This is a commentary on Tocqueville's piece - only quoted in part to hopefully give a taste for reading the full article. Am putting the Original Tocqueville piece on my 'roundtuit' list.
In Democracy in America, Alexis deTocqueville warns that democracy is dangerous. It causes selfish individualism, consumerism, conformity, a disregard for the past and future, and ultimately the establishment of a despotic nanny state. The biggest reason, according to Tocqueville, that the Americans have been able to avoid the pitfalls of democracy is their religion.
Tocqueville identifies several problems inherent to democracy. He argues that Democratic peoples are susceptible to certain attitudes that tend to undo any progress gained by democracy. The first of these attitudes is individualism. There is a distinction between individualism and simple egoism. Tocqueville describes egoism as “a passionate and exaggerated love of self which leads a man to think of all things in terms of himself and to prefer himself to all.” Individualism, however, “is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends.”1 Despite this difference, Tocqueville warns that individualism is merely a stepping stone to egoism.
Individualism appears in democracy because people living in democratic societies tend to be disconnected from their larger family and community. People living in an aristocratic society do not move. Their lives are settled around one town and one career. Family and community are important and immediate concerns for such people. This, according to Tocqueville, means “people living in an aristocratic age are almost always closely involved with something outside themselves, and they are often inclined to forget about themselves.”2 Those who live in a democratic age are always on the move in search of a better life. This causes them to become disconnected from family and community. Often people are merely visitors in their own towns with little knowledge of, or care for, what might be happening in their communities. Therefore, “a man’s interests are limited to those near himself.”3
The same causes which bring about the isolation of the self also bring about an attitude of consumerism. Tocqueville observes that for Americans the “love of comfort appears as a tenacious, exclusive, and universal passion, but always a restrained one.”4 Americans seek to make “life ever easier and more comfortable” and to satisfy their needs as quickly and painlessly as possible.5 This is not greed, but simply a desire for comfort. It is social mobility that causes this attitude. In aristocratic systems, it is impossible for a person to improve his condition, regardless of the amount of work he puts into it. Democratic nations seem to become drunk on the possibility of more wealth and comfort. Therefore, their desires become insatiable.
This attitude is not limited to the middle class, which is uniquely democratic, alone. The wealthy also demonstrate this behavior. Tocqueville reasons that this is so either because the wealthy come from the middle class and therefore share their values of constant improvement through work, or because the upper classes feel they must conform to the majority standards.6
Conformity, therefore, is yet another attitude that threatens democracy. The isolated and individualistic people of a democratic society prefer to think for themselves. Equality causes them to distrust authority and tradition. The opinion that no man is better than any other causes “a general distaste for accepting any man’s word as proof of anything.” However, thinking for oneself is not easy. It requires time and education, and democratic peoples do not have much of either. Tocqueville observes that even though equality causes individuals to distrust the opinion of others, it also “leads them to place almost unlimited confidence in the judgement of the public. For they think it not unreasonable that, all having the same means of knowledge, truth will be found on the side of the majority.”7 A distrust of authority, and a lack of confidence in his own ability to understand, causes the individual to believe that the majority is the only authority which can be trusted. Therefore, people living in democratic societies begin to conform to majority opinion.
Yet another problem with which democracies must contend is the lust for equality that the people soon develop. Of all the things that a democratic society loves, equality is first because it is the foundation of a democratic society. Tocqueville explains that “the particular and predominating fact peculiar to [democratic] ages is equality of conditions, and the chief passion which stirs men at such times is the love of this same equality.” 8 Tocqueville argues that people tend to love equality more than liberty because the benefits of equality come quickly, but its ills “only become apparent little by little.”9 For liberty, however, the opposite is true.
A democratic nation will seek all forms of equality, not just political equality. With the power of the majority on their side, the people will stop at nothing to obtain equality, even if it means they will have to give up their liberty. They love equality more. And their love of equality is debased and insatiable. Therefore, Tocqueville concludes that the people want “equality in freedom, and if they cannot have that, they still want equality in slavery.”10
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good ...
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