The Frenchman Who Wrote About America Better Than Any American: The Story of America Series [Ep. 23]

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, another installment of our series About Us, The Story of America’s Series with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book Land of Hope, Bill McLay. Today, Bill shares the story of a foreigner whose observations on our nation still seem current nearly two hundred years later. His name: Alexis de Tocqueville. Let’s get into the story. Take it away, Bill.

Who was Alexis de Tocqueville? Let me back up. Alexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805 to a French aristocratic family. It was a family that had suffered greatly because of the French Revolution. Tocqueville’s father, who was a loyal civil servant, ended up being imprisoned. His mother suffered from mental illness as a result of this. His grandfather was murdered. He was very much affected by the French Revolution. He grew up in the wake of that cataclysmic event. So, a great question always for him was what was to be learned from this event? Was this something that represented an inevitable movement of history, or was it a fluke? Was the restoration of the monarchy, which took place when he was a young man? Was that a restoration of the normal order of things? So he was living at a kind of cusp of history, and which things seemed as if they could go one way or another. So that’s Tocqueville. He came to America in 1830 ostensibly to study the prison system of the United States, which, believe it or not, was regarded as advanced by the world’s standards at that point. But that was just a pretext. Really, what he wanted to do was to write a great book about this emerging phenomenon, this first great democracy, this first great republic, of which he said, “All the world talks and no one knows.” So he was going to write the book that would make the world understand what this great experiment meant, and to look at its virtues, its vices, and try to discern from that what Europe could learn, what France, in particular, or could learn in its future, and to guide the forces of democracy to a better harbor, to a more felicitous conclusion than what had come out of the revolution, which was bloodshed, Napoleon, and a restoration of the monarchy after much warfare and disruption. He actually had political ambitions also; I should not forbear from mentioning that. And you thought, making this trip to America, writing a great book, would launch him. It really didn’t have that effect. He wrote a great book; it didn’t launch a great political career, as it turned out. As far as America is concerned, Tocqueville wrote the book called “Democracy in America,” De la Démocratie en Amérique, published in two volumes, 1835 and 1840, and these two volumes arguably make up together the greatest single work about America ever written. I think if you were condemned to a desert island with only one book to read about America for all the time left to you in life, I don’t think you could do much better than “Democracy in America,” because it describes certain fundamental properties of American society that have persisted, and it describes in very powerful ways the virtues and the pathologies of democracy—that is, of the regime based on the principle of human equality, making no distinctions of rank, of nobility, and the other marks of aristocracy, but treating all human beings as fundamentally legally, civically equal. It was still a new idea. America, from the start, from the very beginning, we were a republic and conceived of ourselves as a republic. Tocqueville wanted to see firsthand: How does that work? What does that look like? And he’s only 26 years old, but he’s got to have been the most perceptive 26-year-old. He was to sociology and political science what Mozart was to music. He got it very early, and he got it right. So Tocqueville came to America, and he says very clearly, he came there to see what the future held. He came to feel that democracy—that is, a regime that stressed the equality of all people—was the wave of the future. Like it or not, America was the avant-garde. It was in the vanguard of change that he expected and believed was coming everywhere. He says, “I confessed that in America I saw more than America. I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress.” That, I think, is a very clear statement of what he intended to do. He really wasn’t trying to write the best book on America. He just did that as a matter of course, in the process of writing the best book on democracy; and he spends nine months in the country, writes subcopious notes. Now, as the quote I just read, he implies, Tocqueville did not think it was all roses and sugarplums in America. He was not advocating for democracy. He was saying democracy what is coming. Democracy has its virtues; it has its faults. We need to understand both. We need to understand virtues; we need to see the false. We need to acknowledge the faults, and that these faults may be inherent to the nature of democracy. And the best we can do is find a way to live with them.

When we come back, more of the story of Alexis de Tocqueville: “Democracy in America.” After these messages. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and all of our history stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that matter in life. If you can’t get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu. That’s Hillsdale.edu. And we return to Our American Stories, and with our Story of America Series, let’s pick up where we last left off.

