takes charge of ensuring their pleasures and watching over their fate … It is absolute, detailed, regular, farsighted, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if its object was to prepare men for adult life, but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in permanent childhood. It likes citizens to enjoy themselves, so long as all they think about is enjoyment. It labors willingly for their happiness, but it wants to be the sole agent and arbiter of their happiness … The sovereign power doesn’t break their wills, but it softens, bends, and directs them. It rarely compels action, but it constantly opposes action. It doesn’t destroy, but prevents birth; it doesn’t tyrannize , but it hinders, represses, enervates, restrains, and numbs until it reduces each nation to a mere flock of timid and industrious animals, with government as their shepherd.”

As for Socialist theories, Tocqueville declared “a profound contempt for the individual taken in himself, in his condition as man. What characterizes them all is a continuous, changing, and ceaseless attempt to mutilate, cut down, and hinder human freedom in every way. It is the idea that every state should not only direct society but must also be, master of each man … in a new form of servitude.”

Tocqueville concludes, “I shall seek democracy where I have seen it, living, active, and triumphant in the only country on earth where it exists, and where it has succeeded in establishing, up to the present moment, something great and lasting – in America.”

Beyond Connecting the Dots

As an exercise, “connect the dots” is useful in cognitive development; as a metaphor it is useful in identifying the ability or inability, to grasp the “big picture” from a mass of data.

If the recent WSJ Poll is any indication, Americans have transcended connecting the dots and have reached a “blinding flash of the obvious.” For a majority of Americans their “perceptual filters” kicked in after eighteen arduous months of distinguishing, recognizing, seeing, picking out, identifying, observing, noticing, taking in, understanding, comprehending, becoming aware of, realizing, or making sense of something … that the democracy in America as described by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, is not only at risk through the Obama administration, but under a coordinated and determined assault.

According to the WSJ Poll, for the first time since he was elected, more Americans disapprove of Obama than approve -- with 48 percent giving him a thumbs-down. Only 45 percent approved. Less than half -- 49 percent -- rated Obama as having "strong leadership qualities," an 8-point drop since January and a 21-point plunge from when he was first elected.

Two months after oil began spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, half of those surveyed --including one in four Democrats -- said they disapproved of Obama's handling of the crisis. The survey indicated several troubling signs for Democrats in the midterm elections, as 62 percent of respondents reported feeling the country was on the wrong track.

The past 18 months of the Obama administration have been at once, the most turgid, liberal, and ineffectual (in advancing democracy domestically and abroad) in the nation’s history. The litany of abuses are numbing, some notable examples – organized a cabinet and plethora of czars that are to a person far left to Marxist, implemented a hyper Keynesian economic policy which failed under Hoover and FDR, that has only exacerbated a serious recession, artificially resuscitated the anachronistic unions, nationalized two major auto companies, nationalized health care, passed stimulus bills that primarily aided government union workers with miniscule public sector impact, created record multi trillion dollar debt, introduced Orwellian speak to the American vocabulary calling “terrorism” a “man caused disaster”, created an Afghanistan strategy with insuperable rules of engagement and withdrawal date, sides with the Hamas over Israel, refuses to enforce federal immigration laws, bungled the gulf oil spill to promote a Cap and Trade bill, and the latest banking bill that creates a new government agency and leaves untouched Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, who got the whole recession started through their policies guaranteeing sub-prime mortgage loans to banks and investors and incurred over $138 billion in losses… and should have gone under like the private sector Bear Stearns.

Should anyone really be surprised by a government whose creed and unifying theme is “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste?” This is an administration acting like a regime intent on the deconstruction of the United States democracy through circumventing the Constitution, using every means possible to contravene the will of the majority, led by a President who is supportive of a global government in lieu of a sovereign America. Obama has surpassed the malaise of the forgettable Carter administration with a pervasive anomie.

The Obama administration may be ineffectual in advancing democracy, but it is by design. The President, former Indonesian Muslim, later Black Liberation theology layman, community organizer inspired by Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, a mysterious record less ascension through Occidental College, Columbia, and Harvard Law School, culminating in the Presidency is not your Horatio Alger success story, it is far more sub rosa.

