Perhaps the best book about America was not written by an American. Instead, Democracy in America came from the pen of a Frenchman, Alexis De Tocqueville. Tocqueville, a politician and aristocrat, died on April 16, 1859 — 165 years ago.
Democracy in America came from the Frenchman’s first-hand observations of the United States in the early 19th century. Tocqueville arrived in America in 1831 on a mission from the French government to investigate and write about our country’s prison system. But Democracy was his much greater contribution, a work he published in two installments: the first part in 1835 and the second in 1840. These broader observations continue to show us something of value for our own political discourse.
As the title notes, Tocqueville’s book is really about two subjects: democracy and America. First, Tocqueville looked at the history of the world and saw a decided direction toward greater and greater “equality of conditions.” For centuries, forces in Europe had weakened and replaced hierarchical structures in society, religion, and politics. Democracy, based as it is on human equality, was the natural political result of these changes.
Tocqueville uses America as a way to understand democracy better. Here we must understand that America was what Tocqueville studied, not his audience for writing the book. Instead, his primary audience was his native France, which had suffered the worst effects of the greater trends toward democracy — most savagely in the French Revolution that began in 1789.
Tocqueville saw democracy at its worst as enforcing an equality that squelched liberty and excellence. Liberty and excellence distinguish persons who have more of it from those who possess less. A certain view of equality, one that demands basically similar results, must curb or even punish anyone who distinguishes him or herself. This mediocrity also led to severe individualism by destroying grounds for community. Destroying this community then led to social and political isolation, a problem that not only hurt human happiness. Political isolation also made people too weak and thus dependent on the government.
America showed better possibilities for democracy and its underlying commitment to equality. America’s equality included room for differences among persons. Tocqueville spoke about the relations between American men and women, who viewed each other as distinct in contributions but equal in human dignity. In the U.S., moreover, equality permitted the exercise of liberty and the merit such exercise revealed.
Americans also overcame the problem of isolated individualism that democratic equality threatened to inculcate. Instead, they formed a dizzying array of political and civil associations. By these groups, they formed communities committed to achieving public and private goods together as fellow human beings and citizens. Instead of relying on elites or on the government, as what happened in Europe, these Americans showed a rugged dedication to self-government in community in these associations.
This picture of America continues to exist in important ways. We organize for political ends and have one of the world’s most extensive networks of private charities. But we also struggle in certain respects. Some have confused equality with conformity. We tend to see distinction as suspect and differentiation as discriminatory. Thus, we sometimes equate nature with oppression or legitimate categories as systemic evil. In areas such as sex, sexuality, and economics, these confusions reign with especial and damaging vigor.
Oppression and evil exist now as always. But Tocqueville cautions us to consider more carefully when and where it exists as well as the proper means of redressing such vices. We could use a healthy dose of his concern, lest we fall into the very traps Tocqueville praised us for avoiding.
On this anniversary of his death, we should renew our attention to this thoughtful commentator on America. Thoughtful self-government remains possible for America and real in so many ways. Let us think and act so as to be worthy of our lofty place among popular governments, a positive example to the world now and to generations yet unborn.
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Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.