DeTocqueville.US

Archive for April, 2009

Democracy in America begins with an introductory chapter by de Tocqueville in which he discusses the progression of Western society toward democratic government.  The focus of this progression is, for de Tocqueville, the levelling of social gradients.  In the opening sentence, he states:

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. [emphasis mine]

Tracking this rise of “the general equality of conditions” is the theme of the introductory chapter.  De Tocqueville examines this trend primarily using the history of his native France, starting around AD 1100.  The most important part of this for us today is, I think, the causes of this transition.  One reason I think examining the causes of “the general equality” is important is that as our society changes (or as changes are forced upon it), losing site of the causes of liberty and equality may in fact cause us to forget why we have a degree of liberty and equality in this country unparalleled in world history.  If we then forget the “why” of our liberty and equality, others can substitute their own “why,” and thus shift people’s loyalty toward something else (e.g. the government, a political party, or leader).  We can see this in our own society as many people forget that the Declaration of Independence states that our rights come, not from government or a person, but from the Creator.  Thus, instead of looking toward the Creator for their “unalienable rights,” they look toward government. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be using a couple different translations of Democracy in America as I go through the book. I picked up a paperback version published by Bantam, but I also like to read books on my PDA.  Project Gutenberg is the best site for public domain ebooks, and they have Democracy in America in several file formats, now including the .mobi format for Mobipocket Reader, which is my favorite eBook reader for PDAs.  Here is Volume 1 and Volume 2.  I’ve also put the html versions here if you’d like to read them in your browser:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Edit (4/5): I double checked the version on Project Gutenberg, and it happens to be the same version as my Bantam paperback.

Welcome to De Tocquville US.  The purpose of this blog is to explore and discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.  Although Democracy in America was written in 1835, de Tocqueville’s work is incredibly relevant to today.  It can help us to understand where we’ve come from and to then compare that to where we are now.  Given the changes that are occurring in our society, understanding where we’ve come from is more important than ever.  My hope is that we can discover the elements of our society that contributed to the establishment of the United States as the world’s singular example of democratic government and what we can do to maintain our democracy.

The plan will be to work through the book one chapter or so at a time, with posts at least once a week (probably on the weekend).  Thanks for stopping by!