My comments at this time are limited to Volume 1 of this book. (Link to my review of Volume 2) The reason for my stepped approach is to match the pace of a book group with which I participate that is discussing Volume 1 in July and Volume. 2 at our August meeting.

The two volumes of Democracy in America were published in 1835 and 1840 respectively and are based on observations and interviews collected during an 1831-32 tour of the country. This was a time before the Mexican American War and the American Civil War, and it was during the first administration of Andrew Jackson. It is my understanding that the two volumes have somewhat different focus, the first being more political in the narrow sense and the second being more social. 


The book is largely a collection of generalizations and opinions of the author with occasional reference to statistics and data where available. I as a reader occasionally cringed at his sweeping generalizations, but still I value his comments as coming from a unique time in history from a thoughtful and intelligent writer who is an outsider to American politics. Since he was writing from that perspective it’s interesting to note that he was critical of slavery and Andrew Jackson.

The factual description of the mistreatment of Native Americans is damning of the credibility of promises made by the American government. The author included in his book a very sad eye witness description of the condition of a band of Choctaws who had been forcibly removed from their homeland and were in the process of crossing the Mississippi River at the time of his observation.

There’s also a long discussion of the dilemma that the South was in regarding the prospect of ending slavery. It was the author’s observation that the whites were unwilling to live with Blacks as equals, but the natural tendency for the rights within democracies to expand made it inevitable the slavery could not go on for ever. There are occasional hints around a possibility of a civil war, but no explicit prophecy.

There’s a long discussion of the range of governance from the local township to the State and Federal governments. There’s also a long discussion of the Judicial system, lawyers and trial by jury. I thought it was interesting that he said American lawyers argue based on precedence in contrast to French lawyers who argue about where the law is good or bad.

This is a big book which, depending of the prejudices of the reader, can be used to support either liberal or conservative opinions. (It’s like the Bible in that regard.) There are some statements made that subsequent history have proven to be correctly insightful (e.g. expansion of the right to vote). But there are other observations which didn’t last much longer (e.g. Americans are not advanced in the sciences and literature.) There’s also considerable discussion of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and political parties.

The author’s intended reading audience was the French in their search for a stable form of governing in their country. I suspect that the publishing and reading of the English translation exceeded that of the original French edition.

The following is a map of de Tocqueville's travels within the USA:

Well, another year, another classic of American political thought. This one took me even longer than The Federalist Papers, but since it's well over 800 pages long, I'm not going to feel terribly guilty. As with the earlier book, there were two main factors that slowed me down: I was "cheating" with other books, including rereading a great deal of Revolution in the Head; and I would frequently read a paragraph or two and go, "Huh. Are Tocqueville's ideas from 180 years ago applicable today?" Possibly because the style is more analytical than polemic, the answer for Democracy in America was more often "yes" than it was for The Federalist Papers.

I have no idea how long this review is going to be. It's a rich book, but I can't talk about everything in it because I have a life and Goodreads has a character limit.* Also, I spent so long reading the book I've already forgotten a lot of it.

However, I do remember being fascinated by Tocqueville’s perspective on democracy. In 21st century America we take the basic desirability of democracy so much for granted that often all we’re arguing about is whether certain policies help or harm it, e.g. free speech is good for democracy because it allows every viewpoint to be heard or bad for democracy because it gives people with undemocratic ideas a platform. Tocqueville, on the other hand, is generally a fan of democracy, but his is a cautious enthusiasm, always ready to point out the pitfalls along the way and perhaps more surprisingly, never willing to just say aristocracies are terrible.

One of the pitfalls Tocqueville emphasizes repeatedly, and in fact devotes the final fifty pages of the book to, is the way equality threatens both liberty and general greatness in democracies. This is not a Harrison Bergeron-type argument, but more like a logical progression: more equality means people are less likely to achieve lofty ambitions, which means they’re less likely to dream of them, and consequently less likely to be high-minded about anything, including silly trifles like freedom. He also believes that enforcing equality tends to centralize power, which intrinsically threatens personal freedom.

Which brings me to one of the misconceptions I had when I started this book: I was under the impression it was a travelogue with some political science thrown in. I knew Democracy in America was popular with at least some portions of the right, and I thought it was because it was essentially a love letter extolling both the physical majesty of our land and its great democratic virtues. There is some of that, but I think conservative folk also appreciate this book because it warns against the evils of governmental overreach. In fact, one of the few areas where I completely disagree with Tocqueville is his belief that judges should be elected in order to keep one branch of government from being beholden to another. I think this is a terrible idea because I favor judicial continuity. Also, in his chapters on the military Tocqueville talks about the desirability of war under certain circumstances. No, just no.

