An Outsider Looking In: Alexis de Tocqueville The consequences of this state of affairs are dire and dangerous for the future. (Political Science 565)

An Outsider Looking In:Alexis de Tocqueville

“The consequences of this state of affairs are dire and dangerous for the

future.” (Political Science 565)

Associations• Why have Americans not suffered from the risks of

faction inherent in an unlimited right of association?• Americans see associations differently than do

Europeans– In Europe, they are “weapons of war” prepared for battle– In America, they are to show numerical strength and to

persuade the majority– In Europe some political associations are so far out of the

mainstream that they can never hope to persuade the majority, and “when such a party forms an association, its aim is not to convince but to fight.”

– But in America, there are no parties with such dramatic differences (224-226)

2

Democratic Government• “it is not always the ability to choose men of merit which

democracy lacks but the desire and inclination to do so.”– Envy, resentment & equality (230)

• Why has America been able to avoid the worst consequences of this?– During the revolution, America was fortunate to be led and founded

by outstanding men who gave it wise institutions– Good intelligence and customs help to restrain the worst aspects of

democracy• Thus, New England makes better choices than the rest of democracy

– While the House of Representatives is full of losers, the Senate is populated by intelligent and accomplished people• This is because the House is directly elected, while the Senate is chosen by

state legislatures, refining public opinion into “a nobler and more beautiful form” (233-234)

3

Democratic Habits• “I am convinced that, if ever tyranny succeeds in

getting a foothold in America, it will have even more difficulty in overcoming the habits formed by freedom than in conquering the love of freedom itself.– This constantly renewed agitation introduced by

democratic government into the political realm subsequently passes into civil society. Perhaps, all in all, that is the greatest advantage of democratic government which I praise much more for what it causes to be done than for what it actually does.” (284)

4

Perils of Popular Sovereignty

• In America, the majority “possesses immense actual power and a power of opinion almost as great; and when it has made up its mind over a question, there are, so to speak, no obstacles which might, I will not say halt, but even retard its onward course long enough to allow it time to heed the complaints of those it crushes as it goes by.

The consequences of this state of affairs are dire and dangerous for the future.” (290)

5

Tyranny of the Majority

• The majority thinks itself both the source of law and above the law, a tyrant– In Maryland, black Americans had the legal right

to vote, but majority white prejudice against them, and majority sanction of violence, mean that on the whole, they choose not to.

• “So you mean that the majority, which has the privilege of enacting laws, also wishes to have the privilege of disobeying them?” (295, fn. 4)

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Tyranny of the Majority

• “There is [...] no earthly authority so worthy of respect or so vested with so sacred a right that I would wish to allow it unlimited action and unrestricted dominance.”

• “My main complaint against a democratic government as organized in the United States in not in its weakness, [...] but in its inexorable strength.” (294)– Though the people rule as God, they have neither his

wisdom nor his justice

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Tyranny of the Majority• “In America, the majority has staked out a formidable fence

around thought. Inside those limits a writer is free but woe betide him if he dares to stray beyond them.”– “Formerly tyranny employed chains and executioners as its

crude weapons; but nowadays civilization has civilized despotism itself even though it appeared to have nothing else to learn.

• Princes had, so to speak, turned violence into a physical thing but our democratic republics have made it into something as intellectual as the human will it intends to constrict.” (298)

• Even Louis XIV could tolerate mockery of itself, but the majority will tolerate no insult. “The majority lives therefore in an everlasting self-adoration.” (299)

8

Barriers to Tyranny

• “When the American people become intoxicated by their enthusiasms or carried away by them, lawyers supply an almost invisible brake to slow them down.” (313)

• Judges also– Constitutional review– Lifetime appointment

• Election of judges will have “disastrous results, and it will be seen that an attack has been directed against not only the power of judges but against the democratic republic itself.” (314)

9

Juries• “One must make a distinction between the jury

as a judicial institution and as a political one.” (315)– Institutions have unintended social outcomes

• “I do not know whether juries are much use to litigants but I am sure that they are are of great use to those who judge the case. They are, in my view, one of the most effective means available to society for educating the people.” (321)– To exercise judgment in the application of law &

power

10

Slavery & Racism• “Man, in modern time, after the abolition of slavery,

must, therefore, eradicate three much more intangible and tenacious prejudices: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of race, and, finally, the prejudice of whites.”– This is demonstrated by the fact the even in states without

slavery or legal subjugation of blacks, where they may vote and interracial marriage is legal, majority prejudice means that these things almost never happen

– Lacking a legal guarantee of white supremacy, Northerners are more likely to demand the absolute social exclusion of blacks than in the South, where whites are confident of their clear social supremacy (401-403)

11

Abolition

• Northern abolition meant that paid labor no longer had to compete with slaves– “Slavery in the United States is destroyed in the interest,

not of Negroes, but of the whites.”• But while abolition ended slavery in a state, it did not

free slaves– With the approach of abolition, & the knowledge that a

slave’s children could no longer be counted part of the slave’s wealth generating ability, slave owners either sold their slaves South or relocated their whole operation

– The same policy subtracts from the Northern population at the same time that it swells the Southern (410-412)

12

Secession

• The South realizes that its hegemony over American politics is slipping– Thus, “If it happens to notice that a Union law is

not in its favor, it cries out against this abuse of power; it vigorously remonstrates and, if its voice is not heard, it becomes indignant and threatens to withdraw from an association whose burdens it bears without enjoying the profits.” (449)

13

Will republican government endure?

