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Reading this book cannot help but give the reader a much more keen understanding of America. Not even Alexis de Tocqueville has a perfect track record--he really got it wrong when he asserted that "the people in democratic states do not mistrust the members of the legal profession" and when he predicted that the nations of South America would one day be prosperous (a prediction that might yet come true, but has not done so 175 years later after the book's publication).When reading "Democracy in America", what I was repeatedly thunderstruck by was the fact that someone 26 years old was insightful enough to make these observations. He thought that there were mostly equal levels of education in America, and thought that as conditions in the country became more equal, great revolutions would become more rare.Tocqueville is a hero for many conservatives, as he mostly agreed with Jefferson in thinking that that government is best which governs least.
What resulted instead was "Democracy in America", one of the best-ever treatises on a nation's politics, culture, and institutions. Tocqueville examines religion and was "convinced that Christianity must be maintained at any cost in the bosom of modern democracies". Alexis de Tocqueville came to America for nine months in 1831-32 to conduct a study of the American penal system.
He was against slavery and foresaw its demise. "Democracy in America" will be read and studied for centuries by those who wish to understand our great nation. This Bantam edition begins with a great introduction by Joseph Epstein.Along with his famous words concerning the tyranny of the majority, the rise (and future clash) of America and Russia, and the differences between democratic and aristocratic societies, Tocqueville makes scores of other trenchant observations.He shows that America was already a powerful, respected nation by the 1830s, and he expected it to become more powerful (and rule the seas) in the future.He was a staunch advocate of freedom of the press.
He examines political parties, and thought that, in the 1830s, the political system was already to the point that the chief desire of American presidents was to be reelected.
In the process of cultural homogenization and individuation, de Tocqueville foresees that centralization of power will become much more likely as the populace views itself to be nothing more than an accumulation of nearly-identical citizens. It is this latter point, which seems somewhat paradoxical at first glance, which is perhaps the most prophetic of his reflections. In this, he not only foresaw the simple tendencies of utilitarian artwork and literature but also the potential destruction of civil associations and the devaluation of individual accomplishment and differentiation.
To my former understanding, the text was merely a collection of adulation and reflections upon the American way of life by a French observer in the nineteenth century. The phenomena of hardy individualism and its potential devolvement into individualism were not lost in his reflections. Before approaching the text of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, I had little realization as to the proper content of his prophetic work.
From this hardy individualism, de Tocqueville feared that humanity in democratic times may tend more toward equality and stability than toward liberty. Beyond this, his fears of the tyranny which could result by the abandonment of liberties by the people are well founded, for a society which wholly forgets the fact that some human beings can stand out is one which can easily allow itself to be subjected to the capricious desires of a powerful state as liberty is wholly forgotten.These prophetic words should be read by all reflective Americans as we continue to move toward a larger centralized state and clamor with greater intensity for security in all forms (be it physical or social), for such equalizing security can only come at the cost of the liberties which allow the individual to actually have the worth which we intellectually affirm that he or she has. Upon reading this abridged version of Democracy in America, I found a much more prophetic text which reflected more upon the cultural impact of democratic institutions than upon the praise which should be attributed thereto.
While one may fault de Tocqueville for approaching the democratic world with the cutting eye of a small aristocracy, it is quite evident that he accepted the fact that the human spirit was led to greater democratic tendencies and that such was to be taken almost a priori as the state of the world in his era.The truly important reflection of the work as a whole comes in the considerations which he places upon the consequences of equality which follows from democratic revolutions.
Find another edition. This kind of editing is even more unacceptable in our age of open communications and hopefully open minds. As a former reviewer has stated this edition takes quite a bit of liberty in excising the less flattering aspects of Tocqueville's views of America. In fact the entire section on race-relations has been excised --perhaps it was deemed too controversial.
In fact I suspect this is a "patriotic" abridgement. Unless you want to re-create the experience of a modern Frenchman confronted with de Tocqueville's somewhat archaic French by reading the text in somewhat archaic English, I would seek out any of the more recent translations: there are at least three.3) The ellipses, that is, the abridgements, have sometimes been made to conceal some of the author's less flattering views America. For example, in the second chapter of part one, Heffner has omitted references to some of the excesses of Puritan law in New England which the notoriously even-handed Tocqueville had cited. I have three complaints about this edition of Tocqueville:1) Nowhere in the book is the translator credited. This violates basic principles of publication and scholarship.2) This is in fact an abridged version of the original English-language translation by Henry Reeve, dating from sometime before 1862.
An amazing book, and necessary reading for anyone who wishes to understand America, rather than merely talk about it. Everything from the solidity of America's political infrastructure to the disquieting trend toward anti-intellectualism are explored in this massive work, and his gift of analysis is matched only by his gift for prophecy (can you believe that he predicted a conflict between America and Russia before the rise of Communism). Praising this book is a bit like saying Huckleberry Finn was one of the great American novels - it's a profound statement of the obvious. Even so, it must be said: Alexis de Tocqueville's magnum opus is a brilliant sociological analysis of America, with his genius made all the more evident by how applicable his observations about 1830s America are to its twenty-first century counterpart.
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