Six states have already passed measures that would bypass the constitutionally-mandated Electoral College system.  Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick had this to say when he signed the measure into law earlier this week:

“I am proud to join other states in this effort to bring more voters and more states into the presidential campaign process,” the Democratic governor said in a statement. “Voter participation in all 50 states is critical to the strength of our democracy and the national popular vote movement will bring more voters into the fold and ensure that every vote counts.”

from http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/08/mass_governor_p.html

There are several fallacies in Gov. Patrick’s statement, but let’s first examine why the Electoral College exists before we get into those problems.

One of the key issues at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was how to maintain the balance between the big-population states and the small-population states.  The Great Compromise was the solution to this in the Legislative branch.  This created a bicameral legislature composed of a House of Representatives that would be based on population (thus pleasing large states like Virginia and New York) and a Senate with two members appointed from each state regardless of size (thus pleasing small states like Georgia and Rhode Island).  It should be clear why such a compromise was necessary (as well as why the debate prior to this was so heated and took so long).  The large states didn’t want their citizens deprived of influence by being lumped together with the same representatives as a small state, but the small states didn’t want to join into a union that would roll over all of their concerns by majority rule.

This illustrates two of the foundation principles of the Constitution: majority rule with minority rights and federalism.  What many people may not understand is that the Electoral College also protects these very same principles by ensuring that the president was not chosen by a popular vote but by an Electoral College.  The members of the Electoral College are chosen by the state legislatures, and the numbers correspond to the number of Senators and Representatives each state has in Congress.

It should be pointed out that according to the Constitution:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

This means that technically, these states are well within their rights to decide to throw their electors to the national popular vote winner, but constitutionality does not mean this is a good thing to do.  So to illustrate that let’s look at the problems with Gov. Patrick’s statement.

First, he says that “this [is an] effort to bring more voters and more states into the presidential campaign process.”  This statement is historically inaccurate; the Electoral College system, in fact, ensures that presidential candidates cannot ignore small states.  I know some of us in large states (I’m in Texas) lament the amount of attention lavished on Iowa and New Hampshire during the presidential primary season.  However, a popular vote model (even with the facade of the Electoral College) would encourage candidates to ignore low-population states in favor of area of high-population density.  The effect of this would be the opposite of what Gov. Patrick states.

Second, he says “the national popular vote movement will bring more voters into the fold and ensure that every vote counts.”  Again, this is fallacious on several levels.  As stated above, the Electoral College system avoids marginalizing the concerns of small states (there’s that protection of minority rights), but still gives each state representation based on population with the number of electoral votes per state (there’s majority rule).  Thus, each vote still counts and areas of the country that aren’t California and New York are still considered, are still important.  The Electoral College system already does what Gov. Patrick claims a national system would do.

Finally, let’s look at the method by which these six states are trying to “bring more voters into the fold and ensure that every vote counts,” because it is here that the great lie to this national popular vote “movement” can be found.  These states have decided that they will pledge their electors to support the winner of the popular vote.  The effect of this is not to give each vote equal measure, but to actually disenfranchise voters in those states.  For example, if Candidate A receives more of the popular vote nationally, but Candidate B receives more of the popular vote in the state, Massachusetts’s electors would go not to the candidate that her voters chose (Candidate B) but to Candidate A.

How does disregarding the voters in your state “ensure that every vote counts”?!  This is ridiculous sophistry, and Gov. Patrick (as well as the other governors who signed similar measures) has done his fellow citizens a great disservice: he has taken their voice and shackled it to the national sentiment, regardless of how they vote.

If these states and others really wanted a popular-vote system that actually represented their voters, they would pledge their electors in a proportional model, not this sham.  Instead they show their true intentions by disenfranchising voters while claiming to do the opposite.  We already have a model that does what they claim to do; let’s let it work for us.

If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact , pursuant to the powers intrusted it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed.  It would otherwise be a mere treaty, dependent on the good faith of the parties, and not a government, which is only another word for POLITICAL POWER AND SUPREMACY.

Here Hamilton lays out the basic reasoning for the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.  Essentially, his main point is that the supremacy of the Constitution is assumed by its very existence.  I would also point out that we have here a strong argument against secession.  Hamilton continues to explain how the supremacy of the federal government is still alimited supremacy:

But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which arenot pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land.  These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.

So, the Supremacy Clause does not give supremacy to every law passed by Congress and signed by the president.  A law outside of the powers delegated to the federal government is an “[act] of usurpation… to be treated as such.”  Such a law does not deserve to be followed by the people (i.e. civil disobedience).

Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union, like the one we have just considered, only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government.  It will no, I presume, have escaped observation, that it expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution; which I mention merely as an instance of caution in the convention; since that limitation would have been understood, though it had not been expressed.

I find it interesting that Hamilton takes these ideas as understood.  In fact, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was acting with “caution” by including a supremacy clause in the first place, and understood that clause to only apply to laws “pursuant to the constitution.”  In other words, the Supremacy Clause, like the Necessary and Proper Clause, is limited in its scope.  We would do well to remember this.

From March 31, 2010:

Introduction

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2010/03/29/chris-matthews-gets-schooled-tea-partier

As I mentioned in the previous post, this exchange on Chris Matthews’s Hardball raised two important issues.  The first is the Left’s obsession with race, gender, and sexual orientation.  The second, and I believe more important issue, is the place of the 10th Amendment in our federal system, and why it’s important in all issues of federal power.

In the exchange, Melissa Harris Lacewell, a professor at Princeton, says:

Well, well let me just suggest this. That the tea partiers by using the language of tea party have asked us to draw a parallel between their movement and the Revolutionary War movement. But I think if we look more carefully we’ll see that in many ways the tea party movement resembles more closely the kind of secessionist feelings that were both part of the Confederacy before the Civil War and then also remained in the post-civil war Reconstruction era. So in other words-

At which point she is cut off by Dana Loesch (a conservative radio talk-show host) with”

It’s about state sovereignty not secessionism. It’s about 10th Amendment principles.

This is a great exchange, and demonstrates why the 10th Amendment has been so much maligned.  First, we’ll look at the text of the amendment, and then we’ll take a brief look at the history of state sovereignty.

The Constitution

The 10th Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

We can divide this into two key sections.  The first is “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…”  What are the delegated powers?  For the most part, these are contained in Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution in the Enumerated Powers (so called because they are numbered).  I won’t list all of them, but you can read them here.  InMcCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice Marshall wrote:

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent, to have required to be enforced by all those arguments, which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle is now universally admitted. [emphasis mine]

So the point of enumerating powers in the Constitution, indeed of having a constitution at all, is to limit the power of the federal government.  These limits are placed upon the federal government because government power is, by its very nature, coercive.  As George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”  Thus, the Founders created through the Constitution a limited government.

Now, in the debates to ratify the Constitution, many worried that, while (as Marshall points out above) the presence of a constitution by nature limits the government, there needed to be specific protections for the people and the States; thus, the Bill of Rights was adopted as the first ten amendments to the Constitution.  The last two of these protect the people and the States from both too strict and too liberal a reading the Constitution.  On the one hand, the fact that rights are mentioned does not mean these are all the rights (cf. the 9th Amendment); on the other, powers not mentioned specifically delegated to the federal government are retained by the States and the people.

All of this seems relatively clear-cut, but of course, it can’t be that simple.  First, interpretations by the Supreme Court establish precedents which are binding unless overturned by the Supreme Court itself.  Second, the 10th Amendment, and the issue of State Sovereignty, got historically caught up in the struggle over slavery.

Slavery and States’ Rights

All nations have their national shame, and slavery is the United States’ greatest shame.  In preserving the institution, the Southern states used many different tactics and arguments.  One of those was the 10th Amendment.  The Constitution, as it was drafted, did not give Congress any power over the presence of slavery in the United States.  It did include a stipulation about the importation of slaves (which didn’t go into effect immediately), but other than that, slavery was not mentioned.  As a failure of many of the Founders’ resolve, this has been much lamented, but it was seen as a necessary evil for the greater good of creating the union.

Thus, from a strictly constitutional perspective, the defenders of slavery were right in this respect: neither Congress nor the president could outlaw slavery, and any direct attempt to do so outside of constitutional amendment would be unconstitutional.  Now, it should be noted that it was the (over)reaction of the soon-to-be Confederate States to the election 0f Lincoln that led to the Civil War, but the end result of the conflict as far as slavery was concerned was the passage of the so-called Civil War amendments: 13th, 14th, and 15th.  It was acknowledge that constitutional amendment was the only solution, and the rebel states were required to accept these amendments as part of being readmitted to the Union.

In the post-Reconstruction era (after 1877), the States’ Rights argument (with the 10th Amendment as part of it) continued to be used to suppress the civil rights of African Americans, and for the most part the Supreme Court upheld this (cf. Plessy v. Ferguson).  This fact has been touted by detractors of States’ Rights as an example of why the federal government should act unconstitutionally at times.  But this argument is completely wrong.

