The Future of Our Republic: Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America

One of my most-prized possession is a century-old copy of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. This book was first published in 1835, following his tour of early 19^th-century America; mine is copyright 1900. Because he was a Frenchman, whose country was also struggling at that time with a fledgling democracy, he was both interested and objective in his analysis of the state of our government. The reason this book holds such reverence, even today, is that it is a completely honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of modern democracy and because many of its conclusions have since been proven to be amazingly accurate.

At the time, de Tocqueville was interested in examining the reasons for, what, in his view, was the success of the American "experiment". Through the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, it is not a democracy, but a representative republic. This was to avoid some of the major pitfalls of true democracy. In his assessment, he identified three ways that democracy was subject to failure in its noble goals.

One of these was the tendency to dissolve into a form of "mob rule", which was simply a different type of tyranny. The unchecked majority will tend to use its political strength to trample on the rights of minorities. The election of representatives helps to distance decision-making from the people; we have already done away with the indirect election of Senators and now some talk of eliminating the Electoral College. The Bill of Rights was ratified to provide protections for individuals from the will of the majority; since then, other minority rights issues have led to civil war, to protests and associated violence and to nearly constant political debates to this day.

Second, the personal freedom allowed by democracy can result in such a focus on individual matters that duties as a citizen are ignored. When citizens are indifferent towards government, its power is allowed to grow unchecked..."Under this system the citizens quit their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then fall back into it". With voter participation reaching lower and lower levels today, the ability to influence government policy has fallen to special interest groups...those who have the "ear" of lawmakers. And, another point he made so long ago was true then and still is true today: "The most outstanding Americans are seldom summoned to public office".

The third pitfall was when people sought to use the government to enact rules that would restrict the freedom of others who were more talented or ambitious. This condition would place a kind of "cap" on excellence and hold everyone in mediocrity. Following the "Golden Age" at the end of the 19^th century, the government began to be used for exactly this purpose. Politicians, citing unfairness to the "common" man, began attacking the free marketplace. Trust-busting was the first large-scale interference; the labor movement and the laws it championed soon followed. De Tocqueville described it thus: "Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd". The prediction has come true...today, businesses are subject to so many regulations, reporting requirements and anti-discrimination laws that companies need a Human Relations department just to maintain compliance.

As methods of combating these natural tendencies of democracy to destroy itself, de Tocqueville identified several "antidotes". One of these was religion, because it offered a natural control to unfettered ambition and material pursuit. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)." Because of human nature, civilization cannot exist with complete, unchecked freedom: "Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?" In modern society, people are less intimidated by the tenets of religious faith and are less likely to view it as a restriction on their material goals.

Freedom of the press was cited as another major control to government power and showed itself to have that power numerous times through the years. In recent times, however, its balance has come into question; when the press does not objectively cover and report the facts it ceases to be a "free" press and instead becomes a political tool. This was foreshadowed by this quotation: "I admit that I do not feel toward freedom of the press that complete and instantaneous love which one accords to things by their nature supremely good. I love it more from considering the evils it prevents than on account of the good it does". In the most famous example of preventing evil, Watergate, the free press properly flexed its muscles...more recently, it has been focused on the "doing good" part, advocating for all sorts of government projects and solutions to problems. In addition, for business and cultural reasons, there are not as many contrasting opinions as there was in the past.

De Tocqueville also encouraged voluntary associations because they stressed the "collective good" above the individual. These associations, regardless of their reason for being created, were about helping each other. Today, this is not always the case; people have become more and more self-centered and often trust a faceless government to fix the problems. Over the years, the tendency has been to turn more and more power over to the Federal government; this runs counter to the needs of democracy: "The strength of free peoples resides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people's reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty". When power is surrendered to a far-away power, it is no longer readily accessible or controllable; this was essentially the basis for the War for Independence in the first place.

One of America's greatest assets, at the time that de Tocqueville visited, was the equality of most of its citizens. He was referring to economic equality (although he did also recognize the impending crisis with regard to race). What he saw was that eternal optimism was the key to the American spirit...that anyone, regardless of his condition at birth, could aspire to a better condition in life and even to greatness; life was a competition, an opportunity to do better than your peers. America at that time was still agrarian, still had seemingly unlimited expansion capability in terms of land, and had relatively few rich and few poor...most were in the middle class. This was the optimum environment for democracy to succeed.

Americans expected to be left alone by their government (unless their service was required), expected to provide for their own well-being, and yet were quite interested and engaged in political matters. "One of the happiest consequences of an absence of government (when a people is fortunate enough to be able to do without it, which is rare) is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows from it. Each man learns to think, to act for himself, without counting on the support of an outside force which, however vigilant one supposes it to be, can never answer all social needs. Man, thus accustomed to seek his well-being only through his own efforts, raises himself in his own opinion as he does in the opinion of others; his soul becomes larger and stronger at the same time". In the last half-century, we have lost much of that desire for self-reliance, in exchange for a social safety net...designed for our most helpless citizen, but used by many more.

By understanding the promise and potential dangers inherent in the democratic form of government, we can choose the favorable features of our government to maintain, and the direction we prefer to go in the future. In helping others around the world pursue freedom, as we have so often over the years, and as are currently doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, we can also provide an example to follow. Consider these words, written by de Tocqueville over 170 years ago, in light of our current situation in the Middle East: "The nations of our day cannot prevent conditions of equality from spreading in their midst. But it depends upon themselves whether equality is to lead to freedom or servitude, knowledge or barbarism, prosperity or wretchedness". Is that not exactly what we see happening? What we expect from them now that they have the opportunity?

My greatest fear is that we are approaching the day of his warning that, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money". Sound familiar? Have we reached that point? If we all spend a little more time considering these lessons, examining what has become of this great American "experiment", analyzing our current position in the world...maybe, just maybe, we can perfect this unique form of government and preserve our country which, as described by Ronald Reagan, is the "last and greatest bastion of freedom" in the world.