On Democracy in America

I am sharing things I found insightful or noteworthy in Alexis Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” published in 1835. His account of American culture and politics remains relevant to this day; many of the institutions he describes are largely unchanged, and his perspective gives us a time-marked account of people and politics in the world, providing a resource to study both the researcher and the subject. Lastly, his concerns of mob rule have never been more apt. Note: his views on Native Americans, Black People, and notions of “civilized/uncivilized” societies are racist. I have not shared them here for obvious reasons.

Background

After spending nine months in America, a French aristocrat by the name of Alexis De Tocqueville wrote a book on America that became the standard source for generalizing about American politics, culture, and society for almost two centuries.

The book is useful for two reasons: many of what he described has not changed, and much of what he predicts has not yet come to pass. Both aspects are worth discussing.

Tocqueville believed America was an example to learn from, for both good and evil. “There is one country in the world where the great social revolution that I am speaking of seems to have nearly reached its natural limits.” Where democracy has “been able to spread in perfect freedom and peaceably to determine the character of the laws by influencing the manners of the country.”

In describing American politics, Tocqueville argued that American culture had as much to do, if not more, with American democracy as its democratic institutions did. In fact, the word “individualism” first entered the English language through Reeve’s translation of this text. The word was not used pejoratively as it is today — but described a detachment from community that allows one to seek purpose and happiness.

And while it may not make headways today, he presented his arguments through the lens of God consciousness: “I cannot believe that the Creator made man to leave him in an endless struggle with the intellectual wretchedness that surrounds us. God destines a calmer and a more certain future to the communities of Europe. I am ignorant of his designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than his justice.”

A timeline of relevant events

• 1492: Columbus sets sail
• 1600s: First British colonies
• 1776: Declaration of independence
• 1787: Drafting the Constitution / French Revolution
• 1789: Bill of Rights
• 1790’s — 1812: The Napoleonic Wars
• 1805: Tocqueville is born
• 1829 — 1837: Andrew Jackson’s presidency
• 1831: Tocqueville Travels to America
• 1835: Democracy in America, Volume I is published
• 1848: The French Revolution of 1848
• 1859: Tocqueville dies
• 1860–1865: American Civil War

The following excerpts are organized under topical headings. I try to give a sense of his arguments through his own words guided by themes I gleamed from the text.

Tocqueville’s Purpose for Writing the Book

He warned that the old political systems of Europe are dying

• “The spell of royalty is broke, but it has not been succeeded by the majesty of the laws. The people have learned to despise all authority, but they still fear it; and fear now extorts more than was formerly paid from reverence and love.”
• “We have, then, abandoned whatever advantages the old state of things afforded, without receiving any compensation from our present condition; we have destroyed an aristocracy, and we seem inclined to survey its ruins with complacency and to accept them.”

Since the old systems were dying, he argued Europe must become ready for democracy

• Democracy is coming to Europe. We (Europeans) must be ready to guide it. “The most powerful, the most intelligent, and the most moral classes of the nation have never attempted to control it in order to guide it. Democracy has consequently been abandoned to its wild instincts, and it has grown up like those children who have no parental guidance.”
• He argued that centuries of despotism in Europe made the people ill prepared to handle democracy: “The people, never having conceived the idea of a social condition different from their own, and never expecting to become equal to their leaders, received benefits from them without discussing their rights.”
• He believed in the moral arch of the universe bending towards equality and democracy: “In running over the pages of our history, we shall scarcely find a single great event of the last seven hundred years that has not promoted equality of condition.”
• “The gradual development of the principle of equality if, therefore, a providential fact.” “It has all the chief characteristics of such a fact: it is universal, it is lasting, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.” → Determinism
• He believed in a liner view of history. On transitioning to a democratic society, he argued: “The most democratic laws were consequently voted by the very men whose interests they impaired…When a nation begins to modify the elective qualification, it may easily be foreseen that sooner or later, that qualification will be entirely abolished. There is no more invariable rule in the history of society: the further electoral rights are extended, the greater is the need for extending them.”
• Legitimacy: “I can conceive of a society in which all men would feel an equal love and respect for the laws of which they consider themselves the authors; in which the authority of the government would be respected as necessary, and not divine; and in which the loyalty of the subject to the chief magistrate would not be a passion, but a quiet and rational persuasion.”