Civil Rights and the Constitution

The reason this is wrong is quite simple: sometimes (maybe more often at times) the Supreme Court is just wrong.  You see, the Civil War Amendments contain what has become one of the most important amendments in the Constitution: the 14th Amendment.  This amendment gave the federal government the responsibility for protecting “due process” and “equal protection.”  This amendment did not apply just to the federal government (for example, the 5th Amendment already contains a “due process” clause), but for the first time applied directly to the States.  Thus, federal intervention in segregation and other civil rights issues was constitutional.

The problem before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was with the Supreme Court’s failure of interpretation.  The 1890s court failed to uphold the Constitution against segregation’s assault upon it.

The 10th Amendment and Federal Health Care

So, what does all this mean for the current debates over state sovereignty, especially as it relates to health care?  We can break this down into a couple points.

First, does health care reform fall under the powers of Congress?  In so far as we are concerned with Interstate Commerce (one of the Enumerated Powers), then yes, I think it does.  In fact, one of the chief reforms I believe should have been enacted is the extension of health care insurance across state lines.  However, federal government-run health care (the “public option”) is another matter entirely.  Nothing in the Constitution suggests that the government should be running an insurance company, and to call such a thing “competition” is preposterous for a number of reasons outside the scope of this article.

Second, if a “public option” is unconstitutional, what other option do we have?  This is the most important bit.  There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that forbids the States from having their own health-care systems.  In fact, it would only fall under federal jurisdiction if it crossed state lines and became Interstate Commerce.  I haven’t researched every state to find out if they have their own public options, but it seems to me that this is the best solution.  The States are closer to the people (and thus more directly responsible to them), and each state would be able to formulate a plan that would work best in that state.

The fact that this is so is shown by the very legislation passed by the Democrats (or at least in the process).  Early on, various states were getting exceptions to the rules, exceptions negotiated by their representatives to 1) get their support and 2) get the best (one hopes) for their constituents back home.  This kind of thing should be shameful in a federal bill, but it shows that each state needs to have its own options outside of a federal mandate.  Also, much of the bill concerns an expansion of Medicaid, which, while federally mandated (ugh!) is largely administered by the States for the very reasons I cited above.

Thus, those states opposed to the recently-passed health-care bill do have an argument, one that has nothing to do with unconstitutional secession.  This conflict has been building for decades, but has now come to a head with this particular expansion of federal power.  The 10th Amendment, though much maligned both by segregationists and nationalists in the past, must be upheld for the Constitution as a whole to stand.

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.  The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.[Emphasis mine.]

This quote struck me for several reasons.  First, we should always remember that the government is our “creature.”  This is the concept of Popular Sovereignty.  The government is ours, not a few politicians in Washington, not large corporations, not foreign meddlers, but our own, and we should remind those we have graced to be our representatives of that on a regular basis.

Second, what the federal government can and cannot do should always be determined by the Constitution.  Objections to a law can be formulated in terms of political expediency, pragmatism, ethics, or any number of approaches, but support must always  include the constitutionality of the law to be enacted.

I have another great quote from this particular passage of The Federalist which I will post separately.

The above exchange, from Chris Matthews’s Hardball, has brought two topics to mind, both of which I will cover in different posts. The first is the Left’s use of race and gender as a means to steer debate away from the issues and instead instigate ad hominim attacks on their opponents.  Now, I want to point out from the beginning that this isn’t a case of “this side does this, while the other is blameless.”  We know that there are people on the right who do similar things.  But the abundance of these sort of attacks on the Left, and their spread through the mainstream media, shows that they are systemic on the Left.

The discussion Matthews initiates begins from this very premise.  He states, “Is this fight, from the tea party side, aimed at the, or ignited by the health care defeat last week they suffered, about ethnicity and gender and orientation, sexual orientation or is it about the substance of the issue?”  The very fact that this is the premise of his discussion demonstrates his position.  If Matthews believed that the tea partiers were concerned with the substance of the issue, he wouldn’t even raise this question.  So, from the start we know what Matthews’s biases are.  Of course, by focusing attention on the idea that tea partiers only oppose federally run health-care, bigger government, and higher taxes because they are racist-sexist-homophobes, he can ignore the substantive issues being raised by the tea party movement.

An important question, however, is why leftists are so quick to raise the spector of racism-sexism-homophobia at the drop of a hat?  If we look at the focus of leftist politics, we can easily see the reason.  If you spend all your time focusing on people’s race, gender, and sexual orientation, you will often project the same on to others.  Many leftists just cannot believe that everyone is not obsessed with gender, with race, with sexual orientation.  Furthermore, there is an air of superiority, a “How dare you?!” attitude to any opposition to their policies.  They see themselves as enlightened despots who hold the answers to society’s ills, and if we oppose them, there must be something psychologically wrong with us.

