Democracy in America
Democratic character — Tocqueville's 1835-40 study of equality's effects: associations, the tyranny of the majority, and soft despotism.
Mechanisms
Association, the mother science
In democracies the art of associating is the master skill on which civilization depends.
In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made.
Why it matters
In democracies the art of associating is the master skill on which civilization depends.
Use when: When collective action fails and the proposed fix is a hero.
Arguments
Equality, the providential fact
The book’s generative claim: equality of conditions is a divine-decree-level force no generation can check.
The gradual development of the equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine decree: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.
Why it matters
The book’s generative claim: equality of conditions is a divine-decree-level force no generation can check.
Use when: When democratic trends are treated as reversible policy choices.
Association against the majority
The institutional answer to majority tyranny: not rights on paper but the organized habit of combining.
At the present time the liberty of association is become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority.
Why it matters
The institutional answer to majority tyranny: not rights on paper but the organized habit of combining.
Use when: When a majority starts closing ranks.
The apprenticeship of liberty
Freedom is fertile but its apprenticeship is arduous — despotism’s temporary prosperity is the trap.
It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty.
Why it matters
Freedom is fertile but its apprenticeship is arduous — despotism’s temporary prosperity is the trap.
Use when: When liberty looks like too much trouble.
The press, last bulwark
Parliaments and popular sovereignty can coexist with servitude; a free press cannot.
but that servitude cannot be complete if the press is free: the press is the chiefest democratic instrument of freedom.
Why it matters
Parliaments and popular sovereignty can coexist with servitude; a free press cannot.
Use when: When press freedom is treated as one liberty among many.
Concepts
The fundamental fact
Tocqueville’s method in one line: find the single fact from which all others derive.
The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.
Why it matters
Tocqueville’s method in one line: find the single fact from which all others derive.
Use when: When drowning in symptoms and you need the root.
Soft despotism
The famous prophecy: a mild, absolute, minute power that keeps men in perpetual childhood and spares them the trouble of living.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood
Why it matters
The famous prophecy: a mild, absolute, minute power that keeps men in perpetual childhood and spares them the trouble of living.
Use when: When comfort is being traded for agency.
Definitions
Individualism, defined
The distinction that runs the book: individualism is a calm error of judgment, egotism a blind passion.
Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellow-creatures; and to draw apart with his family and his friends; so that, after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself.
Why it matters
The distinction that runs the book: individualism is a calm error of judgment, egotism a blind passion. Tocqueville coined the word for the new disease.
Use when: When withdrawal gets mislabeled as selfishness.
Passages
The sad Americans
The paradox of prosperity: the freest men brooding over advantages they do not possess, feverishly pursuing welfare.
In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men, placed in the happiest circumstances which the world affords: it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad even in their pleasures.
Why it matters
The paradox of prosperity: the freest men brooding over advantages they do not possess, feverishly pursuing welfare.
Use when: When success does not feel like it.