America, as an example to learn from

• “I am the opinion absolute perfection is rarely to be found in any system of laws.”
• “I am far from supposing that they [Americans] have chosen the only form of government which a democracy may adopt…my wish has been to find there instruction by which we may ourselves profit.”
• “I have sought to discovery the evils and the advantages” of democracy, and to examine “the safeguards used by the Americans to direct [democracy], as well as those that they have not adopted.”

What Made America Different

Origin Theory

He argued there was something different/unique about New England colonies. This is far too romantic/revisionist in my opinion, but it is worth noting:

• “America is the only country in which it has been possible to witness the natural and tranquil growth of society, and where the influence exercised on the future condition of states by their origin is clearly distinguishable.”
• “The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New England all belonged to the more independent classes of their native country. Their union on the soil of America at once presented the singular phenomenon of a society containing neither lords nor common people, and we may almost say neither rich nor poor. These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our own time. All, perhaps without a single exception, had received a good education, and many of them were known in Europe for their talents and their acquirements. The other colonies had been founded by adventurers without families; the immigrants of New England brought with them the best elements of order and morality; they landed on the desert coast accompanied by their wives and children.”
• “But what especially distinguished them from all others was the aim of their undertaking. They had not been obliged by necessity to leave their country; the social position they abandoned was one to be regretted, and their means of subsistence were certain. Nor did they cross the Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their wealth; it was a purely intellectual craving that called them from the comforts of their former homes.”
• “The English colonies (and this is one of the main causes of their prosperity) have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more political independence than the colonies of other nations; and this principle of liberty was nowhere more extensively applied than in the New England states.”

Religious Zealotry of Early Pilgrims

Despite their positive attributes, he highlighted and criticized their zealous practice of religion. He provided examples of many of the draconian laws they chose to live under.

• “In the name of God. Amen. We, whose names are underwritten…having undertaken for the glory of God, and advantage of the Christian Faith, and the honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia.”
• “The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and, strange to say, they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ. ‘Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord,’ says the preamble of the Code, shall surely be put to death.’ This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents was to be expiated by the same penalty. The legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus applied to an enlightened and moral community. The consequence was, that the punishment of death was rarely more frequently prescribed by statute, and never more rarely enforced.”
• “It must not be forgotten that these fantastic and oppressive laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the customs of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws. In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check the worldly luxury of long hair.”

But despite the religious zealotry, he argued they established really great laws

• “The general principles which are the groundwork of modern constitutions, principles which, in the seventeenth century, were imperfectly known in Europe, and not completely triumphant even in Great Britain, were all recognized and established by the laws of New England: the intervention of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of the agents of power, personal liberty, and trial by jury were all positively established without discussion.”
• “The boldest theories of the human mind were reduced to practice by a community so humble that not a statesmen condescended to attend to it; and a system of legislation without a precedent was produced offhand by the natural originality of men’s imaginations.”
• “nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people.”

Education

He argued that education was readily available in America more than anywhere on Earth. Though it was limited in its depth (producing exceptional people), he commended its breadth (equality of opportunity + proportion of people who completed primary school).

