Even for the modern reader, de Tocqueville’s message is germane and enlightening, and at times feels prophetic. Though one may not agree with every facet, his arguments are consistent and fair glimpses of his perspective of the unique American culture (I say “American” instead of United Statesian - not because I don’t understand the vast topography of the Americas, and that the United States is but a portion of the Americas – but because Statesian isn’t a word. I choose culture instead of democracy, because we all know we’re a Democratic Republic. Right? Good.) I loved the clarity of his discourse, and found it flowed gracefully.

There were many quotes which stuck out for me, including:

"The settlers … possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our own time … Nor did they cross the Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their wealth; it was a purely intellectual craving that called them from the comforts of their former homes; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of exile their object was the triumph of an idea."

and

"Centralization easily succeeds, indeed, in subjecting the external actions of men to a certain uniformity, which we come at last to love for its own sake, independently of the objects to which it is applied, like those devotees who worship the statue and forget the deity it represents."

But my greatest delight was Chapter XI, "Of The Spirit In Which The Americans Cultivate The Arts." If I could, I would have included the entire section in this review. I thought de Tocqueville’s observations regarding the creation of arts and the ethos of New World artisans most fascinating!

"Democratic nations… will therefore cultivate the arts which serve to render life easy, in preference to those whose object is to adorn it. They will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful."

"When, on the contrary, every profession is open to all—when a multitude of persons are constantly embracing and abandoning it—and when its several members are strangers to each other, indifferent, and from their numbers hardly seen amongst themselves; the social tie is destroyed, and each workman, standing alone, endeavors simply to gain the greatest possible quantity of money at the least possible cost. The will of the customer is then his only limit."

"… In democracies there are always a multitude of individuals whose wants are above their means, and who are very willing to take up with imperfect satisfaction rather than abandon the object of their desires."

"When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones: few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket. Thus the democratic principle not only tends to direct the human mind to the useful arts, but it induces the artisan to produce with greater rapidity a quantity of imperfect commodities, and the consumer to content himself with these commodities."

"When I arrived for the first time at New York, by that part of the Atlantic Ocean which is called the East River, I was surprised to perceive along the shore, at some distance from the city, a considerable number of little palaces of white marble, several of which were built after the models of ancient architecture. When I went the next day to inspect more closely one which had particularly attracted my notice, I found that its walls were of whitewashed brick, and its columns of painted wood. All the edifices which I had admired the night before were of the same kind."

By no means is this difficult or dry reading. For the student of political science, it is a must.

“Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?” (Part 1, p. 6)

True, this book is long and necessarily outdated. It is not a travelogue, nor is it an ethnography. Rather, it’s mostly a comparative philosophical analysis of democracy and aristocracy. It does get slow when Tocqueville dives deep into townships and their political arrangements. Nevertheless, parts of it are spectacular (e.g., the Introduction to Part 1). And Tocqueville made many astute observations and great points. His central argument was that the origin of the United States shaped nearly all its later social, cultural, and political developments. He rightly predicted a gradual movement toward universal suffrage. Some of his most memorable comments were about the central role of judicial power in society—indeed, he saw the judicial class as the most powerful in the United States—and about the dangers of a tyranny of the majority under populism:

“He who punishes the criminal is therefore the real master of society.” (Part 1, p. 282)

“…it may be foreseen that faith in public opinion will become a species of religion there, and the majority its ministering prophet.” (Part 2, p. 11)

Tocqueville insightfully argued that one of the main functions of religion was to encourage self-control by pushing people to focus on the future instead of on their immediate wants and temptations. He also predicted that race relations and racial inequality would both remain bad after the demise of slavery due to the persistence of three related prejudices: the bias of race, of color, and of having once been a master over another.

