But what disturbed Tocqueville was the way in which, in the United States, people of no distinction, in terms of education, skill, experience or talent, would refuse to defer to what Tocqueville called their ‘natural superiors’, as he put it. They were inspired – he believed – by an unwillingness to bow before any kind of authority. They refused to think that someone could be better than them just because they had trained to be a doctor, studied the law for two decades or had written some good books.