• “But it is by the mandates relating to public education that the original character of American civilization is at once placed in the clearest light. ‘Whereas,’ says the law, ‘Satan, the enemy of mankind, finds his strongest weapons in the ignorance of men, and whereas it is important that the wisdom of our fathers shall not remain buried in their tombs, and whereas the education of children is one of the prime concerns of the state, with the aid of the Lord. . . ‘Here follow clauses establishing schools in every township and obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to support them. Schools of a superior kind were founded in the same manner in the more populous districts. The municipal authorities were bound to enforce the sending of children to school by their parents; they were empowered to inflict fines upon all who refused compliance; and in cases of continued resistance, society assumed the place of the parent, took possession of the child, and deprived the father of those natural rights which he used to so bad a purpose. The reader will undoubtedly have remarked the preamble of these enactments: in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.”

Land

He argued that America protects property of individuals better than any nation/country in the world.

• “Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed down from generation to generation that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness; but unless those fortunes are territorial, there is no true aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the poor.”
• “The law of inheritance was the last step to equality. I am surprised that ancient and modern jurists have not attributed to this law a greater influence on human affairs.”
• “When the legislator has once regulated the law of inheritance, he may rest from his labor.”

The Virtues of the American System

One of his main arguments was that American culture influenced the political systems; I found this point fascinating, though I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced.

Good Social Condition

“Social condition is commonly the result of circumstances, sometimes of laws, oftener still of these two causes united; but when once stablished, it may justly be considered as itself the source of almost all the laws, the usages, and the ideas which regulate the conduct of nations: what it does not produce, it modifies.”

• “The social condition of the Americans is eminently democratic.”
• “In America, there are but few wealth persons; nearly all Americans have to take a profession.”
• “America, then, exhibits in her social state an extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country in the world, or in any agre of which history has preserved the remembrance.”
• “in the United States, the county and the township are always based upon the same principle: namely, that everyone is the best judge of what concerns himself alone, and the most proper person to supply his own wants.”

Police

He wrote some very interesting observations about the police system in the U.S., comparing it to Europe.

• “The European, accustomed to find a functionary always at hand to interfere with all he undertakes, reconciles himself with difficulty to the complex mechanism of the administration of the townships. In general it may be affirmed that the lesser details of the police, which render life easy and comfortable, are neglected in America, but that the essential guarantees of man in society are as strong there as elsewhere.”
• “In America the means that the authorities have at the-disposal for the discovery of crimes and the arrest of criminals are few. A state police does not exist, and passports are unknown. The criminal police of the United States cannot be compared with that of France; the magistrates and public agents are not numerous; they do not always initiate the measures for arresting the guilty; and the examinations of prisoners are rapid and oral. Yet I believe that in no country does crime more rarely elude punishment. The reason is that everyone conceives himself to be interested in furnishing evidence of the crime and in seizing the delinquent. During my stay in the United States I witnessed the spontaneous, formation of committees in a county for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime. In Europe a criminal is an unhappy man who is struggling for his life against the agents of power, while the people are merely a spectator of the conflict, in America he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.”
• “Why, then, does he obey society, and what are the natural limits of this obedience? Every individual is always supposed to be as well informed, as virtuous, and as strong as any of his fellow citizens. He obeys society, not because he is inferior to those who conduct it or because he is less capable than any other of governing himself, but because he acknowledges the utility of an association with his fellow men and he knows that no such association can exist without a regulating force. He is a subject in all -that concerns the duties of citizens to each other; he is free, and responsible to God alone, for all that concerns himself. Hence arises the maxim, that everyone is the best and sole judge of his his own private interest, and that society has no right to control a man’s actions unless they are prejudicial to the common weal or unless the common weal demands his help. This doctrine is universally admitted in the United States.”

He argued that distributed power creates a sense of ownership over law

• “Centralized administration is fit only to enervate the nations in which it exists, by incessantly diminishing their local spirit. But in the United States the centralization of the government is perfect; and it would be easy to prove that the national power is more concentrated there than it has ever been in the old nations of Europe.”
• “In the United States, it is believed, and with truth, that patriotism is a kind of devotion which is strengthened by ritual observance.”
• “it is not the administrative, but the political effects of decentralization that I most admire in America. In the United States the interests of the country are everywhere kept in view; they are an object of solicitude to the people of the whole Union, and every citizen is as warmly attached to them as if they were his own. He takes pride in the glory of his nation; he boasts of its success, to which he conceives himself to have contributed; and he rejoices in the general prosperity by which he profits. The feeling he entertains towards the state is analogous to that which unites him to his family, and it is by a kind of selfishness that he interests himself in the welfare of his country. To the European, a public officer represents a superior force; to an American, he represents a right. In America, then, it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and to law. If the opinion that the citizen entertains of himself is exaggerated, it is at least salutary; he unhesitatingly confides in his own powers, which appear to him to be all-sufficient.
• “To the European, a public officer represents a superior force; to an American, he represents a right. In America, then, it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and to law. If the opinion that the citizen entertains of himself is exaggerated, it is at least salutary; he unhesitatingly confides in his own powers, which appear to him to be all-sufficient.
• “There are two methods of diminishing the force of authority in a nation. The first is to weaken the supreme power in its very principle, by forbidding or preventing society from acting in its own defense under certain circumstances. To weaken authority in this manner is the European way of establishing freedom. The second manner of diminishing the influence of authority does not consist in stripping society of some of its rights, nor in paralyzing its efforts, but in distributing the exercise of its powers among various hands and in multiplying functionaries, to each of whom is given the degree of power necessary for him to perform his duty. There may be nations whom this distribution of social powers might lead to anarchy, but in itself it is not anarchical. The authority thus divided is, indeed, rendered less irresistible and less perilous, but it is not destroyed.”

Comments on the Judicial System

• “an elective authority that is not subject to judicial power will sooner or later either elude all control or be destroyed”
• “Judicial habits do not render men especially fitted for the exercise of administrative authority.”

Comments on the Legislative System

• “The only advantages that result from the present constitution of the two houses in the United States are the division of the legislative power, and the consequent check upon political movements”

Criticisms of American System

Money bail punishes the poor

• “The civil and criminal procedure of the Americans has only two means of action, committal or bail. The first act of the magistrate is to exact security from the defendant or, in case of refusal, to incarcerate him; the ground of the accusation and the importance of the charges against him are then discussed.”
• “It is evident that such a legislation is hostile to the poor and favorable only to the rich. The poor man has not always security to produce, even in a civil case; and if he is obliged to wait for justice in prison, he is speedily reduced to distress. A wealthy person, on the contrary, always escapes imprisonment in civil cases; nay, more, if he has committed a crime, he may readily elude punishment by breaking his bail. Thus all the penalties of the law are, for him, reduced to fines. Nothing can be more aristocratic than this system of legislation.”
• “Yet in America it is the poor who make the law, and they usually reserve the greatest advantages of society to themselves. The explanation of the phenomenon is to be found in England; the laws of which I speak are English, and the Americans have retained them, although repugnant to the general tenor of their legislation and the mass of their ideas.”

Bad social condition

• “I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.” → Retort: “But wealth circulates with inconceivable rapidity, and experience shows that it is rare to find two succeeding generations in the full enjoyment of it.”

• “Primary instruction is within the reach of everybody; superior instruction is scarcely to be obtained by any.”
• “The Americans can devote to general education only the early years of life. At fifteen they enter upon their calling, and thus their education generally ends at the age when ours begins. If it is continued past that point, it aims towards a particular specialize and profitable purpose; one studies science as one takes up a business; and one takes up only those applications who immediate practically is recognized.”

• “In America most of the rich were formally poor; most of those who now enjoy leisure were absorbed in business during their youth; the consequence of this is that when they might have had a taste for studty, they had no time for it, and when the time is at their disposal, they have no longer the inclination.”