“There is a natural prejudice that prompts men to despise whoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal; and the real inequality that is produced by fortune or by law is always succeeded by an imaginary inequality that is implanted in the manners of the people.” (Part 1, p. 357)

“Thus the same man who is full of humanity towards his fellow creatures when they are at the same time his equals becomes insensible to their afflictions as soon as that equality ceases.” (Part 2, p. 166)

Of course, Tocqueville was wrong a lot, too. For example, he dramatically overestimated Americans’ willingness to impeach and remove misbehaving presidents. He also wrongly predicted that religion would only survive in democratic countries if it confined itself to spiritual matters and stayed out of politics. The results of recent elections show how far off he was on that prediction. Additionally, he incorrectly predicted that the demand for real diamonds would disappear as faux ones became more available. And his views on cultural sophistication (involvement in science and writing) in the United States were either wrong when written, or became so quickly after he put them down on paper:

“It must be acknowledged that in few of the civilized nations of our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the United States; and in few have great artists, distinguished poets, or celebrated writers been more rare.” (Part 2, p. 35)

MEMORABLE QUOTES:

“From the time when the exercise of the intellect became a source of strength and of wealth, we see that every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea became a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the graces of the mind, the fire of imagination, depth of thought, and all the gifts which heaven scatters at a venture turned to the advantage of democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries, they still served its cause by throwing into bold relief the natural greatness of man. Its conquests spread, therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge; and literature became an arsenal open to all, where the poor and the weak daily resorted for arms.” (Part 1, p. 5)

“The gradual development of the principle of equality is, therefore, a providential fact. It has all the chief characteristics of such a fact: it is universal, it is lasting, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.” (Part 1, p. 6)

“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.” (Part 1, p. 9)

“The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced; this was the capital fact which was to exercise an immense influence on the character, the laws, and the whole future of the South. Slavery … dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man. The influence of slavery … explains the manners and the social condition of the Southern States.” (Part 1, p. 30)

“Now, I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world: rights must be given to every citizen, or none at all to anyone.” (Part 1, p. 53)

“Not that those nations whose social condition is democratic naturally despise liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and, if they miss their aim, resign themselves to tehri disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would rather perish than lose it.” (Part 1, pp. 53-54)

“There is no more invariable rule in the history of society: the further electoral rights are extended, the greater is the need of extending them; for after each concession the strength of the democracy increases, and its demands increase with its strength. The ambition of those who are below the appointed rate is irritated in exact proportion to the great number of those who are above it. The exception at last becomes the rule, concession follows concession, and no stop can be made short of universal suffrage” (Part 1, p. 57)

“In the Middle Ages, when it was very difficult to reach offenders, the judges inflicted frightful punishments on the few who were arrested; but this did not dimmish the number of crimes. It has since been discovered that when justice is more certain and more mild, it is more efficacious.” (Part 1, p. 104)

“In the United Stats the ablest men are rarely placed at the head of affairs … On my arrival in the United States I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the citizens and so little among the heads of the government.” (Part 1, p. 200)

“It is impossible, after the most strenuous exertions, to raise the intelligence of the people above a certain level. Whatever may be the facilities of acquiring information, whatever may be the profusion of easy methods and cheap science, the human mind can never be instructed and developed without devoting considerable time to these objects.” (Part 1, p. 200)

“Force is never more than a transient element of success, and after force comes the notion of right. A government able to reach its enemies only upon a field of battle would soon be destroyed. The true sanction of political laws is to be found in penal legislation; and if that sanction is wanting, the law will sooner or later lose its cogency.” (Part 1, p. 282)

“For myself, when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me; and I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million men.” (Part 2, p. 12)

“As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.” (Part 2, p. 214).

I had thought to come back to this after reading a general history of the early history of the US republic, but instead a sudden batch of newspaper articles wondering about the end of Democracy brought me back to it.

Reading this book I felt that the unfinished  The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution was Tocqueville's masterpiece and in so far as Democracy in America has renown, I feel it is because there are a lot of Americans, and naturally it is nice when a foreigner takes your country and its institutions seriously and discusses them soberly as something of world historical significance (although in places he is plainly exasperated by his hosts).