Unfortunately, there’s little we can do to convince hardcore leftists that we conservatives are not the way they see us.  On the other hand, they are far in the minority, and we don’t actually have to convince them at all.  If we focus our message on the majority of Americans (and 40% already self-identify as conservative), we can institute real change in our country.

(Note: I really try to not read the comments on Huffington Post stories.  The site is a bastion of almost pure liberalism, and it’s often hard to fight the urge to comment on every backward, ill-informed comment.  That, and I just get really, really mad reading it, so it’s usually better for everyone involved that I don’t.)

<On to the comment:>

[NY-23] is a win for the Democrats in so far as they gain the seat, but Owens was to the right of Scozzafava on several issues, so it’s not exactly a win for liberalism. It’s not a “big” win for the Democrats because they failed to break 50% of the vote. The 6% who voted for Scozzafava apparently felt that neither Owens nor Hoffman represented them well; unfortunately, however, we don’t know (as far as I can tell), exactly who those people are or why they voted for her.

The election was definitely not a win for the Republicans, but it was a victory of principles for conservatives.

Put aside particular ideologies and party loyalties for a second: for conservatives, this race was about showing the GOP that we won’t vote for just anyone. For the Democrats and liberals out there, imagine how you would feel if the Democratic Party machinery just picked a candidate, without any sort of primary or public input, and that candidate was against many of your core principles. Would you go ahead and vote for them just because they have a “D” next to their name? Would you feel right about that?

That’s what this election was about. This election couldn’t change the fundamental makeup of the House. Instead, this was a chance to show that we’re tired of playing party politics.

<End comment.>

This is really what I think conservatives and Republicans need to learn from NY-23.  Yes, we lost the election, but we won a battle for the heart of the GOP and conservative politics in this country.  Although I would love to see us drop all of the baggage and corruption of the Republican Party, I believe a third-party movement is a bad idea.  This election confirms what a lot of us have known instinctively for a long time: that a substantial chunk of the country is conservative (recent polls put it at 40%) and that a conservative will beat a liberal Republican.  Had there been a proper campaign for a conservative, Republican candidate without any sort of split, I seriously think Hoffman could have won.

We need to continue putting pressure on the GOP to run candidates not to appeal to any particular group, but to support conservative principles and articulate them correctly.  We cannot give up on persuading people and showing them why our principles are good for this country.

Gingrich is also wrong about the practical (i.e. partisan) reasons for supporting Scozzafava and other candidates like her. He says (to paraphrase) that supporting liberal Republican candidates helps our majorities in Congress and will help Republicans effect their ideals in Washington. This is ridiculous for two reasons. First, (as Rush Limbaugh and others have pointed out) liberal Republicans won’t be voting for conservative ideas that they don’t hold (cf. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, et al); instead we will be giving liberal Democrats more votes and the veneer of bipartisanship. Second, doing things just for the party continues the culture of corruption that pervades both parties. It is an attitude that puts the “good” of the party before our ideals. Gingrich and others forget that political parties only exist because of common ideals; a party with too big a tent doesn’t really have a reason to exist beyond continuing its own existence.

I believe, however, that there is a more important reason that Gingrich and others like him are wrong about support liberal Republicans. Many people have said that the Republican party has to understand the voters in different constituencies and run candidates that can pander to them. The argument goes something like this: people in the northeast are liberal, so we have to run liberals to get their vote.

This worries me greatly for one big reason: it relinquishes the party’s responsibility for persuading people. It says, “Don’t try to convince people you’re right, just try to get their vote.” This is not the way to do things. If people don’t agree with us, we shouldn’t just give up. We have to persuade them, show them how our ideas can help them achieve their goals. If we want their vote, we have to show them that our plans will make their lives better.

Persuading voters in this way is certainly more difficult; it requires a lot more work. But this is why conservatives around the country must work one-on-one with people and explain conservative ideas to them. It must be a local movement, and it must ignore the “leaders” in the Republican party who, like Gingrich, attempt a defeatist attitude of giving in to leftism.

The above article, by Dana Loesch, discusses progressive, Democrat groups planning to start some “grassroots” demonstrations to show support for the Democrat health-care reforms; the article, as is often the case in this type of article, accuses the Democrat group of “astroturfing,” or creating a fake grassroots movement.  While this is a good example of astroturfing, I think the distinction between astroturf and grassroots is often quite vague.  One of the first things Democrats said against the Tea-Party movement is that it was astroturf, and this has created a back-and-forth between the two sides, each accusing the other of astroturfing.

