A few years ago I went on a Brown (University) excursion to
Concord Massachusetts led by Brown Professor of history Kenneth Sacks. He
trained in the classics but teaches their influence on American history.
In a brief conversation I had with him he said that de
Tocqueville was the Thucydides of American history. If you have an argument
about Greek history and can defend your position by quoting Thucydides you win
the argument. He said that the same can be said of American history with de
Tocqueville.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal text is, of course,
Democracy in America, which is in fact, like Don Quixote, two books. De
Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who in 1831 traveled to the United States
ostensibly to study the American prison system. He was here for 9 months and
took extensive notes. In 1835 he
published Democracy in America (what turned out to be Volume I) which was a
comprehensive survey of the new republic’s origins and its political, and
social institutions.
De Tocqueville first considers the substrate out of which
the United States grew. He considers the
geography, the Anglican predispositions and temperament, and the social
conditions that gave rise to the democratic intuitions that spread through the
colonies. He makes the case that it was
the unique contribution of all three of these factors that allowed democracy to
take root here.
He then goes on to describe how government at the local then
state then federal level works not merely as a sterile civic lesson but in the
real world as American responded to and shaped these institutions. What was striking to me about this was how we
interface with these same institutions as our forefathers did 180 years
ago. For the most part de Tocqueville is
quite impressed with what he sees and I for one come away with a sense of pride
in this nation of which I am a part.
However, he ends Volume I with a chapter, The
Present And Probable Future Condition Of The Three Races That Inhabit The
Territory Of The United States, which could be subtitled America’s Dirty Little Secret. In
this chapter, the longest in either volume, he delineates our deplorable
relations with blacks and Indians, the enormity of the problem, and its
intractability. With copious notes and statistics and poignant anecdotes the
lays bare the problem at the time and presciently predicts the future that awaited our country.
Volume II was written five years later in 1840 with an entirely
different purpose and an entirely different format. De Tocqueville firmly believed that democracy
was coming to a country you will be living in.
“ . . . the democratic revolution
which we are witnessing is an irresistible fact against which it would be
neither desirable nor wise to struggle . . .”[1]
That
said there are downsides as well as upsides to this inexorable march of
democracy and the purpose of Volume II is, using America as an example, to
outline how democracy will both positively and negatively effect the thoughts,
feelings, and manners of people who adopt democracy.
Volume
II is laid out in four Books, each with as many as 26 chapters. However, each of these chapters is no longer
than 12 pages (most 5 pages or less) and each is really a self-contained essay
that gives a rather accurate snapshot of some aspect of the how life will
change when democratic institutions are adopted. He predicts “fake news”. He describes the
“Rat Race”. He worries that we will
reach a place where people end up “talking without speaking; hearing without
listening”. Nearly all of the changes good and bad are the result of moving
from societies that are static and hierarchical to ones that are ever changing
and egalitarian (or at least perceived to be so by those who live in it.)
He
is not trying to denigrate democracy he is trying to paint an honest picture of
it. As he says, “ . . . it is because I am not an adversary of democracy, that I have
sought to speak of democracy in all sincerity.
I was persuaded that many would take upon themselves to announce the new
blessings which the principle of equality promises to mankind, but that few
would dare to point out from afar the dangers with which it threatens them. To
those perils therefore I have turned my chief attention, and believing that I
had discovered them clearly, I have not had the cowardice to leave them
untold.”[2]
De Tocqueville is a brilliant writer and thinker and
particularly in Volume II he is so accessible because you can pick nearly any
chapter and in a few pages treat yourself to the writing of a great thinker and
get new insights into how the world we are living in works and how we got here.
Below is a link to to the entire text as well as a partial list of chapters, all in
Volume II, I found most illuminating.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/toc_indx.html
Book 1 Chapter XL
Book 1 Chapter XVII
Book 2 Chapter XIII
Book 3 Chapter I
Book 4 Chapter VI
