Democracy In America
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Throughout the course of history, mankind has been recorded to corrupt itself. Men have grown tired of simply surviving; they have had to take and conquer others. Absolute monarchies control wealth, land, and even lives of men. The conditions of the people were solely dependent on the conditions of the one who was in power in that particular place and time. History has proven that most men rule unwisely in their kingdoms. To avoid tyrannical rule, some make an attempt to set up a government in which the people ruled themselves. This form of government is called a democracy, or “rule of the people.” History has also revealed through the Greeks and the French Revolution, that a democracy that gives complete power to the people, “absolute democracy”, is nothing more than a short prelude to tyranny.
A new democracy was established in America with certain unique characteristics in its structure and establishment. Americas tyranny never came. Americas duration of holding to its original form of government, since the time of the Constitution, evolved from a near insignificant point in human history, to an era power not in a man, but rather in free men, every one in America for over 200 years. The question of every great historian then is this, “How has Americas democracy thrived when all others previous to it has failed?”1 A brilliant young historian from France devoted a major portion of his life to answer this world changing mystery. Alexis de Tocqueville revealed to Europe, which characteristics instilled in American democracy must be modeled in order to construct a proper institution of government in any nation. He did this in his work, Democracy in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris on July 29, 1805. Tocquevilles father was a royalist prefect from Normandy who supported the Boubon monarchy, his great-grandfather was a liberal aristocrat killed in the French Revolution, and his mother was a devout Roman Catholic who strongly advocated a return on the Old Regime. In 1835, the first part of Democracy in America was published. A highly positive and optimistic account of American government and society, the book was very well received throughout Europe. “In 1840 the second part of Democracy in America was published. This volume was substantially more pessimistic than the first, warning of the dangers despotism and governmental centralization, and applying his ideas and criticisms more directly to France. As a result, it was not received as well as the first part, except in England where it was acclaimed highly.2
Tocqueville believes that history progresses with the inevitable growth of equality of conditions, and he sees America as the furthest progression of this growth. The extraordinary level of equality can be both a help and a hindrance to freedom. “On the one hand, one cannot have complete freedom. “As social conditions become more equal, the number increases who, although they are neither rich enough nor powerful enough to exercise any great influence over their fellow-creatures, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants.”1 “Yet at the same time, Tocqueville recognizes than in almost every situation, freedom is endangered by an overly ardent passion for equality.”3 “This, independently of equality itself, tends powerfully to divide men, to lead them to mistrust the judgment of others, and to seek the light of truth nowhere but in their own understandings.”1
Tocqueville inaccurately stated the out come of a possible civil war. “As long as it only indirectly assailed by the interpretation of its laws, and as long as its substances is not seriously altered, a change of opinion, an internal crisis, or a war, may restore all the vigor which it requires. So far is the Federal Government from acquiring strength, and from threatening the sovereignty of the States, as it grows older, that I maintain it to be growing weaker and weaker, and that the sovereignty of the Union alone is in danger.
Tocqueville emphasizes that one of the most important problems in American democracy, or any other democracy, is that of individualism. He compares and contrasts egotism from individualism. However, individualism may cause one to sever himself with the world, which can create an entrance for the entry of tyranny and the end of democracy in America. Egotism centers one on himself. Individualism can very well do the same if it is corrupted by egotism.
“Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with egotism. Egotism is a passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect everything with his own person, and to prefer himself to everything in the world. 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 he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Egotism originates in blind instinct: individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in the deficiencies of the mind as in the perversity of the heart. Egotism blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all others, and is at length absorbed in down right egotism. Egotism is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another: individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the as the equality of conditions.”1
Alexis de Tocqueville points out the unique feature of patriotism one has for his own country. He states that this feeling is made up of instinctive passions that can not ultimately save a nation. He soundly states that in the times of peace those with patriotism in their hearts will slowly but surely lose them if not continuously rekindled.
“But like all instinctive passions, this kind of patriotism is more apt to prompt transient exertion than to supply the motives of continuous endeavor. It may save the State in critical circumstances, but it will not infrequently allow the nation decline in the midst of peace. Whilst the manners of a people are simple and its faith unshaken, whilst society is steadily based upon traditional institutions whose legitimacy has never been contested, this instinctive patriotism is wont to endure.”1
When the passion of a nation has left, they become complacent to mediocrity and care little about neither nation nor the direction it is pursuing. Unfortunately, it is precisely