evolution

This is the third full-length post in a series on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, a look at 19th century America through the eyes of a Frenchman. This series was touched off some weeks ago by Joel. This is a book that should be required reading in every American high school or university.

We’re up to Chapters VI and VII, which discuss the finer points of the American judicial system. The American judiciary is one of the three corners upon which the American enterprise rests, and I think Tocqueville’s observations¹ hold up over time.

I’m skipping ahead a bit — Joel has dealt with Chapter III of Alexis de Tocqueville’s book here. I mean to deal with Chapters IV and V, which deal with the phenomenon of local, “bottom-up” government.

I do want to say a few words about his Chapter III post, which also references passages that I briefly touched on here. He read it quite differently than I did, but I don’t think his reading is any less valid. In fact, there is a logical consequence to his points about aristocracy and education:

In early America, we lacked bored heirs who, in the absence of having to build their own fortunes, devoted themselves to intellectual endeavours. The people who were wealthy had worked hard to accumulate the wealth, so by the time they had time to devote to, you know, smart things, they’d acquired other habits…

But since education is so accessible in America, Alexis says, almost everybody has some book learnin’.

The result: “A middling standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend.”

Joel then goes on to quote the same passage I did in my last de Tocqueville post, where I lamented the lack of unity of purpose in America today.

Joel and de Tocqueville both have it right regarding the dangers of homogeneity. We are indeed as a society sliding toward a soft socialism of “equality”, and people are starting to notice — they are starting to see what they can get away with. Some of the Republicans’ actions, particularly by those of social “conservatives”, of the last few years bear that out. And more than a few “liberal” (leftist) politically-correct technocrats feel that society needs to be “guided” by the loving hands of a handful of elites (themselves).

Which brings us to de Tocqueville’s musings on the nature and structure of local governments in early America.

The first thing that jumped out at me was this passage:

The principle of the sovereignty of the people, which is always to be found, more or less, at the bottom of almost all human institutions, generally remains there concealed from view. It is obeyed without being recognized, or if for a moment it is brought to light, it is hastily cast back into the gloom of the sanctuary.

“The will of the nation” is one of those phrases, that have been most largely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age. Some have seen the expression of it in the purchased suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; others, in the votes of a timid or an interested minority; and some have even discovered it in the silence of a people, on the supposition that the fact of submission established the right to command.

Alexis de Tocqueville could not have imagined modern polling data and its effects on the power-hungry, self-aggrandizing politicians which existed then as well as now when he wrote Democracy in America. What I have seen today* is that if the American people want something — even if it is contrary to or not found in fundamental principles of American government, i.e., the Constitution — they will find some craven politician to give it to them. This model will lead to an anti-libertarian society just as surely as the worst authoritarian dictator would. (Remember — democracy is a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberty.) Surely polling data is not the only cause of this phenomenon — misconceptions of what “equality” should mean play a major role — but it is an example.

de Tocqueville goes on to survey examples of local government. He addresses government at the township level, the county level, and the state level each in turn. He begins with the township, devoting a healthy chunk of Chapter V to it. He wrote that “[i]t is not undesignedly that I begin this subject with the township. The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that wherever of men are collected it seems to constitute itself.” Even though our “townships” have gotten quite a lot bigger with time, this is still true today. Each citizen of a town has a greater share of power within that town that he does anywhere else. What’s different is today is that, with the rise of an “activist” federal government and “activist” state governments which “govern” without end (or to no end in particular), these natural gatherings have much less latitude in which to self-determine. The affairs of the town are the easiest way for people to exercise their liberties to greatest effect. Consolidation of power in state governments and in the federal government — a phenomenon that’s made steady progress since 1900 — has, in my opinion, harmed the cause of liberty.

There’s another thing de Tocqueville notices about early 19th century America that is no longer true today — and again that is to our current detriment:

NOTHING is more striking to a European traveler in the United States than the absence of what we term the government, or the administration. Written laws exist in America, and one sees the daily execution of them; but although everything moves regularly, the mover can nowhere be discovered. The hand that directs the social machine is invisible. Nevertheless, as all persons must have recourse to certain grammatical forms, which are the foundation of human language, in order to express their thoughts; so all communities are obliged to secure their existence by submitting to a certain amount of authority, without which they fall into anarchy. This authority may be distributed in several ways, but it must always exist somewhere.