I feel it is important to say that it is not a travelogue, nor is it a systematic study of American institutions circa 1830. de Tocqueville's big idea, I guess, is that a culture or civilisation is by definition congruent so that on the basis of a couple of key data points one can infer or deduce the entire nature of that culture and civilisation. On the one hand he is wonderfully inventive coming close to describing alienation and deskilling as a consequence of industrial labour organisation - what will become of the man's mind, he asks, if all he does is make pin heads all day for years on end, on the other hand he plainly suffers from the absence of conceptual language which will be invented later and suffers from a fondness of logic and deduction, for example in his opinion at the time of writing there was no American literature but, because he perceives the nature of the culture of the USA, he gives us a chapter about what American and indeed all democratic countries' literature will be like, ditto poetry, theatre, history writing and how the USA will conduct wars (book 2 Chapter XIII onwards). He suffers from Observational bias too - because Andrew Jackson was President during his visit he assumes that the trend from then on will be for the Federal structures to become weaker and state ones stronger  which reminds me of a history of modern Greece that I read, the author closed with the election of a New Democracy government in the mid to late 1980s which he heralded as a decisive changing point in the history (at least) of Greece, when with a few years more perspective we see that it bumbled and rumbled along determined to resolutely no kind of changing point at all . Here his biases may also be due to his sources both books and the people he meet in the USA who by implication seem to have been well to do persons opposed to the Democratic party.

Having read the thing twice, I feel as though I am a person on their death bed regretting that they didn't do more unpaid overtime while they had the chance : there need be no shame in reading a selection or an abridged version, Tocqueville would have benefited from an imaginative and kind editor, he spends pages expressing one idea but in lots of slightly different ways, it is possible to imagine a condensed version a couple of hundred pages long. He suffers strongly from being innovative, later generations would devise concepts like 'conventional wisdom' or collect statistics, or indeed establish more ostensibly democratic states and providing more data to chew over. It is a book more admirable in its ambition than likeable in it's delivery.

In studying democracy in America we notice two obvious separate subjects - America and Democracy, and the USA we can further say in the 1830s was a colonial society, a frontier society, a capitalist society which had a degree of industrialisation, had regions with a slave economy, as well as regions absorbing immigrants from overseas and regions absorbing internal migrants and all these factors worked together in a dynamic way. Tocqueville doesn't pull all these elements apart nor can he know what was typical of democratic societies in general or only of America because they wasn't much to compare the USA with (he doesn't much like Switzerland as it wasn't federal enough for his liking in the 1830s) in his lifetime.

Tocqueville was very interested in the role of religion, he observes that Christianity is essential democratic - even Catholicism because he holds that everyone is equal beneath the priest, for his contemporaries and indeed Europeans for a further hundred years or so this would have been a provocative position to take - the hostility in some countries to democratic tendencies from churches was marked and turf wars over education, welfare and social policy generally were and have been an ongoing process, I recall in the context of Italian unification that a Pope forbade Italians from participating in elections which I guess gave people something extra to talk about in the confessional box. Religion, like Aristocracy (meaning potentially any elite group in society) functions in a dualistic manner, both are anti-democratic and underpin democracy simultaneously they tend towards tyranny (majoritarian culture in the case of religion, generally being anti-democratic in the case of elites) while at the same time promoting a unifying culture and protecting privileges and rights for all. That nothing has a simple effect in the social dynamic, but is at least two-faced was a useful insight.

de Tocqueville was hardly a disinterested or neutral observer, he was an aristocrat, but he believed that the trend was towards democratic governments in politics. He also felt that governments would be increasingly centralised and would have greater and greater scope than ever before, this meant that when democratic governments flipped in to despotism these despotic governments would be more powerful than any tyranny seen before 1830, democratic society would be vulnerable to tyranny because of the drive to equality, there would be no institutions or individuals capable of resisting despotism - which seems a curious position since Aristocrats and provincial liberties in his native France hadn't been so successful in restraining the ambitions of mighty kings.

Implicit in his thinking is French history, he assumes that all governments are essentially programmatic and are always working to achieve a certain programme coherent across centuries, he also seems to have the likes of Turgot and Sully in mind in believing that there are great statesmen, philosophes perhaps at heart, public spirited and of considerable intellect who really ought to be ruling over everybody, for him President Washington and the early leadership of the USA were of that ilk (but things have been going downhill since Jefferson in his opinion).

