Tocqueville at 200

WSJ ^ | 7/29/05 | Staff

[T-Bird45]

When Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, arrived in Newport, R.I., in May 1831, the country was barely 50 years old--and Tocqueville wasn't yet 26. Andrew Jackson was president and John C. Calhoun was vice president. Politically, the event of the year was Nat Turner's slave revolt in Virginia. Steamships existed and a primitive rail system had just come into service, but the first of the wagon trains had yet to cross the Rockies. In faraway Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, then 22, gave his first political speech (atop a beer keg) on the subject of "the navigation of the Sangamon River."

[T-Bird45]

This is a free read if you are registered or go to bugmenot. Basic thesis is that de Tocqueville would still recognize America today as similar to what he observed in the 1830s. The article points out he would probably decry the spread of the federal government but would connect with other institutions, such as local government, civic associations, and religious belief. In my opinion, these are where he would most strongly point out how the reach of federal government has supplanted these very institutions.

[pissant]

Good article. Thanks for posting it! Tocqueville was very wise beyond his years.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Religious belief, for a third, which elevates men above their material fixations and furnishes democracy with the public morality it requires.

This is the essential part and the thing the left is trying hardest to destroy.