Barack Obama's America; A timeless critique from TOCQUEVILLE.

www.weeklystandard.com ^ | March 9, 2009 issue | Alexis de Tocqueville

[Yosemitest]

Barack Obama's America
A timeless critique from Tocqueville.
by Alexis de Tocqueville 03/09/2009, Volume 014, Issue 24


It seems that
if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day,
it would have other characteristics:
it would be more extensive and milder,
and it would degrade men without tormenting them. .  .  .


When I think of the small passions of men of our day,
the softness of their mores,
the extent of their enlightenment,
the purity of their religion,
the mildness of their morality, their laborious and steady habits,
the restraint
that almost all preserve in vice as in virtue,
I do not fear that in their chiefs they will find tyrants,
but rather schoolmasters. .  .  .


I want to imagine with what new features
despotism could be produced in the world:
I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men
who revolve on themselves without repose,
procuring the small and vulgar pleasures
with which they fill their souls. .  .  .


Above these
an immense tutelary power is elevated,
which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments
and watching over their fate.
It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild.
It would resemble paternal power if, like that,
it had for its object
to prepare men for manhood;
but on the contrary,
it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood;
it likes citizens to enjoy themselves
provided that they think only of enjoying themselves.
It willingly works for their happiness;
but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that;
it provides for their security,
foresees and secures their needs,
facilitates their pleasures,
conducts their principal affairs,
directs their industry,
regulates their estates,
divides their inheritances;
can it not and the pain of living?


So it is that every day
it renders the employment of free will
less useful and more rare;
it confines the action of the will
in a smaller space
and little by little
steals the very use of it from each citizen. .  .  .


Thus, after taking each individual
by turns in its powerful hands
and kneading him as it likes,
the sovereign
extends its arms over society as a whole;
it covers its surface
with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules
through which
the most original minds and the most vigorous souls
cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd;
it does not break wills
but it softens them, bends them, and directs them;
it rarely forces one to act,
but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting;
it does not destroy,
it prevents things from being born;
it does not tyrannize,
it hinders, compromises,
enervates, extinguishes,
dazes, and finally reduces each nation
to being nothing more
than a herd of timid and industrious animals
of which government is the shepherd. .  .  .


I have always believed
that this sort of regulated, mild, and peaceful servitude,
whose picture I have just painted,
could be combined better than one imagines
with some of the external forms of freedom,
and that it would not be impossible
for it to be established
in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.


--Alexis de Tocqueville


From Democracy in America, volume two, part four, chapter six:
"What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear"
(translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop)

[Yosemitest]

This is Rush's subject for tomorrow.

Thanks Rush.

Okay, let's expand the issue with examples and point/counterpoint.

[sourcery]

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C. S. Lewis

[OneWingedShark]

Wow... it’s a good read.

[Pan_Yan]

Ping

[griswold3]

I saw a news clip on TV last night from Harpers.
It said something about President Bush being a dictator in the WH and we just did NOT know it. (’progressive projection’ LOL)

Anyone have a link?

[ravinson]

Tocqueville was quite prophetic when he wrote that in the 1830's after having extensively toured America and made careful observations. He was uniquely qualified to objectively analyze America because he was a well-educated, aristocratic European who had family members who had been imprisoned and executed by the mobs which took over his country after the French Revolution.

Unforturnately, few educators expose their students to Tocqueville because his warnings about majoritarian tyranny fly in the face of their blind populism.

[Yosemitest]

And blind populism is what today's National Educators Association (teachers baby sitters) ...
is all about.

[bamahead]

So it is that every day
     it renders the employment of free will
less useful and more rare;
     it confines the action of the will
in a smaller space
     and little by little
steals the very use of it from each citizen

Wow.



Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!

[bamahead]

You’ll like this :)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks bamahead!

[ntnychik]

Bookmark to read later

[Cincinna]

Thanks jla for the heads up!

*** FRENCH POLITICS AND CULTURE PING LIST *** FREEPMAIL ME IF YOU WANT TO JOIN ***

See also Alexis de Tocqueville

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2202855/posts

Toqueville was a man if the eighteenth century who understood the American character better than the American left of the 21st century.

*** FRENCH POLITICS AND CULTURE PING LIST *** FREEPMAIL ME IF YOU WANT TO JOIN ***

[RobbyS]

Soft tyranny!

[skinkinthegrass]

Thanks jla for the heads up!

Thanks, for the post/article.

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke
"Socialism is great until you run out of someone elses money" Margaret Thatcher
"There are two sets of rules. One set for the rulers and another for the rest of us." —Richard Yancey, former IRS tax collector

[philman_36]

It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood...

Where the expression "Nanny State" came from.