Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 10 - November 26, 2017
Tocqueville remains to this day the classic chronicler of this historical moment in the West, which he, in fact, labeled as the transition from the aristocratic era to the democratic, the former characterized by respect for rank, the latter by the end of privilege based on birth.
Under the title Napoleon III, he set about crafting the first modern dictatorship, rooted in popular support—just as Tocqueville had foreseen in Democracy in America.
Democracy in America is a protean text, capable of being stretched and adapted to serve just about everyone.
Of all the novel things which attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of social conditions.
So already, this book is suspect -- there's no equality in a society with slavery
The gradual unfurling of equality in social conditions is, therefore, a providential fact which reflects its principal characteristics; it is universal, it is lasting and it constantly eludes human interference; its development is served equally by every event and every human being.
An obscure tradition, although one widely known to the majority of the Indian tribes of the Atlantic seaboard, informs us that, once upon a time, the settlement of these same races had been situated to the west of the Mississippi.
All the immigrants spoke the same language, all were children of the same people.
patently false
By contrast, the wealthy man always evades prison in civil matters.
The picture of American society is, if I may put it this way, overlaid with a democratic patina beneath which we see from time to time the former colors of the aristocracy showing through.
Thus, in France, central government lends its officers to the township; in America the township lends its civil servants to the central government, which alone shows how different these two societies are.
Within its restricted limits, the power granted to American courts to pronounce on the constitutionality of laws remains still one of the most powerful barriers ever erected against the tyranny of political assemblies.
Separated by 2,800 miles of sea from their enemies, aided by a powerful ally, the United States owed victory more to their geographical position than to the courage of their armies or to the patriotism of their citizens.
The assembly which was responsible for the drafting of the second constitution, though small in number,4 contained the finest minds and the noblest characters that had ever emerged in the New World.
All the states are young; they are close to one another; their customs, ideas, and needs are the same;
Slavery?
The policy of the Americans toward the world at large is simple; it might almost be said that no one needs them and they need no one.
When, after scrutinizing the organization of the Supreme Court, we come to consider the whole body of powers granted to it, we easily discover that never has a more powerful judiciary been established in any nation.
The American states which united in 1789 agreed not only that the federal government dictated laws but also that it executed those laws itself.
I have previously mentioned that all the states of the Union had adopted universal suffrage.
hardly universal
Despotism certainly brings ruin to men, more by preventing them from producing than by taking away the fruits of their labors; it dries up the source of wealth while it often respects wealth once acquired.
Since that period, the United States has not had to sustain a single serious war.
War of 1812?
The great privilege enjoyed by Americans is, therefore, not only to be more enlightened than other peoples but also to have the capacity to repair their mistakes.
There is nothing more irksome in the conduct of life than the irritable patriotism Americans have.
It cannot be repeated too often: nothing is more fertile in wondrous effects than the art of being free but nothing is harder than freedom’s apprenticeship. The same is not true of tyranny, which often advertises itself as the cure of all sufferings, the supporter of just rights, the upholder of the oppressed and the founder of order. Nations are lulled to sleep amid the brief period of prosperity it produces and when they do wake up, wretched they are indeed. On the other hand, freedom is usually born in stormy weather, growing with great difficulty amid civil disturbances. Only when it is
...more
I know of no country where there is generally less independence of thought and real freedom of debate than in America.
spurious
Strictly speaking, it was still an empty continent, a deserted land waiting to be inhabited.
Patently false
Three factors seem to contribute more than all the others to the maintenance of a democratic republic in the New World.
If the mind of the Americans were free of all shackles, one would soon encounter among them the boldest innovators and the most relentless logicians in the world.
Religion, which never interferes directly in the government of Americans, should therefore be regarded as the first of their political institutions, for, if it does not give them the taste for liberty, it enables them to take unusual advantage of it.
To each of them I expressed my astonishment and revealed my doubts: my view was that all these men agreed with each other except over details; but they all attributed the peaceful influence exercised by religion over their country principally to the separation of Church and state. I assert confidently that, during my stay in America, I did not meet a single man, priest or layman, who did not agree about that.
Unbelief is an accident; faith is the only permanent state of mankind.
An American gains his knowledge of the laws from his participation in legislation: he becomes educated about the formalities of government from governing.
a bond of affection linked in this case the oppressed and the oppressors, and nature’s efforts to draw them close made even more striking the wide gap between them caused by prejudice and law.
Such is the Indians’ language; what they say is true and what they foresee seems to me inevitable.
I see slavery in retreat but the prejudice which arises from it has not moved at all.
Were I inclined to pursue this parallel, I could easily demonstrate that almost all the observable differences in character between northerners and southerners have their roots in slavery; but that would divert me from my subject.
Interim measures seem to me likely to end shortly in the most horrific of all civil wars and possibly in the ruin of one or other of the two races.
Men have the same ideas about freedom and equality;
no
The answer is easy: the South, which has supplied four Presidents,75 which realizes today that federal power is slipping away, which sees an annual decrease in the number of its representatives in Congress and an increase in those from the North and West, is peopled by ardent and angry men whose frustration and restlessness are evident.
One can foresee that peoples under democratic rule will not easily believe in messages from a divine source and will willingly laugh at new prophets since they will wish to choose the main arbiter for their beliefs within, and not beyond, the bounds of human understanding.
And that Mormon thing?
Jesus Christ had to come into the world to reveal that all members of the human race were similar and equal by nature.
Well nice in theory
I meet an American sailor and ask him why his country’s vessels are constructed to last for so short a time; he answers with no hesitation that the art of navigation is making such rapid progress that the finest ship would soon outlive its usefulness if it extended its life more than a few years.
Scarcely a single pioneer’s cabin is without a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log house.
I readily admit that Americans have no poets; I could not possibly allow that they have no poetic ideas.
Proof that most of his theorizing makes no sense
Such things are not intrinsically poetic and anyway would cease to be so because they are too familiar to all who might be addressed by the poet.
He is so tiresome
I doubt whether men were more virtuous in aristocratic times than in others, but they certainly referred constantly to the beauties of virtue; only secretly did they examine its usefulness.
Day by day, he gains in skill but is less industrious; one may say that as he, the workman, improves, so does he, the man, lose his self-respect.
Thus, as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, the particular class which runs industry becomes more aristocratic.
However, this is the direction in which the friends of democracy should constantly fix their anxious gaze; for if ever aristocracy and the permanent inequality of social conditions were to infiltrate the world once again, it is predictable that this is the door by which they would enter.
But the role of Slavery can’t be overlooked
Thus Americans do not believe that men and women have the duty or the right to perform the same things but they show the same regard for the role played by both and they consider them as equal
