[William McKinley]

Part II of this chapter tomorrow.

The Conservative Mind: Cooper (An Excerpt from the chapter "Macaulay, Cooper, and Tocqueville")

The Conservative Mind: John Adams and Liberty Under The Law (An Excerpt)

The Conservative Mind: Burke & The Politics of Prescription (An Excerpt)

[cornelis]

The two big volumes of Democracy are a mine of aphorisms

Sometimes he reminds me of Polonius.

[cornelis]

The analysis of democratic despotism is his supreme achievement as a political theorist, a sociologist, a liberal, and a conservative.

Did he recognize its antidote? That would have royalized him.

[cornelis]

The deepest intellectual weakiness of democracy is its lack of taste or gift for the theoretical life. All our Nobel prizes and the like do nothing to gainsay Tocqueville's appraisal in this regard. The issue is not whether we possess intelligence but whether we are adept at reflection fo the broadest and deepest kind. We need constant reminders of our deficiency, now more than in the past. --Allan Bloom The Closing of the American Mind. How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students

And how true it is. The first initial reaction to any serious consideration of theoretical analysis is an adolescent confidence against making a fuss where there is no need for one. This is usually followed by a corny joke and thumbing one's nose at the pressure that seriousness brings. But hey! This is America. Chill out.

[cornelis]

That's a nice portrait of Tocqueville. Who painted it?

[Merovingian]

tyranny of mediocrity, a standardization of mind and spirit

AMEN..is that you, Ron?

[fortheDeclaration]

Do you know where that great quote is by Tocqueville that went something like this,

I did not find the greatness of America in her farms, her natural resources, her vast land, her political system, but in the thundering righteouness that sounded from the pulpits of her churches'

Thanks.