Lawyers have too much sway

• “Next to its habits the thing which a nation is least apt to change is its civil legislation. Civil laws are familiarly known only to lawyers, whose direct interest it is to maintain them as they are, whether good or bad, simply because they themselves are conversant with them. The bulk of the nation is scarcely acquainted with them; it sees their action only in particular cases, can with difficulty detect their tendency, and obeys them without thought.”
• “I have quoted one instance where it would have been easy to adduce many others. The picture of American society has, if I may so speak, a surface covering of democracy, beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep out.”
• “It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, more social obligations were there imposed upon him than anywhere else.”
• “In no country in the world does law hold so absolute a language as in America; and in no country is the right of applying it vested in so many hands.”

Faceless decentralized administration

• “The system of decentralized administration produces several different effects in America. The Americans seem to me to have overstepped the limits of sound policy in isolating the administration of the government; for order, even in secondary affairs, is a matter of national importance. As the state has no administrative functionaries of its own, stationed on different points of its territory, to whom it can give a common impulse, the consequence is that it rarely attempts to issue any general police regulations.”
• “The want of these regulations is severely felt and is frequently observed by Europeans. The appearance of disorder which prevails on the surface leads one at first to imagine that society is in a state of anarchy; nor does one perceive one’s mistake till one has gone deeper into the subject. Certain undertakings are of importance to the whole state; but they cannot be put in execution, because there is no state administration to direct them. Abandoned to the exertions of the towns or counties, under the care of elected and temporary agents, they lead to no result, or at least to no durable benefit.”
• “In no country in the world does law hold so absolute a language as in America; and in no country is the right of applying it vested in so many hands. The administrative power in the United States presents nothing either centralized or hierarchical in its constitution; this accounts for its passing unperceived. But power exists, buts its representative is nowhere to be seen. Thus, in the United States, government authority, anxious to keep out of sight, hides itself under forms of a judicial sentence; and its influence is at the same time fortified by that irresistible power which men attribute to the formalities of law.”
• “Nothing is more striking to a European traveler in the United States than the absence of what we term the government, or the administration.”

On Politics in General

Partisanship

• “In the heat of the struggle each partisan is hurried beyond the natural limits of his opinions by the doctrines and the excesses of his opponents, until he loses sight of the end of his exertions, and holds forth in a way which does not correspond to his real sentiments or secret instincts.” → THE BEST OF TIMES THE WORST OF TIMES
• “Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded Your own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are not in their proper relationships, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confused with a taste for oppression, and the holy cult of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?”
• “The will of the nation” is one of those phrases, that have been most largely abused by the wily and despotic of every age.”
• “Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is very seldom offered to them by their friends; on this account I have frankly uttered it.”

On liberty

• “Concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the county about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal.”
• “The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint 1 of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it.”
• “The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions, among men them-selves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it, and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of your goods, but of your lives, if need be…it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”

Equality over liberty

• “Now, I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world: rights must be given to ever citizen, or none at all.”
• “Not that those nations whose social condition is democratic naturally despite liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol…nothing can satisfy them without equality.” → does this apply today?

On government officials

• Roles/status of government officials: “Federal functionaries of a high class are generally men who have been favored by good luck or have been distinguished in some other career. Such cannot be the permanent aim of their ambitions.”

On religion

• “Nor can the prodigious exertions made by certain nations to defend a country in which they had lived, so to speak, as strangers be adduced in favor of such a system; for it will be found that in these cases their main incitement was religion. The permanence, the glory, or the prosperity of the nation had become parts of their faith, and in defending their country, they defended also that Holy City of which they were all citizens. The Turkish tribes have never taken an active share in the conduct of their affairs, but they accomplished stupendous enterprises as long as the victories of the Sultan were triumphs of the Mohammedan faith. In the present age they are in rapid decay because their religion is departing and despotism only remains. Montesquieu, who attributed to absolute power an authority peculiar to itself, did it, as I conceive, an undeserved honor; for despotism, taken by itself, can maintain nothing durable. On close inspection we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government. Do what you may, there is no true power among men except in the free union of their will, and patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world that can long urge all the people towards the same end.”