Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
In 1831, a French nobleman named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States for a nine-month visit and examination of the country’s penal system. His travels took him to many states and to a meeting with President Andrew Jackson, “a man of violent character and middling capacity,” Tocqueville declared. His observations of American life, its people, and of the state of its democracy became the subject of his work, Democracy in America, published in two parts in 1835 and 1840. It remains one of the most insightful works ever written about America.
Tocqueville takes the reader through a series of observations about America. His themes remain constant. America has a unique culture and people who he believes are best positioned to counteract what he says is the “soft despotism” of the administrative state that was found throughout France and Europe at the time. He argues what makes America unique are several factors, including a decentralized administration, local self-government, civil associations, a free press, and its adherence to religion and family.
He viewed America with amazement. “I confess that in America I saw more than America: I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions,” he wrote. The fast pace of American life also made an impression. “No sooner do you set foot upon the American soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult…Everything in motion around you.”
Tocqueville spends time addressing the concept of equality in America. Equality for Americans means the equality of living in a free society, not equality with forced economic or social outcomes. He compares this definition of equality to socialist thinking. “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.”
A Map of America in 1830
It made an impression on Tocqueville how strong the sovereignty of the people was in America. “The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them.”
What also made an impression on Tocqueville was how local and decentralized government administration was. As he came to study the penal system, he noticed each jurisdiction’s procedures pertaining to the administration of justice varied. He discussed the constitutional framework of federalism and the division of powers built into the Constitution. He admired that Americans formed associations among themselves outside the scope of government to solve problems within their communities and to help individuals stay connected to one another.
For Tocqueville, an important part of how a country should be measured is the kind of citizens it produces. He came away impressed with Americans in large part because of their religiosity. He states that America’s adherence to religion is important for democracy to prosper because it acts as a moral guide that would otherwise be lacking. “Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention.” He continues, “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
Tocqueville touches upon a variety of aspects of life in America, from its people to its institutions, to the culture at large. He spends time discussing two aspects of life in 1830’s America – slavery and the Native American population. He makes the observation comparing the states of Kentucky and Ohio, one slave and the other free. Although the climate is the same, Tocqueville observed that Ohio, as a free state, was brimming with life and growth while Kentucky was not. He points out that slavery was keeping Kentucky from prospering like its northern neighbor. He also witnessed the forced movement of Native Americans to the west and acknowledged that the future for Native Americans would be difficult.
Ultimately, one of the most important overall observations Tocqueville makes about America is whether it can withstand what he calls the administrative state that had overtaken his native France, something Tocqueville believes is destructive to democracy. He calls administrative state control over citizens “an immense tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate.” He continues, “each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” Finally, Tocqueville warns there is acceptance by the citizens of this tutelary power even in a democracy. “They console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians….free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.”
He concludes with the idea that the unique attributes of America discussed earlier in his work gives America the best chance to overcome the destructive elements of the administrative state. Whether Americans have been sufficiently diligent in heeding Tocqueville’s warnings about the administrative state remains an open question.
Alexis de Tocqueville served as a deputy in the French assembly and later as foreign minister to Louis Napoleon. In 1856, he published a history of modern France entitled, The Old Regime and the French Revolution. He planned further volumes of this work but died from tuberculosis in 1859 at fifty-three.
Tocqueville’s observations in Democracy in America ring as true today as they did when he wrote them in the 1830s. It is one of the more widely quoted books ever written about America. Below are a few of the quotes from Tocqueville’s work:
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather by equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
“It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”
“The more government takes the place of associations, the more will the individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help.”
“Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and the founder of order.”
“Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.”
“The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.”
“There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.”
“Nothing is more powerful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”
“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.”
“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul.”
“There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult – to begin a war and to end it.”
“A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.”
“…that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak.”
“As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment.”
Recommended Reading:
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville