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Some of my favorite Tocquevillias are about the venality of the democratic people. He saw that equality would lead more men to prosperty while channeling them into more narrow lives. It's a theme he draws over and over. He also felt that equality would lead to a maintainance of morality, and I think this has proven correct:

Equality of condition does not of itself produce regularity of morals, but it unquestionably facilitates and increases it...
[here, PsyOp, I'll extend a quotation you gave in the "Morality" section above...] Society is endangered, not by the great profligacy of a few, but by laxity of morals amongst all. In the eyes of a legislator, prostitution is less to be dreaded than intrigue...
The tumultuous and constantly harrassed life which equality makes men lead, not only distracts them from the passions of love, by denying them time to indulge it, but it diverts them from it by another more secret but more certain road. All men who live in democratic times more or less contact the ways of thinking of the manufacturing and trading classes; their minds take a serious, deliberate, and positive turn; they are apt to relinquish the ideal, in order to pursue some visible and proximate object, which appears to be the natural and necessary aim of their desires. Thus, the principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth."

Certainly our moral conceptions have changed (and dramatically), but whatever the current set the morals are strong and uniform, be it from the Bible Belt or Ivy League PC. That said, my stay here in San Francisco has led to some insight into the nature of social dissent, something my reading of de Tocqueville didn't uncover.

I've been terrifically dissapointed by the underground crowd. I've not exactly lived with them, but we've made our treks through Haight-Ashbury (the kids like to lower the windows and crank out the B-52's "Planet Claire" as we cruise Haight Street), the Castro, and across the Bay to Berkeleyville. It all seems so normal. Even the crack house down the way is a bore, as are the new-agers with their incense and quartz pyramids, which has made for unfulfilling spectator sport. One gets used to the bums and the smells of their public humanity.

I don't want more from these people, and I'm glad not to be witness to a shootout, or a homeless rage, or a gay bath house. I've merely learned how dull they are. Today I was excited by one of the visitors from Planet Claire: unlike most, she was a pretty girl, nice clothes, nice walk, upright, firm and confident. Her red hair was perfectly cut, and her face perfectly blank. We watched her walk up Haight Street, turn a corner, then sit on the walk against a brick wall with legs stretched out like Raggedy Anne. Whatever her buzz or angst or fears, I saw none, and I wondered only how bored she must be. Absent the hair, she could have walked straight to my mother's dinner table.

Like the nose rings, the gay thing here is dreary at best. Diversity flags are more common than stop signs. Men holding hands are a laugh, or nothing at all. Gay is so normal its absence would shock. The only thing I learned new (and I've lived in Miami Beach, so I've seen it all), is that these people are supremely obsessed with sexuality, an infatuation that, like the flags, is so practiced it is merely banal.

Sex seems to be the only thing that defines the gay culture. Without it, there is no gay. De Tocqueville couldn't have predicted birth control, but had he known it he would have seen where it would go. On the same principle, he'd have explained away with a flipped hand that one or two percent of the populace that so demands to be different.

The dissent that is supposed to define this city means nothing. My dissapointment is that of the tourist: the exhibit was closed, the Colleseum was hidden beneath scaffolding, or McDonalds has taken over the Champs Elysee.

For my culture, and my country, I think I've learned a great lesson: the bums have plenty to eat. When I see a fresh bag of bread thrown in the park in their midst to feed the birds, I see that bums have emotions to spare for the birds. Then I see it everywhere: the new-agers get to the top of Mount Shasta on the back of OPEC (and they sleep in the latest tents courtesy of some new thread by Dupont); Haight Street is a parody of the parody it's always been, especially with the Ben & Jerry's at the corner, raking in middle class dough; and the gays don't like to be called gay anymore, for the word has turned drab ("daddy" or some other thing, I read in the paper here, cuts better).

You see, life is way normal here in San Francisco.

Thank God there haven't been any earthquakes the last two weeks.

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'Nuff of that diverson. Back, then, to Mr. d T.

One truly lovel section regards the family. De Tocqueville saw that equality would extend to children and influence the family in a magnificent way:

"I think that, in proportion as manners and laws become more democratic, the relation of father and son becomes more intimate and more affectionate; rules and authority are less talked of, confidence and tenderness are oftentimes increased, and it would seem that the natural bond is drawn closer in proportion as the social bond is loosened."
In a democratic family, the father exercises no other power than that which is granted to the affection and the experience of age; his orders would perhaps be disobeyed, but his advice is for the most part authoritative. Though he be not hedged in with ceremonial respect, his sons at least accost him with confidence; they have no settled form of addressing him, but they speak to him constantly, and are ready to consult him every day; the master and the constituted ruler have vanished; the father remains."

or this:

"Democracy loosens social ties, but tightens natural ones; it brings kindred more closely together, whilst it throws citizens more apart.

As for our daughters, he noted,

I have been frequently surprised, and almost frightened at the singular address and happy boldness with which young women in America contrive to manage their thoughts and their language, amidst all the difficulties of free conversation..."
The Americans... have found out that, in a democracy, the independence of individuals cannot fail to be very great, youth premature, tastes ill-restrained, customs fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless, paternal authority weak, and marital authority contested. Under these circumstances, believing that they had little chance of repressing in women the most vehement passions of the human heart, they held that the surer way [of raising their daughters] was to teach her the art of combatting those passions for herself. As they could not prevent her virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined that she should know how best to defend it; and more reliance was placed on the free vigor of her will than on safeguards which have been shaken or overthrown. Instead then of inculcating mistrust of herself, they constantly seek to enhance her confidence in her own strength of character. As it is neither possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in perpetual and complete ignorance, they hasten to give her a precocious knowledge on all subjects. Far from hiding the corruptions of the world from her, they prefer that she should see them at once, and train herself to shun them; and they hold it of more importance to protect her conduct, than to be over-scrupulous of the innocence of her thoughts."

[I shall make my daughter read this on her 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st... birthday]

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Best to all, and a wonderful rest of the summer. We're heading back East now, via the northern route, glorious Maine the destination.

-Nicollo