The idea of “social state” means that regimes do not have control over their pasts, although Tocqueville admits that the illiberality of Puritan democracy had to be addressed later on and was indeed reformed. In any case the Puritan point of departure seems to have an artificial clarity since Tocqueville does not go back to examine the social state that produced it. And he says expressly that Puritans were not the only first Americans; he has chosen them as the most significant.