Does anyone seriously believe that about today’s federal government? The “movers” are everywhere, and again they are not exclusively Right or Left. The impersonality of a large bureaucracy cannot possibly have the interest of all the people it purports to serve at heart. It will thus necessarily fail at any such attempt. Even a state government cannot possibly be expected to serve all its citizens in its present-day expanded role. These governments were intended (and should today) to provide a few basic protections and services for its citizens (fewer with increasing government size), with the people of the towns intended to provide the rest. These governments doubly hurt the cause of liberty, because citizens end up working like dogs to pay off their obligations to them, leaving less time for interest in local affairs.

I leave you with the thoughts of de Tocqueville on centralized government:

The partisans of centralization in Europe are wont to maintain that the government can administer the affairs of each locality better than the citizens can do it for themselves. This may be true when the central power is enlightened and the local authorities are ignorant; when it is alert and they are slow; when it is accustomed to act and they to obey. Indeed, it is evident that this double tendency must augment with the increase of centralization, and that the readiness of the one and the incapacity of the others must become more and more prominent. But I deny that it is so when the people are as enlightened, as awake to their interests, and as accustomed to reflect on them as the Americans are. I am persuaded, on the contrary, that in this case the collective strength of the citizens will always conduce more efficacious to the public welfare than the authority of the government. I know it is difficult to point out with certainty the means of arousing a sleeping population and of giving it passions and knowledge which it does not possess; it is, I am well aware, an arduous task to persuade men to busy themselves about their own affairs. It would frequently be easier to interest them in the punctilios of court etiquette than in the repairs of their common dwelling. But whenever a central administration affects completely to supersede the persons most interested, I am inclined to suppose that it is either misled or desirous to mislead. However enlightened and skillfull a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all the details of the life of a great nation. Such vigilance exceeds the powers of man. And when it attempts unaided to create and set in motion so many complicated springs, it must submit to a very imperfect result or exhaust itself in bootless efforts.

Next time, we’ll discuss de Tocqueville’s thoughts on the judiciary and how they relate to today’s America.

Note: I have created a “Democracy in America” category and placed a link to all the posts in this series in the sidebar under “features”. You’ll be able to access all my DIA posts there.

Joel has posted a third item in his series on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, focusing this time on the relation of religion to liberty and the social order. I haven’t very much to add to Joel’s own post and the comments therein, but this from the text:

Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the faculties of man and that the political world is a field prepared by the Creator for the efforts of mind. Free and powerful in its own sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion never more surely establishes its empire than when it reigns in the hearts of men unsupported by aught beside its native strength.

Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs, as the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.

Even for someone like myself who is not religious, there is meaning here.

[previously: I -- I-A]

It’s not quite a dichotomy, I think. It’s a peak with the two “extremes” at the bottom of either slope. The further down a society is on the slope, the more likely it is to end up at the “bottom”, which in one case is desirable and the other is undesirable (and impossible in a society that claims to be free).

Anyway, I’ve read a little further, and it turns out I wasn’t so crazy after all. Tocqueville:

THE political consequences of such a social condition [one in which the people' rights, riches, and power have small standard deviations---ed.] as this are easily deducible.

It is impossible to believe that equality will not eventually find its way into the political world, as it does everywhere else. To conceive of men remaining forever unequal upon a single point, yet equal on all others, is impossible; they must come in the end to be equal upon all.

Now, I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; rights must be given to every citizen, or none at all to anyone. For nations which are arrived at the same stage of social existence as the Anglo-Americans, it is, therefore, very difficult to discover a medium between the sovereignty of all and the absolute power of one man: and it would be vain to deny that the social condition which I have been describing is just as liable to one of these consequences as to the other.

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. Not that those nations whose social condition is democratic naturally despise liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and, if they miss their aim, resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would rather perish than lose it.

On the other hand, in a state where the citizens are all practically equal, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power. No one among them being strong enough to engage in the struggle alone with advantage, nothing but a general combination can protect their liberty. Now, such a union is not always possible.

From the same social position, then, nations may derive one or the other of two great political results; these results are extremely different from each other, but they both proceed from the same cause.

I’d like to develop these thoughts further — but I’ve been dealing with folks at the office running around with their hair on fire, and I’m tired, so I’ll just leave it there for now.