• “What most strikes the visitor to the United States is the kind of tumultuous agitation at the heart of which we find political society.”

• While the small laws change constantly, the fundamental law is stable

• “What can be foreseen now is that, if Americans were to deviate from a republic, they would speedily arrive at despotism without pausing for very long at monarchy.”– If the ill-defined powers fearlessly allocated to the elected

official fall into the hands of a hereditary power, the people are use to extraordinary deployments of power, without any check against it (465-70)

14

Individualism• A centrifugal psychological product of democratic equality• “Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which

persuades each citizen to cut himself off from his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of his family and friends in such a way that he thus creates a small group of his own and willingly abandons society at large to its own devices.” (587)• Isolates individuals from others, communities, and history– “wrong headed thinking” originating in defects of the mind as

much as the heart– Not egoism, which is “an ardent and excessive love of oneself

which leads man to relate everything back to himself and to prefer himself to everything• Springs from blind instinct

15

Self-Interest Rightly Understood• Practical interactions make it apparent “that man helps

himself by serving others and that doing good is in his own interest.” (610)– Especially over long term– A conclusion drawn from democratic habits of association,

interaction, cooperation– Americans respect both rights and property because they

all have both• “The doctrine might debase a few individuals but it

does raise the race as a whole.” (612)– People are not less selfish in America than in Europe, they

only understand their self-interest better

16

Self-Interest

• “Do you not see the decline of religions? [...] Do you not notice how, on all sides, beliefs are ceding place to rationality and feelings to calculations? If, amid this general upheaval, you fail to link the idea of rights to individual self-interest, which is the only fixed point in the human heart, what else have you got to rule the world except fear?” (279)

17

John L. O’Sullivan• 1813-1895• Democratic party activist• Editor, literary critic, gov’t

envoy to Portugal• Influential in van Buren,

Pierce administrations• Founder, editor-in-Chief

of United States Magazine & Democratic Review– Whitman & Hawthorne

18

The Nation as Crusade• The “high and holy” democratic/voluntary principle

(“Introduction”)– “the fundamental element of [America’s] new social and

political system” • Defining America

– “The best government is that which governs least”– “Let man be fettered by no duty, save

His brother’s right—like his, inviolable”• A community of belief– “full and free profession of the cardinal principles of

political faith on which we take our stand”– “true and living faith”

The Nation as Crusade

• US exceptional, world-historical importance• “All history has to be re-written; political science and

the whole scope of all moral truth have to be considered and illustrated in the light of the democratic principle. All old subjects of thought and all new questions arising, connected more or less directly with human existence, have to be taken up again and re-examined in this point of view.”

• The American interest = the universal interest– Voluntary principle = democracy = United States =

“the cause of all mankind”

The Nation as Crusade• Defining the community:• What about slavery?– Vague commitment to eventual extinction of slavery– slavery was “not a political” problem, “but a moral

and economic one, the decision of which must rest, voluntarily, with the slave states themselves.”

– Matter of intrastate commerce, not rights (Democratic Review 14, 4/44, p. 429) Union composed of states, not individuals

– Illegitimate to compel change in status quo– Would violate democratic principle


• Liberty > Equality– To be treated as an equal, one must be capable of

self-rule. – Some can, some can’t:– “According to their knowledge of, and respect for, the

rights of a citizen, shall their freedom from governmental restraints be measured out to them, and every privilege which they learn to exercise wisely, government will be forced to relinquish, until each man becomes a law unto himself.” (“Territorial Aggrandizement”)

The Nation as Crusade• To be considered an equal, one must first become free– Anglo-Saxon culture (not biology) makes whites most

capable of freedom• Until then, it is fair to regard the un-free individual as

an inferior– Slaves are made incapable of being free because the

brutality w/which they are treated has made them brute– Natives cannot be free because of their savagery &

primitiveness– Mexicans can’t be free because they are “semi-

barbarous”, have an aristocratic Spanish culture. They may one day be educated enough that they can be free.


• “The Great Nation of Futurity”– “we have, in reality, but little connection with the

past history of any [other nations], and still less with antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history.”• America is new, morally pure, and unstained by sins of

the past• A radical break from the past


• “America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminisces of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of personal conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement.”– America acts with pure motives, in the interest of

all mankind by definition


• “We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. “


• “We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that ‘the gates of hell—the powers of aristocracy and monarchy—’ shall not prevail against it.”


• The enemies of the United States and democracy are enemies not only of all mankind, but of God– They are intrinsically evil, satanic

• “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”– Matthew 16:18– Refers to the Christian church– America, embodying the will of God, is the new

church– By definition, the United States is a force of pure good

and its enemies agents of pure moral and religious evil


• “no lust for territory has stained our annals. No nation has been despoiled by us, no country laid desolate, no people overrun.”– The indigenous would probably disagree.– But, they cannot for O’Sullivan be free, and thus

are removed from consideration. Where they were, democracy will be.


• New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845:• “To state the truth at once in its neglected simplicity,

we are free to say that were the respective arguments and cases of the two parties, as to all these points of history and law, reversed—had England all ours, and we nothing but hers—our claim to Oregon would still be best and strongest. And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”

The Nation as Crusade• “All this will be our future history, to establish on earth

the moral dignity and salvation of man—the immutable truth and beneficence of God. • For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which

are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field.

• Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?” (Great Nation of Futurity)