But all my disagreements are trivial when compared to my admiration for the work as a whole and my awe at the hundred-page “three races” section that wraps up the first volume. Let me see if I can set the scene properly: for 350 pages Tocqueville has, with some reservations, waxed rhapsodic about how successful America has been at implementing a law-based, fully participatory, generally peaceful democracy. Then he stops in his tracks to say that all of it is a lie if one considers the circumstances of Native Americans and black people.

I don’t think I can do justice to the heartbreaking way he describes the treatment of Native Americans, but I will note its prescience. In 1835 many white people in the United States probably thought deporting Indians to the west was a humane solution, a way to keep the peace between two clashing cultures. Alexis de Tocqueville calls it genocide, the first step toward eradicating a people and their culture.

As for Africans, even before the three races section Tocqueville takes some pains to say, “This description I’m giving of a town-hall-based democracy made up of small landholders and petty bourgeoisie applies mostly to the Northeast. The Southern states are different.” When he finally addresses the elephant in the room, it’s not waved off as a “peculiarity” or difference in local customs. The enslavement of Africans in the South is incompatible with the American character Tocqueville admires not only because it spits in the face of equal rights, but because it denigrates useful work as something only subhumans are fit to perform. What I found particularly damning was Tocqueville’s assertion that black people in the North weren’t faring much better, because the color of their skin made them somehow slave-adjacent. In other words, even if the chains were off, the taint of unworthiness remained.

So even if you don’t read the entire book, I highly recommend Some Considerations Concerning the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States (or whatever this chapter is titled in your particular translation from the original French). If you’re an American it’s unlikely to be a feel-good read, but I think it’s invaluable to see the worst sins of our history through the clear eyes of a gifted writer who didn’t have a personal stake in them.

*Actually this review ended up being a little shorter than the one I did for Addiction is a Choice.

lost years of my life reading this book, but probably my favorite read out of all the assigned readings in my government class.

This is the book Norman Mailer wanted to (but didn't) write !

Incredibly insightful perspective. Most of the insights remain relevant today, some strikingly so. Must read for anyone with an interest in American politics.

Democracy in America on and off read for historical value not literary. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American prison system. In his later letters Tocqueville indicates that he and Beaumont used their official business as a pretext to study American society instead

Witticisms like

the lower classes of society ... what they always lack, more or less, is the art of judging the means, even while sincerely wishing the end

and its related One must not conceal from oneself that democratic institutions develop the sentiment of envy in the human heart to a very high degree. It is not so much because they offer to each the means of becoming equal to others, but because this means constantly fail those who employ them (...) Every day this complete equality eludes the hands of the people at the moment when they believe they have seized it.

are the signature of a perceptive, even clairboyant observer.

The book was written toward 1830. The United States were consolidating themselves, showing the first signs of their united and developing potentials. But Tocqueville foresees many of the events and developments that would take place, even to the present demise of their empire. The analysis is sociological, people-oriented. Enough pages are devoted to the political landscape, to the form of government, the judiciary, the laws and mores of society, above all the outstanding role played by faith among the American people, as a defining feature of their character. Never boring, always engrossing through sheer perceptiveness, when we come to realize today how prescient he was.

Tocqueville compares the US of the 1830s to the Europe of the same time, but more specifically to his France. Democracy in the States was a novel form of government. He makes it clear that it is not so much the novelty of its system of government that works, providing peace and prosperity to a people, as it was the core beliefs and mores of that transplanted people into a new territory blessed by natural resources and a common faith. America as a unique land of immigrants who had left their country not precisely for touristic purposes but to make a living, to survive, in peace and independence: basically America was made up by people who wanted to be left alone by the government. They wanted to take the reigns of their own destiny, with all the risks entailed. Tocqueville cleverly notes that the same system of government played out in Europe is not a safe guarantee of its success becuase the characters of their populations are different.

Tocqueville also realizes that nothing is static, that just as the country grows and prospers, its population also evolves, its classes will change along with their conditions, spiritual and material. He is so prescient in this particular premoniton that it almost feels eerie. What we came to know as the tycoons of late nineteenth century America, he already noticed in 1830, and identified, of course, as the manufacturing aristocracy:

I think that all in all, the manufacturing aristocracy that we see rising before our eyes is one of the hardest that has appeared on earth; but it is at the same time one of the most restrained and least dangerous … if ever permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy are introduced anew into the world, one can predict that they will enter by this door.

The danger that Tocqueville tries to point out is not in the existence of an aristocracy in itself, but in the probability that this new class would want to resemble their European counterparts, become a sort of nobility, and leave the role of entrepreneur played so far and so well to a welfare state:

the manufacturing aristocracy of our day, after having impoverished and brutalized the men whom it uses, leaves them to be nourished by public charity in times of crisis.

