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This freedom, dangerous as it is, nevertheless offers guarantees on one point: in the country where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factious persons, but no conspirators.
Most Europeans still see in association a weapon of war
This is not the manner in which the right of association is understood in the United States.
Political associations in the United States are therefore peaceful in their objects and legal in their means;
The difference
due to several causes.
The exercise of the right of association, therefore, becomes dangerous to the degree to which it is impossible for great parties to become the majority. In a country like the United States, in which opinions differ only by nuances, the right of association can remain so to speak without limits.
The English, who are divided among themselves in such a profound manner, rarely abuse the right of association because they have had a longer use of it.
But of all the causes that cooperate in the United States to moderate the violence of political association, perhaps the most powerful is universal suffrage.
Thus it sometimes happens in the immense complication of human laws that extreme freedom corrects the abuses of freedom and that extreme democracy prevents the dangers of democracy.
Chapter 5 ON THE GOVERNMENT OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
in our day, in the United States, the most remarkable men are rarely called to public offices,
several causes of this phenomenon.
It is impossible, whatever one does, to raise the enlightenment of the people above a certain level.
they always lack, more or less, is the art of judging the means, even while sincerely wishing the end.
it is not always the capacity that democracy lacks for choosing men of merit, but the desire and the taste.
democratic institutions develop the sentiment of envy in the human heart to a very high degree.
Democratic institutions awaken and flatter the passion for equality without ever being able to satisfy it entirely.
In general, one remarks that everything that rises without their support obtains their favor only with difficulty.
While the natural instincts of democracy bring the people to keep distinguished men away from power, an instinct no less strong brings the latter to distance themselves from a political career, in which it is so difficult for them to remain completely themselves and to advance without debasing themselves.
ON THE CAUSES THAT CAN IN PART CORRECT THESE INSTINCTS OF DEMOCRACY
There are certain laws whose nature is democratic and which nonetheless succeed in part in correcting these dangerous instincts of democracy.
Why is the elite of the nation found in this chamber rather than in the other? Why are so many vulgar elements gathered in the first assembly when the second seems to have the monopoly on talents and enlightenment?
I see only a single fact that explains it: the election that produces the House of Representatives is direct; that from which the Senate emanates is subject to two stages.
I see in the electoral double stage the sole means of putting the use of political freedom within the reach of all classes of the people.
INFLUENCE THAT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY EXERTS ON ELECTORAL LAWS
When election comes only at long intervals, the state runs a risk of being overturned in each election.
When elections succeed each other rapidly, their frequency keeps a feverish movement going in society and maintains public affairs in a state of continuous volatility.
ON PUBLIC OFFICIALS UNDER THE EMPIRE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
In the eyes of democracy, government is not a good; it is a necessary evil.
Officials themselves sense perfectly well that they have only obtained the right to be placed above others by their power on the condition that they descend to the level of all by their manners.
None of the public officials in the United States has a uniform, but all receive a wage.
I regard the complete absence of unpaid offices as one of the most visible signs of the absolute empire that democracy exercises in America.
If in democratic states all citizens can obtain posts, all are not tempted to solicit them.
In the United States, it is people moderate in their desires who involve themselves in the twists and turns of politics. Great talents and great passions generally turn away from power in order to pursue wealth;
It is to these causes as much as to the bad choices of democracy that one must attribute the great number of vulgar men who occupy public offices.
ON THE ARBITRARINESS OF MAGISTRATES
two kinds of governments under which there is much arbitrariness mixed with the action of magistrates; it is so under the absolute government of one alone and under the government of democracy.
comes from nearly analogous causes.
In despotic ...
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Since the sovereign always holds in his hands the lives, the fortunes, and sometimes the honor of the men he employs, he thinks he has nothing to fear from them, and he allows them great freedom of action because he belie...
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In democracies, the majority, being able to take power each year out of the hands in which it had entrusted it, also does not fear that it may be abused against itself.
ADMINISTRATIVE INSTABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES
democracy, pushed to its final limits, harms progress in the art of governing. In this regard it suits a people whose administrative education is already accomplished better than a people new to the experience of affairs.
Democratic government, which is founded on an idea so simple and natural, nevertheless always supposes the existence of a very civilized and very learned society.
ON PUBLIC COSTS UNDER THE EMPIRE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
despotism ruins men more by preventing them from producing than by taking the fruits of production away from them;
What is important
is to compare free peoples among themselves,
It seems to me that among free governments, government of the middle classes will be, I shall not say the most enlightened, nor above all the most generous, but the most economical.