For Tocqueville pure or model forms of government are practically irrelevant, politics is human interaction. The history, social complexion and geography of the country shape how the democracy will actually function in practise. At times this felt deterministic, if history is destiny then can we only say that democratic countries will remain so and non-democratic societies remain so for all time? But Tocqueville believes that through education a society can become more (and presumably less too) democratic. By education he means involvement in democratic activities holding political office and involvement in running public affairs. In terms of the future of representative governments this seems to me a disturbing observation, are there countries where one can still observe a functioning Cursus honorum with aspiring politicians working up from fly catcher general to head of state? Jury service he believes too is educative it teaches everybody that citizens are the ultimate power and are the ones with the right to decide and govern. In this I feel the weakness of his trust in logic and deduction. I feel that what he says makes sense but if it actually has that effect on society generally I am not sure, and while we can feel that the transition from non-democratic to democratic society is unlikely to be smooth or easy, but that seems too simplistic a view too.

In addition to despotism Tocqueville's picture of the tyranny of the majority is strikingly pessimistic - majority culture indeed looks worse than a despotism "what I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom that prevails there but the shortage of any guarantee against tyranny" (p.294) in Tocqueville's vision of America the government represents the majority whose values and ideas will also be reflected throughout the legal system and public service general, he tells of observing an election in Pennslyvania and asking if free Blacks have the vote, he is told -yes, but they don't dare to vote (presumably for fear of violence), of course Tocqueville himself was also part of the majority in some ways, he reflects that everybody imaginable has the vote in the USA in the 1830s despite being in correspondence with J.S. Mill he doesn't imagine giving women the vote and thinks it normal that servants (not just slaves) don't have the vote either. Even if you do have the vote, as we noticed, exercising it is another issue and cultural change to shift the position of the majority is something else again. Perhaps it begins to make sense that when French President Louis Napoleon held a referendum asking 'This democracy business is a bit rubbish really, do you agree that I must become your lawful Emperor, Napoleon III' that a majority voted yes  the actual question was probably worded slightly differently

I get the impression that Tocqueville has been mined as a source of an idealised view of the USA, how far his view of essentially the North and North-west of the USA of the 1830 was (a) realistic and (b) remained similar as the country continued to develop I am sure many others will have their own ideas. Thinking of some of the quotes below I see I've read him in a similar light playing the game of what he 'got right' or 'got wrong' this is I guess to fall into the Texas sharp shooter fallacy, the USA even in 1830, was already a pretty big target, and the future is not so small either  hopefully.

On the remarkable side I think is his view of slavery that a particular (and not so visible) evil is how the slave internalises the negative view that the slave society has of them and that the downfall of a civilisation need not be sudden, catastrophic and violent - he anticipates the Needham Question by seeing the state of early nineteenth China as a warning - you can be a forerunner yet still end up falling way behind without the need for any barbarians charging down the streets.

féline betaalt me twintig euro om haar rechtsfilosofie essay te schrijven

I read selections this time around, as I did years ago.

de Tocqueville toured and studied America not long after the French Revolution. He was hoping to glean ideas for his own country. I think what he found couldn't necessarily apply. He says we had no democratic revolution, because we began democratically. This makes sense, as our Revolution was simply an effort to keep that independent flavor, rather than lose it to our parent country.

Among the many things he observes and analyzes, I was interested in his view of property inheritance and how that affects society. In the aristocratic countries, it traditionally went to the eldest male. Consequently, family formed a larger portion of a person's identity. You stick by family, you depend on family for your welfare, and when you're the head of the family, you have obligations.

Here in America, that was not the law. Instead, land is divided among children. Because the land is divided and lots become smaller, it is easier to sell and move on. There is consequently less ties to the land and to the family. While he did make a point of saying "Anglo-Americans" I thought this analysis could have gone a little further and address the room which people felt they had to move to. That may have been in a section I didn't read.

Many of his observations still hold true today, I believe.

For example:
"In the proudest nations of the Old World works were published which faithfully portrayed the vices and absurdities of contemporaries....Moliere criticized the court in plays acted before the courtiers. But the power which dominates in the United States does not understand being mocked like that. The least reproach offends it, and the slightest sting of truth turns it fierce; and one must praise everything, from the turn of its phrases to its most robust virtues."

(Don't mock the president, Mr. Colbert. Wear your flag pin, Mr. Obama.)

Worth reading the whole two volumes

Lots of us have read snippets of De Tocqueville, but these two volumes are classics for a reason. He wrote in 1830, the age of Jackson - well worth revisiting today.