What each group accuses the other of doing is really not important.  What is important is how are we going to view protests?  At what point do they cease to be a legitimate outpouring of individual feeling and become fake?

First, corporate involvement is definitely a factor.  Corporations, although made up of individuals and treated in many ways like individual people by the law, cannot by definition begin a grassroots movement.  For a movement to be grassroots, individuals have to be making their own choices to be involved, and an employee at Microsoft or EMI doesn’t usually choose to be employed there because of political feelings.

But what about employees of a non-profit political organization?  People employed by such an organization usually do so because they feel strongly about an issue.  Are their feelings and passions about an issued negated by doing what they do for a living?

Second, does it matter where it starts?  The above article takes this as being the important distinction.  This position holds that a grassroots organization should be started by everyday people who feel strongly about an issue but for whom that issue isn’t their main job.  Thus, a protest started by a political organization can’t be grassroots.  I’m not sure that I agree with that idea, and it becomes especially troublesome in the third point.

So, third, what happens if “professional” political organizations or individuals get involved in a grassroots movement?  For example, if we take the Tea-Party movement as a grassroots movement, does that change if Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity get behind them and support them?

These three problems really get to the problem with the whole grassroots-astroturf debate.  At the moment the debate has become simply a “tit-for-tat.”  While astroturfing definitely exists (the music industry is notorious for this), many of the examples I’ve seen recently are not as easy to call, and I think most of this argument has simply become a way of smearing your opponent without actually talking about the issue.

What we should remember, however, is that many of our representatives on the Right have little room to talk on the hypocrisy front. Unfortunately, hypocrisy seems to be ingrained in most politicians. Republicans came to the majority in Congress in the 1990s as a specific response to tax-and-spend liberalism, but when they finally had a Republican president and an opportunity to affect real change, they succumbed to the spending bug themselves.

It is often said nowadays that the Right is “in the wilderness.” We should remember that the wilderness is a place of reflection and preparation, and we should learn the lessons not only of last eight years, but also of the last eight months, and not repeat the same mistakes.

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.Let us, then, track the develop of equality as de Tocqueville does.  He begins:

Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power.

“The situation of France,” then, was one of supreme inequality, with the route to power (land) in the hands of a small group of people.  The influence of the Church, however, served to begin the progress toward equality.  This was, of course, nothing to do with the religious teachings of the Church (or even the Church’s intention), but rather with the fact that the Church, as the center of learning in early medieval Europe, allowed people of humble means to rise to positions of influence as advisers to kings and princes.  This combined with a settling of society throughout the Middle Ages to give rise to the law:

… the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail.

In addition to the rise of the law, commerce also contributed to the elevation of the lower classes, allowing for the expansion of private property rights.  The cities became enclaves of a type of democracy inside of aristocratic lands.  Finally, the struggle of power between kings and their nobles had a leveling effect, as the kings brought up the middle classes at the expense of the nobles, and the nobles fought themselves almost to extinction.  (This was especially true in the War of the Roses in England, as the noble class found itself decimated in the power struggle between York and Lancaster.)

The Renaissance saw two additional developments that contributed to the rise of democracy: the importance of money in politics, and influence of “men of letters.”  The first is interesting specifically because it is so odious to many people today, but during this period money was, in fact, a great leveler, reducing the importance of birth and raising the importance of work, investment, and enterprise.  The second is, of course, sometimes derided (especially when compared to practical experience), but the idea that one could through the power of knowledge and ideas was revolutionary.

De Tocqueville sums it all up thus:

The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

The first thing that is important to note about this development is that it is not the result of any particular leader or group, but instead developed as a natural product of history.  Of the kings of France, de Tocqueville says, “Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices.”  Because this development was not the direct result of any one person’s actions, or even their intention, the people do not owe anyone their gratitude for it.  He expands this idea by stating:

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich the poor and to impoverish the rich.

In this general trend toward democracy de Tocqueville sees the hand of God working; if all men are equal in sight of God, then they should be equal in sight of the law.  While de Tocqueville acknowledges, thus, the importance of Christianity in the development of democracy, he is careful to point out that “religion is often entangled in those institutions which democracy assails,” and for this reason those who support liberty may attack religion (as some did during the French Revolution).  Despite this, however, he, much like John Adams, believes that democracy can only work in a moral society:”…liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”

(Part 2 of the Introductory Chapter will look more closely at the case of France and finish out de Tocqueville’s introduction.)