What is being done to American is nothing short of the process of a revolution. As Tocqueville said “the revolution only tells you something that already took place."

President Obama is executing the plan of Columbia professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven known as the Cloward & Piven Strategy. Simply stated, overwhelm the U.S. economy creating failure of the economy and social chaos; destroying capitalism in the process - voila, the socialization of America.

The reckless government spending and expansion of entitlements (estimated $117 Trillion in unfunded liabilities) are sufficient to collapse the economy.

A brief look at the numbers and their purpose is chilling: Stimulus Plan and Bail Outs –Hundreds of billions go to leftist organizations including Acorn and its progeny, unions through the GM and Chrysler buyouts, including $125 billion to unionized teachers, creating and saving thousands of government jobs, Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants – Politically Obama is holding Arizona hostage as a quid pro quo for an amnesty bill, border security in exchange for amnesty, 12 million new Democrat voters with all entitlement rights, Nationalized Health Care – Estimated 30 million uninsured now represent 30 million new Democrat voters at the cost of trillions of dollars (collapse the economy), plus unionization of all health care and hospital workers and 20 thousand new unionized IRS workers to enforce the new law, Cap & Trade – Source of revenue for the government and redistributes the wealth by exorbitant taxation on upper income tax payers. Restructure the Tax Burden – Expand voters dependent upon government by raising taxes, on high income taxpayers, small businesses, the top 20% of tax payers, redistribution of wealth to those who didn’t earn it and punishment of the successful at its finest.

It all adds up to a limitless Socialist government where changes are not only in government but the structure of society into three classes: Majority of citizens dependent on big government, privileged class of all government workers, and selected members of government become the ruling class at the top of the pyramid.

A democratic society cannot be sustained when almost 50% of the population pays no taxes. Tocqueville, the master of illuminating comparison declared, “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.”

How did we get ourselves in such a mess? Some say it was eight years of George W. Bush and that the electorate was looking for something new. Possibly, but it appeared that a rabidly left leaning media, including the taxpayer funded NPR, took every opportunity to degrade Bush and marginalize Republican candidates while sycophantically deifying Barack Obama, which ultimately tipped the scales in the Democrat’s favor.

Tocqueville understood all too well the influence of the media (press) in his day, “After the people themselves, the press represents the most irresistible power that exits in America.” At the risk of an egregious incongruity, Ozzy Osbourne had it right in the lyrics of Crazy Train, “One person conditioned to rule and control, the media sells it and you live the role.”

There is ample evidence to suggest that the nation was caught up in the hysteria of electing the nation’s first black President. Dr. Walter E. Williams, distinguished black economist said it best, “white liberals who voted for Obama … received their one-time guilt-relieving dose from voting for a black man to be president.” Whatever the reason, the media failed miserably in doing its research on Barack Obama and the voters for their indifference to the facts, but instead being swayed by the mellifluous speech of Obama. Tocqueville had a particular antipathy for this type of speech, those “who reason badly and speak well.” Thomas Jefferson offered sage advice with, "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Is there sufficient reason remaining or have we become too conditioned to a big central government? Tocqueville presented an ominous concern, “The scope of central power expands imperceptibly in all directions, even though everyone wants it restrained. A democratic government, therefore, increases its power by the mere fact that it continues to exist. Time is on its side. Every chance event works to its advantage. The passions of individuals assist it without their own knowledge, and one may say that the older a democratic society is, the more centralized it becomes.” Tocqueville understood politicians role in this dynamic, “It is easy to see that most of the ambitious and able citizens in a democratic country will work relentlessly to expand the social power, because they hope to control it themselves one day. It is a waste of time to try to prove to them that too much centralization can be harmful to the state, because it’s for themselves that they are centralizing it.”

One is left to hope that the quote of an author falls on the side those supporting a socialist government and society versus those supporting a democratic government and society, “The infinite sadness of unfulfilled desire.”