The USA has in fact reached this point of no return a good long time ago. The whole Federal government is pretty much a bureau for the dispensing of charity to the losers of the American dream, or those who'd rather not dream at all. Of course Europe cannot even say that we ever were anything but leeches to the prosperity engendered by American capitalism, and saved from totalitarianism by their very red American blood.

The book should be a mandatory read in all American shools, if only to let them see how far they have come from their forebears, and to be ashamed of it.

A very deep philosophical book. The writing is a good glimpse into the time the author was living in. The author made some predictions that came true.

Despite the higher hopes I had for this historical expository work, I was disappointed in the end. While I did go from understanding less to understanding more, I feel it is because of the negative aspect of understanding of the book’s weaknesses more than the positive aspect of accepting the book on the strengths of its arguments. Besides being a contender for the number one misquoted book of all time, I will look upon those spouting even accurate quotes from DIA with much suspicion.

Tocqueville’s concept of individualism is interesting, but I am not sure the strengths of its features or the potential fears he warns of are due the concern he grants them. Just as in true tyrannical and despotic states, there will always be causes for political activism of all varieties and the people to fight for them, these are able to flourish best in a democracy. Tocqueville almost makes it seem as if the citizens of a democracy are doomed to becoming like the Eloi from H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, the childlike happy people, who instead of speak a simple language and are mainly interested in playfulness, Americans are made an average people that are mainly interested in material well-being.

I also have problems with the importance assigned to the role of religion. Throughout the book, Tocqueville makes the spurious mistake of asserting the spirit of American independence was born out of the famously independent Christian expressions, especially the Puritan/Protestant sects. He consistently failed to grasp it was the independent mind longing for freedom and equality that formed both the so called “independent” Christian sects as well as the independent American spirit. Instead he confounds equality, liberty, and democracy with Christianity, just as he rightly accuses most Americans of doing.

The biggest problem with the work is the armchair feel of his philosophical analysis and the generalities he employs in describing democracy in America. The work is long on hypotheses and short on evidence and examples that demonstrate those hypotheses. It must of course be admitted that history shows some of these bore fruit, but many are generalities lacking detail, nuance, and evidence and are thus dangerous concepts as a basis for action. While at times the paradigms may be useful for contemplation of democracy in American, I am highly suspicious of how far they can be rightly applied.

A really excellent biography of the USA. Highly recommended.

One of the most pivotal books in my college education. It got me to start rethinking the concept of prisons and mass incarceration in America.

Have to eventually read this, of course.

Just a note, for now. I was reading about some essay on The Economist, and one of the comments quoted from de Tocqueville. The comment, below, reminded me of one of the reasons I’m somewhat pessimistic about America’s future as Aquinas’ “city on a hill”.

The foundation of New England was a novel spectacle, and all the circumstances attending it were singular and original. […]
  The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New England all belonged to the more independent classes of their native country. Their union on the soil of America at once presented the singular phenomenon of a society containing neither lords nor common people, neither rich nor poor. These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our own time. All, without a single exception, had received a good education, and many of them were known in Europe for their talents and their acquirements. The other colonies had been founded by adventurers without family; the emigrants of New England brought with them the best elements of order and morality, they landed in the desert accompanied by their wives and children. But what most especially distinguished them was the aim of their undertaking. They had not been obliged by necessity to leave their country, the social position they abandoned was one to be regretted, and their means of subsistence were certain. Nor did they cross the Atlantic to improve their situation, or to increase their wealth; the call which summoned them from the comforts of their homes was purely intellectual; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of exile, their object was the triumph of an idea.
— [Page 31, Democracy In America, Alexis De Tocqueville; via google books]

What de Tocqueville recognized was the incredible exceptionalism of America’s founders, and their immediate lineage.

Beyond that, the United States has had a few other important sources of differentiation.

First, the land was — for their intents and purposes — empty (the annihilation of the native Americans is of utmost importance, but not central to this analysis). A historically unprecedented amount of land and resources was very quickly translated into a wealthy and powerful country, one still united in its self-identity, not riven by zero-sum contests of acquisition.

Second, at the same time the industrial revolution was the cause of an increasing number of those same zero-sum contests of acquisition in Europe, so the peaceful growth of the United States was even more dramatic in comparison.

In the centuries since then, the United States has become “normal”, just like other developed countries. We now fight with each other roughly to the same degree as any other developed country. In the decades since the end of WWII, the United States has spent incredible sums as the hegemon, both wisely and foolishly. Even though it should have been apparent years ago that the country can no longer afford to exercise this role — in fiscal or repetitional terms — the belief in America’s “mission” forces continuing impoverishment.

Samuel Johnson claimed that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”, but what is of equal concern today is that patriotism is beggaring the country.