I am uncomfortable with his assertion that hierarchical obedience in service to an established hereditary order is necessity to a free society. I think he misses the true message offered by de Toqueville, that people whose obedience is to God and country as the source of their own freedom, will, as long as they remain vigilant, meet every requirement for both vision and continuity he rightly cites as essential to continued liberty.I think that when you describe an obedience to God and country, he would say that is a hierarchial obedience in service to an established hereditary order. In other words, de Toqueville is offering a reaffirmation and specification of the very idea you are saying the author missed.
The distinction is one of substance, not of form. Obedience to God is hierarchical, but it is a totally flat management structure with an infinitely benevolent and omniscient despot. The choice to obey is totally without apparent coercion; one is free to reject the very idea of hell. To choose to obey God is an act in the pursuit of freedom. The hierarchy in this article to which I objected was hereditary monarchy> nobility> commoner, for which the author's conservatism has an apparent predisposition.
Not me. I've had just about enough of its financial analog here in America, with their destructive influence buying through tax-exempt "charitable" foundations. Give me the Silicon Valley hierarchy of productivity, invention, and drive, over the Rockefeller/Pew/Ford/MacArthur/Chase/Morgan/Phillips/Walker... hierarchy any day, although the former is morphing into looking like its Eastern model as we speak (the Packard Foundation is an abomination to liberty).