ABOUT
“If the number of times an individual is cited by politicians, journalists, and scholars is a measure of their influence, Alexis de Tocqueville—not Jefferson, Madison or Lincoln—is America’s public philosopher” says Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor and chair of the Department of Government at Cornell University. Tocqueville’s importance no doubt plays out today, he was referenced by Bill Clinton in his ’95 State of the Union speech (here). During the 104th Congress, Tocqueville was referenced on 47 separate occasions. In the Supreme Court case Powers V. Ohio, Justice Kennedy referenced Tocqueville (here). Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, assigned a reading list to the members of Congress, urging them to read Tocqueville (here). Today, I urge you to read Tocqueville also.
HISTORY
In the 1830s democracy was sweeping across Europe. In search of answers, Alexis de Tocqueville departed from France to explore the most democratic nation in the world: The United States of America. His cardinal text, Democracy in America, is an analysis of everything American: from townships to federalism to geology to daily life. The text offers an unrivaled glimpse into early America and the threats associated with popular government. Above all else, Tocqueville dissects the American political system, offering insight on its character, operation, essence and issues.
MY ANALYSIS
If you have not gathered from the title of today’s reading, we are looking at Tocqueville’s analysis of the issues with “democracy.” Despotism, operatively defined, is a system of governance in which the government exercises unlimited authority. Traditional despotism, characterized by an authoritarian leader (Caesar or Mao or Mugabe), meant seizing power and maintaining complete control over the lives of the people. An equally repugnant form of despotism comes not in the form of militaristic autocrats, but, as C. S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters, “The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.” To Tocqueville, this is the threat.
Citing the old versus the new despotism, Tocqueville asserts “If despotism were to be established in present-day democracies, it would probably assume a different character; it would be more widespread and kinder’ it would debase men without tormenting them.” What exactly is this nice form of autarchy? It begins when people look at their political leaders not as “tyrants but rather as guardians.”
Therefore, usurpation is protection. Administrative agencies protect us, rather than destroy our liberties. Gun control keeps us safe, rather than infringes on our rights; regulation curbs the woes of a free-market system: all are assumptions people must make to provide the necessary antecedents to this “soft-despotism.”
Tocqueville envisions what this world might look like, “I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls… he exists only in himself and for himself; if he still retains his family circle, at any rate he may be said to have lost his country.” So what replaced man and family?
“Above these men stands an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after their enjoyments and watching over their destiny. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed. It would be like a fatherly authority, if fatherlike, its aim were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood….” The prophetic vision is of a nanny-state. Where men cannot function without government assistance. Responsibility is replaced with The Federal Administration on Aging, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Prohibition, Drinking Age, Environmental Protection Agencies, Departments of Development and streets lined with marble buildings, hodgepodges of Greek columns and an alphabet soup of agencies. Mistakes mean bailouts and inefficiency means government expansion. “[The Government] works readily for [the citizen’s] happiness but it wishes to be the only provider and judge of it. It provides their security, anticipates and guarantees their needs, supplies their pleasures, directs their principal concerns, manages industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances. Why can it not remove from them entirely the bother of thinking and the troubles of life? Welcome to America.
The real tragedy is not the expansion of government but the destruction of the individual, “[The Government] reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range and gradually removes autonomy inteslf from each citizen.” We are all a single mass of bodies, therefore all solutions must be collective: the term “I” is replaced by “we.” The apotheosis of this new despotism.
Unlike the Despotisms of history, “[This type] does not break men’s wills but it does soften, bend and control them; rarely does it force men to act but it constantly opposes what actions they perform.” You can have a car, but the car must have a certain fuel efficiency rating, a safety rating, and so on. The government gets to pick the options for you to pick from.
If you get nothing else from Tocqueville’s writing, remember this: “The democratic nations which introduced freedom into politics at the same time that they were increasing despotism in the administrative sphere have been led into the strangest paradoxes. Faced with the need to manage small affairs where common sense can be enough, they reckon citizens are incompetent; when it comes to governing the whole state, they give these citizens immense prerogatives. They turn them by degrees into playthings of the ruler or his masters, higher than kings or lower than men….”
A new sort of despotism. American despotism.
To what extent is Tocqueville correct?
[...] Tocqueville: Soft Despotism [...]