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Basically, upon re-reading by a general joe like me, I see him as attributing a bunch of false Rouseauian concepts to the Tocquevillian readings of history and then knocking down that straw-man by saying that we weren't an egalitarian nation. The response is best made that Tocqueville never said we were. We were cognizant of our Prescriptive Rights as Englishmen and translated that into a nation animated by those freedoms.

Looking at our history based on what inequality there was is like measuring the depth of the rivers at the time--interesting, but of little use.

Such doesn't make the real deep comparative issues like why the founder's generation thought so little of slavery as a injustice: American Slaves of the 1700s had better working conditions, hours and lives than the feudal serfs of Europe. (I hasten to add that conditions were much worse in the 1800s, but the point made bu Forrest McDonald illustrates how little inequality really effects us.)

To all you good folks, thanks for sharing!

I'll be viewing De Tocqueville in the context of the 1912 election's fight between advocates for "Direct Democracy" and Constitutionalists. It seems to me that DeToc would have understood the battle, and I intend to employ his definitions in the narrative.

I found this paper while looking for a DeToc quotation in the Univ. of VA X-Roads e-text collection. I couldn't imagine that they felt this paper worthy of placement within a million MBytes of the great man. I just knew Freepers would have a thought or two.

I had to read it with a ruler, but that wasn't the worst of it. It took me long to read because I kept screaming at it. My print-out is peppered with "A.H.!" and "F.U.!"'s in the margin. Anyway, I always feel that I have to at least look at the fools, and it's a joy to bury 'em deep in a footnote with cynicism piled like dirt.

I'll re-read everyone's posts tonight, and I may have a specific question or to. Meanwhile, thanks for taking the time for this.

One last thing: anyone familiar with Myrdahl and Hartz?