Amazing. The man predicted the American future perfectly. Democracy will seek to destroy distinctions until everything is androgynous. I'm riffing a bit but basically that.

Americans boast in democracy, but we are unaware of the ways it has biased and prejudiced our thinking in negative ways. Enter de Tocqueville, the Frenchmen who visited the United States in the 1830s. His reflections contained in Democracy in America give Americans a fresh, piercing perspective about our way of life. The benefits of democracy are obvious, but the dangers are subtle and often work themselves out over many years. De Tocqueville was something of a seer. By looking at the seed of equality, he was able to see the fruits, good and bad, that would develop even hundreds of years later.

What are the dangers of democracy today?

1) The tyranny of the majority. Many people are unaware that America is a democratic republic and not a pure democracy. In other words, a government should pass and enforce just laws. When the majority passes unjust laws and enforces them through a powerful government, like in the French Revolution, the result is ugly: carnage, death, and the debasement of people. Hobbes says, “Man has a right to everything, including [to harm] another person’s body.” Against Hobbes, De Tocqueville says, “I hold it to be an impious and detestable maxim, that, politically speaking, the people have a right to do anything…The rights of every people [ought to be] confined within the limits of what is just.”

2) Choosing comfort over freedom. Since the government is so powerful, Americans will increasingly rely on government to make them happy. But we need to learn the lesson Greece quickly: while a government can protect everyone's right to pursue happiness, it cannot make everyone happy. Notice I said cannot, and not should not. A government can try to make everyone happy, but it will always fail. Since human desires are so great, a government, like Greece, that tries to do the impossible—to make everyone happy—will bankrupt itself. A government should enforce justice equally. A government should not artificially enforce equal outcomes.

3) Self as epistemological authority. De Tocqueville wisely points out that every epistemology has an authority. For example, modernists and Enlightenment thinkers choose Reason (capital R) as the authority. Protestants choose God speaking through the Bible as the authority. Catholics choose the Roman Catholic Church as the authority. Americans choose Self as the epistemological authority. This results in narcissism, disrespect for all authority, subjectivity, sometimes a denial of reality, and an antisupernaturalistic bias. Remember Skully from the X-files? She was an unknowing disciple of Descartes—De Tocqueville might have been talking about her: “Americans readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural.”

4) Pride. In aristocratic ages, pride expresses itself as the desire to be everyone’s superior. In democratic ages, pride expresses itself as the desire to be no one’s inferior.

5) Uniformity of thought. “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America…In America, the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion: within these barriers, an author may write what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”

6) An interest in science not as something true and beautiful and good, but as something useful. When we feel justified murdering children with advanced technology and hiding people in freezers (because science), we know scientific research got off track somewhere. We go off track, because like Nazi Germany, we encourage scientists to pursue what is possible and useful instead of what is true, good, and beautiful. Science, when it pursues truth, goodness, and beauty, often turns out to be very useful. But science, when it pursues only what is useful and possible, becomes full of lies, ugliness, and death.

Here is De Tocqueville’s overall warning: “It is therefore most especially in the present democratic times, that the true friends of the liberty…ought constantly to be on the alert, to prevent the power of government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general execution of its designs.”

It's a sad state of affairs when a 19th Century Frenchman knows more about the workings of the American government than the majority of voters.

Did you have to read this book for Political Science 101? I did, and I still have my copy of it. In this election year, it would be worth taking a look at this book again. It seems to me that, particularly in the past eight years, we have strayed off the path of the ideals that this book represents. Anyone interested in democracy, equality, and the role of the military in government should own a copy of this book. Make sure it is the unabridged one.

n  I struggle to penetrate God’s point of view, from which vantage point I try to observe and judge human affairs.n