[Note: I have edited this post to fix some kludgy grammar and sentence structure, as well as to add a couple of footnotes. I would also like to fix the reference to Parmesan cheese below. In fact the EU does not legislate the composition of Parmesan cheese -- they do something that is dumber than I could have suspected. "Parmesan" is a protected name limited to about 600 producers in a certain region of Italy. Thus, a cheese produced in Sweden using the same procedure and the same material composition -- hell, it could be produced by Italian farmers in Sweden -- is not, according to the EU, "Parmesan cheese". Nice to see that all the EU's other problems are fixed.

These thoughts have been fermenting in my head for several days, but I sat on them because I didn't want to steal the thunder¹ of Joel Mathis, who proposed the idea of blogging his way through Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, a book that has been on my pile for several months. Studying for the first Society of Actuaries exam forced me to put the book away. I have a few months before the next exam, so when I saw Joel's idea, I decided to join in. He started it off here.

It should be clear to all who read this book that what Tocqueville was after was not American democracy or a survey of America in general; instead he was out to capture the Platonic ideal of democracy. He found it best expressed here in America, which is why he came.

I think we need to clarify a few things that appear to have been forgotten in the years since Tocqueville wrote this book. First is to attempt to determine what Tocqueville meant by equality. In my mind, there are two kinds of equality: equality of opportunity* and equality of outcome. The first kind of equality is a desirable state (and, I will argue, the only state) for a free society. If this condition holds, free people can truly make of their lives what they will -- a state from which liberty necessarily follows. The second kind -- equality of outcome -- is in my belief the animating principle of the people I call "boutique multiculturalists" and of self-styled "progressives"; in other words, the "social democratic" wing of the modern Left. It will only hold, as one of Joel's commenters noted, in our graves. It defies human nature. It can only be attempted (and in fact is attempted these days) through government force of arms.² It is the first type which I believe Tocqueville meant -- equality of opportunity is something with which most Europeans before his time would certainly have been unfamiliar³.

Second is the use of the words democracy and liberty. They are not equal, though there are many people in Washington, D.C. and in the state capitals who are paid a lot of money to make you think that they are. In the words of mathematical logic, democracy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for liberty -- one can have democracy without liberty, but one cannot have liberty without also having democracy. Prime examples are the current governments of Europe along with the European Union itself (which legislates such things as the proper composition of Parmesan cheese). The last two generations of Americans -- including my own -- have been led to believe that the two are equivalent when they are not. So far, my impression has been that Tocqueville realized this.

With all that in mind, let's now turn to Joel's questions of the day. First:

We have more knowledge more freely available than ever now, thanks to the Web and its ilk; is that still, on balance, a democratizing force?

That depends upon who uses the information and why. As Bill said in Joel's comment thread:

I think there are two things we can conclude. The first is that a proliferation of outlets is the only way to make sure (and even then it's iffy) that the Truth is even in the pack to begin with. And the second is that truth is not democratic but something else all together. We can't decide what happened to Cortes' ships [see the full comment -- it's the 3/24 12:41 pm comment--ed.] by counting noses, because what “everyone knows” may not be the truth - and I’m just cynical enough to argue that it’s probably not the truth.

I agree that the truth is *often* outed, but I would also argue that, men being what they are, truth is more often decided for each person based on what he would wish it to be. “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest,” and all that, especially once we get past little questions like “who’s the Emir of Krrjrrkistan?” and onto big questions like “Are people more equal today than they were in de Tocqueville’s day?” The answer is often yes or no depending on how limited the sources upon which we are relying are.

Therefore while I don’t think that more knowledge is generally a democratizing force, it is a force that opens opportunities. That may lead to specialization, which may be a democratizing force but only if people take advantage of the opportunities of knowledge.

I made this very point at the Citizens’ Journalism Academy when this very question was asked by another participant. All this information, the volume of which has increased exponentially in the last decade, is whatever the reader makes of it. It is not necessarily a democratizing force, but as Bill says, it increases the number of opportunities available, which can indeed lead to more freedom for the users of that information. The proliferation of information is again a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberty.

Next:

Is equality still ‘a fundamental condition of America?’

It depends, as I said, on the definition of equality. Equality of opportunity is indeed a necessary condition of liberty (here, I’m substituting “liberty” for Tocqueville’s “America”, which I have argued is a signifier for “a Platonic ideal of democracy/liberty” which Tocqueville chooses to call “America”. The other kind I’ve already argued is impossible.

I need to plow through a couple more chapters, and we’ll continue in this line later this week.