There are challenges reading Alexis de Tocqueville today: To what extent were his observations of America and Americans in the 1830's accurate and how much have we changed since then. The corollary is, to the extent that Americans have changed are the changes positive or negative.
I have read excerpts from "Democracy in America" over the years, and now I am plowing through the whole thing. In the early chapters Tocqueville talks about municipal governments in the early United States, something that we all take for granted now and to which we generally ascribe a lower level of importance compared to State and Federal actions. It is the context of discussing the advantages of America's decentralized "provincial institutions" that Tocqueville makes the following observations.
How much does this describe Americans today:
"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."(emphasis mine)
As important, how has the government changed since:
"As the administrative authority [of the government] is within the reach of the citizen, whom in some degree it represents, it excites neither their jealousy nor hatred; as its resources are limited, everyone feels that he must not rely solely on its aid."
We now have a political class that seeks to rule rather than govern. They have amassed a state which depends more upon obedience than participation. Does the state seem like part of your family? Do we have a state that invites the contributions of its citizens, or a state that confiscates the bounty of its subjects?
"What resistance can be offered to tyranny in a country where each individual is weak and where the citizens are not united by any common interest?"
Those who seek to deprive us of our liberty must convince us that we have nothing in common. Sound like anyone you know?
[Excerpts from Democracy in America (Knopf, NY 1994), pp. 94-5]