A few months ago, bored at work and with no other obligations to tie me to New York, I decided that I would look into employment in Europe; and now, several months and an irksome visa process later, I am on the verge of setting off to Madrid. Unsurprisingly, I’m very excited to go; but of course leaving one’s home is always bittersweet. This is partly why I picked up Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, as a sort of literary good-bye kiss to this odd, uncouth, chaotic, and fantastic place which has, up until now, molded my character, sustained my body, and contained my thoughts.
tt
This turned out to be an excellent choice, for this book is without a doubt the best book ever written on the United States. I am able to say this, even though I haven’t even read a fraction of the books written on this country, because I simply can’t imagine how anyone could have done it better. As it is, I can hardly believe that Tocqueville could understand so much in the short span of his life; and when I recall that he wrote this book after only 9 months in America, while he was still in his thirties, I am doubly astounded. This seems scarcely human.
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Part of the reason for his seemingly miraculous ability is that, with Tocqueville, you find two things conjoined which are normally encountered separately: extremely keen powers of observation, and a forceful analytic mind. With most travel writers, you encounter only the former; and with most political philosophers, only the latter. The product of this combination is a nearly perfect marriage of facts and reasoning, of survey and criticism, the ideas always hovering just above the reality, transforming the apparently senseless fabric of society into a sensible and intelligible whole. Almost everything he sees, he understands; and not only does he understand what he sees, but so often hits upon the why.
tt
Although this book covers an enormous amount of ground—religion, slavery, culture, government, the role of women, just to name a few topics—there is one central question that runs through every subject: What does the appearance of democracy mean for the future of humanity? Tocqueville sees this question as the most pressing and significant one of his time; for, as he perceived, what was happening then in America was destined to inspire Europe and perhaps the whole world to adopt this new form of government, which would forever change the face of society. In short, Tocqueville is seeking to understand America so that he could understand the future; and the plan of the book follows these two goals successively. The first volume, published in 1835, is a thorough analysis of the United States; and the second volume, published in 1840, is a comparison of democracy and aristocracy, an attempt to pinpoint how a switch to a democratic government causes far-reaching changes in the whole culture.
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Tocqueville is famously ambivalent about American democracy. He often sounds greatly impressed at what he finds, noting how hardworking and self-reliant are most Americans; and yet so often, particularly in the second volume, Tocqueville sounds gloomy and pessimistic about what the future holds. Much of his analysis is centered on the idea of social equality. He often reminds the reader—and by the way, Tocqueville wrote this for a French audience—that Americans, rich or poor, famous or obscure, will treat everyone as an equal. The entire idea of castes or classes has, in Tocqueville’s opinion, been abolished; and this has had many effects. Most obviously, it gives free reign to American ambition, for anyone can potentially climb from the bottom to the top; thus results the ceaseless activity and endless financial scheming of Americans. And even those who are quite well-off are not spared from this fever of ambition, for the lack of inherited wealth and stable fortunes means that the rich must continually exert effort to maintain their fortunes. (Whether this is true anymore is another story.)
tt
Thus we find a kind of money-obsession, where everyone must constantly keep their minds in their wallets. In America, money is not only real currency, but cultural currency as well, a marker of success; and in this context, the creature comforts of life, which after all only money can buy, are elevated to great importance. Rich food, warm beds, spacious houses—these are praised above the simpler pleasures in life, such as agreeable conversation or pleasant walks on sunny days, as the former require money while the latter are free and available to anyone. The central irony of a classless society is that it forces everyone to focus constantly on their status, as it is always in jeopardy. You can imagine how shocking this must have been for Tocqueville, the son of an aristocratic family. There simply was no class of Americans who had the leisure of retiring from the cares of the world and contemplating the “higher” but less practical things in life. All thought was consumed in activity.
tt
This results in a society of the ordinary individual. In America, there are few “great men” (as Tocqueville would say) but a great many good ones. Americans are self-reliant, but not daring; they are often decent, but never saintly. They will sometimes risk their lives in pursuit of a fortune, but never their fortunes for the sake their lives. An American might temporarily accept hardship if there is a financial reward on the other end; but how many Americans would forsake their fortunes, their comforts, their houses and property, for the sake of an idea, a principle, a dream? Thus a kind of narrow ambition pervades the society, where everyone is hoping to better their lot, but almost nobody is hoping to do something beyond acquiring money and things. One can easily imagine the young Tocqueville, his mind filled with Machiavelli and Montesquieu, meeting American after American with no time or inclination for something as intangible as knowledge.
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In the midst of his large-scale cultural analysis, Tocqueville sometimes pauses for a time, putting off the role of philosopher to take up the role of prophet. Tocqueville does get many of his predictions wrong. For example, he did not at all foresee the Civil War—and in fact he thought Americans would never willingly risk their property fighting each other—and instead he thought that there would be a gigantic race war between blacks and whites in the south. But Tocqueville was otherwise quite right about race relations in the slave-owning states. He predicts that slavery could not possibly last, and that it would soon be abolished; and he notes that abolishing slavery will probably be the easiest task in improving the relationship between blacks and whites. For although slavery can be destroyed through legal action, the effects of slavery, the deep-rooted racial prejudice and hatred, cannot so easily be wiped clean. In support of this view, Tocqueville notes how badly treated are free blacks in the northern states, where slavery is banned. Without a place in society, they are shunned and fall into poverty. The persistence of the color line in America is a testament to Tocqueville’s genius and our failure to prove him wrong.
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But perhaps the most arresting prediction Tocqueville makes is about the future rivalry of the United States with Russia. Here are his words:

Americans struggle against obstacles placed there by nature; Russians are in conflict with men. The former fight the wilderness and barbarity; the latter, civilization with all its weaponry: thus, American victories are achieved with the plowshare, Russia’s with the soldier’s sword.
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To achieve their aim, the former rely upon self-interest and allow free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.
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The latter focus the whole power of society upon a single man.
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The former deploy freedom as their main mode of action; the latter, slavish obedience.
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The point of departure is different, their paths are diverse but each of them seems destined by some secret providential design to hold in their hands the fate of half the world at some date in the future.

While discussing such an obviously brilliant man as was Tocqueville, whose ideas have become foundational in the study of American society, it seems almost petty to praise his prose style. But I would be doing an injustice to any readers of this review if I failed to mention that Tocqueville is an extraordinary writer. I was consistently captivated by his ability to sum up his thoughts into crisp aphorisms and to compress his analyses into perfectly composed paragraphs. I can only imagine how much better it is in the original French. Here is only a brief example:

Commerce is a natural opponent of all violent passions. It likes moderation, delights in compromise, carefully avoids angry outbursts. It is patient, flexible, subtle, and has recourse to extreme measures only when absolute necessity obliges it to do so. Commerce makes men independent of each other, gives them quite another idea of their personal value, persuades them to manage their own affairs, and teaches them to be successful. Hence it inclines them to liberty but draws them away from revolutions.

In the brief space of a book review—even a long one—I cannot hope to do justice to such a wide-ranging, carefully argued, and incisive book as this. So I hope that I have managed to persuade you to at least add this work to your to-read list, long as it may be already. For my part, I can’t imagine a better book to have read as I prepare myself to visit a new continent, about the same age as was Tocqueville when he visited these shores, for my own travels in a strange place. And although, lowly American that I am, I cannot hope to achieve even a fraction of what Tocqueville has, perhaps his voice echoing in my ears will be enough to encourage me to look, to listen, and to understand.

Proféticamente, Alexis de Tocqueville, en De la Democracia en América, escribía: "Así, bien podría establecerse en el mundo una suerte de materialismo honrado, que no corrompería a las almas, sino que las ablandaría y terminaría por distender sin ruido alguno todos sus resortes". Es una lástima que el francés que escribió esto en la primera mitad del siglo XIX, no haya sido lo suficientemente longevo como para visitar Disneylandia, donde su frase ha cobrado exagerada vida, en el quiriquiquí idealista.

Para leer al Pato Donald Pág.98

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Aunque reconoció (Tocqueville) la vitalidad del nuevo mundo político de los Estados Unidos y vió cómo la síntesis de diversas formas de gobierno había sido fundida en una democracia de masas regulada, también reclamó haber visto en América cómo la revolución democrática alcanzaba sus límites naturales. Por ello, sus opiniones sobre si la democracia Americana podía evitar los viejos ciclos de corrupción se combinaban con el pesimismo, cuando no eran directamente pesimistas.

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Alexis de Tocqueville fue, tal vez, el primero en presentar el problema en estos términos. Sus análisis de la democracia de masas en los Estados Unidos, con su espíritu de iniciativa y expansión, lo llevó al amargo y profético reconocimiento de la imposibilidad de las élites europeas de continuar manteniendo una posición de comando sobre la civilización mundial.

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Tocqueville creía que la igualdad de condiciones que observó había ayudado a construir y mantener la confianza entre los norteamericanos.

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