Democracy in America by Tocqueville

At the age of 26 Tocqueville traveled to America and wrote a book about the effects of democracy and equality in America.

He describes, among other things, the structure of the government, with its advantageous and disadvantageous, and the effects of democracy/equality, on poetry, history, freedom, religion, personality, family and more.

His writes beautifully and the book is filled with interesting and insightful analysis.

I will summarize three of them.

He foresees the potential problems with equality and freedom:

He says that “equality awakens in men several propensities extremely dangerous to freedom.” The “most formidable” one is the tendency to trample on individual rights. As people become more equal the government begins to control more and more aspect of people’s lives. (He doesn't say explicitly why equality equals big government, but one could imagine reasons why he assumed this was so.)

As the government becomes bigger and bigger it intrudes more on people’s lives and infringes their independence. In classic Tocqueville style he says that big government “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to a be nothing better than flock of timid industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

He repeats in many different words the simple idea that as the government becomes bigger the individual becomes smaller.

Government, however, is checked by the free-press and the judiciary. The Judiciary, for example, “at a time when the eye and finger of the government are constantly intruding into the minutest details of human actions, and when private persons are at once too weak to protect themselves, and too much isolated for them to reckon upon the assistance of their felloes. The strength of the courts of law has been the greatest security which can be offered to personal independence.”

Tyranny of the majority:

We all know that Tocqueville coined the famous phrase “tyranny of the majority,” but did you know that he thought that lawyers are “the most powerful existing security against the excesses of democracy.”? He says that lawyers form “the only enlightened class whom the people do not mistrust,” (how much has changed since!) and that they put a check on the tyranny of the majority because they control the law and as a rule “their general spirit will be eminently conservative and anti-democratic.” Don’t know how true this is nowadays, but it is an interesting point.

Religion:

He says that people need some dogma in their lives in order not to speculate too much on unknowable things. For if they do, they will undoubtedly not find the answers to them, which will cause then to loose heart in pursuing those things that are knowable. Further, this mental condition makes them more likely to give up their independence.

In his words: if one doesn’t have a creed then, “doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the other… and such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude.. and men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence.”

However, religious dogma should limit itself to the utmost degree and not speak to things which are not religious in nature, for that would cause the intellect to loose its exploratory and independent nature. Furthermore, religious observance should be limited to that which is needed to perpetuate the creed and no more, because people want to live well and not be shackled by rituals.

In his words: religious practice ought “to be limited to as much as is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself, which is the substance of religion, of which the ritual is its form.”

Religion is also good for democracy since it promotes togetherness and charitableness, and makes people less likely to sacrifice their independence.

In his own words: “I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independent and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that, if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.”