He captured great things about the nation. He also captured flaws. He’s not an American booster, not an American cheerleader, but an observer, an astute observer. He didn’t want to become an American. There was a lot about Americans that was distasteful to him. He—remember, he’s an aristocrat. Actually, many foreign observers of that time talked about Americans—the way Americans ate; that they massive amounts of food without much attention to the food. A Frenchman would not do this. So it was not altogether an admiring figure. And yet he did admire many things, and we’ll get to those in a moment. I want to talk about the flaws that he saw first. One example is the policy of Indian Removal that’s going on at this very time. Tocqueville witnessed it firsthand. He stumbled upon a group of Choctaw Indians crossing the Mississippi River near Memphis. And here’s what he said: “It is impossible to conceive the extent of the sufferings which attend these forced immigrations. They are undertaken by a people already exhausted and reduced, and the countries to which the newcomers betake themselves are inhabited by other tribes who received them with jealous hostility. Hunger is in the rear, war awaits them, and misery besets them on all sides. In the hope of escaping from such a host of enemies, they separate, and each individual endeavors to procure the means of supporting his existence in solitude and secrecy, living in the immensity of the desert, like an outcast of civil society. Social tie which distress had long since weakened. His en dissolved. They’ve lost their country, and their people won deserts them. Their very families are obliterated, the names they bore in common are forgotten, their language perishes, and all the traces of their origin disappear.” And he ended his writing on this subject with. Another feature of Tocqueville was a man who possessed enormous compassion and insight, but also an ability to make very hard and difficult judgments. And so he ends with this: “These are great evils, and it must be added that they appear to me to be irremediable. I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed to perish, and that whenever the Europeans shall be established on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, that race of men will be no more. The Indians had only the two alternatives of war or civilization. In other words, they must either have destroyed the Europeans or become their equals.” That, of course, is not the only flaw. Circa 1831, that Tocqueville saw. He had some contact with the institution of slavery. A few words about that. The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they’ve lived. But the destiny of the Negroes is in some measure interwoven with that of the Europeans. The two races are attached to each other without intermingling, and they are alike unable entirely to separate or to combine. The most formative all of all the eels which threaten the future existence of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and, in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments or of the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to consider this as a primary fact. The permanent evils to which mankind is subjected are usually produced by the vehement or increasing efforts of men. But there is one calamity which penetrated furtively into the world, and which was at first scarcely distinguishable amidst the ordinary abuses of power. It originated with an individual whose name history has not preserved. It was wafted like some accursed germ upon a portion of the soil. But it afterwards nurtured itself, grew without effort, and spread naturally with the society to which it belongs. I need scarcely add that this calamity is flavored. Tocqueville was very acute in identifying another aspect of our national character, and that is a certain restlessness, restlessness in the midst of our prosperity. Let me give you a portion of that: “In certain remote corners of the old world, you may still sometimes stumble on a small district. It seems to have been forgotten amid the general tumult, and to have remained stationary while everything around it was in motion. The inhabitants, for the most part, are extremely ignorant and poor. They take no part in the business of the country, and are frequently oppressed by the government. Yet their countenances are generally placid, and their spirits are light. In America, by contrast, I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords. It seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures. The chief reason for this contrast is that the former do not think of the ills they endure, while the latter are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare, and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them, lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it. In the United States, a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into burry. He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops. He embraces a profession and gives it up. He settles in a place which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortexa politics. And if at the end of a year of unremitting labor, he finds he has a few days’ vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel 1,500 miles in a few days to shake off its happiness. At first sight, there’s something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance. The spectacle itself, however, is as old as the world. The novelty is to see a whole people furnish an exemplification of and completing the list of the foibles, deficiencies of democracy that took the identified is one that I think was identified already by some of the founders who see it in the Federalist Papers discussed, and that is the concept of the tyranny of the majority.” Thought is an invisible and almost intangible power that makes sport of all tyranny in our day. The most absolute sovereigns of Europe cannot prevent certain thoughts hostile to their authority. It is not the same in America: as long as the majority is doubtful, when speaks, but when it has irrevocably pronounced, everyone becomes silent. The friends and enemies alike then seem to hitch themselves together for its wagon. The reason for this is simple. There is no monarch so absolute that he can gather in his hands all the strength of society and defeat resistance, as can a majority vested with the right to make the laws and execute them. In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free, but unhappiness awaits him if he dares to leave them.

When we come back, more here on Our American Stories, and we return to Our American Stories, and with his Story of America Series, when we last left off, Professor Bill McLay told us the story of the negative aspects of America that French observer Alexis de Tocqueville saw. While here: the Trail of Tears, slavery, our restlessness, and the tyranny of the majority. Let’s return to the story of Alexis de Tocqueville. It’s time now for what he saw that was positive.

These are some of the flaws that Tocqueville saw in American democracy, and yet he proposes ways that American democracy can and already is countervailing against them. Maybe one of the most redeeming features of American life is the way that we organize ourselves, political associations. He marveled at the ability of Americans to form organizations themselves politically, to spontaneously come together without necessarily the direction of government or any coercive authority, to accomplish good works for the public interests. Here’s how he talks about it: “The political associations that exist in the United States form only a detail in the midst of the immense picture that the sum of associations presents. There, Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, feudal, very general and very particular, immense and very small. Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes. In this manner they create hospitals, prisons, fools. Finally, if it’s a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate everywhere. That at the head of a new undertaking you see the government in France and a great lord in England. Countenant, that you will see an association in the United States.” This is still a characteristic of American life today. Here’s Tocqueville with a few more comments about associations: “I encountered all sorts of associations in America of which I had no idea, and I often admire the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and get them to advance cities freely. Thus the most democratic country on earth is found to be, above all, the one where men in our day have most perfected the art of pursuing the object of their common desires in common. Does this result from an accident, or could it be that there’s in fact a necessary relation between associations and equality? Aristocratic societies always include within them, in the midst of a multitude of individuals who can do nothing by themselves, a few very powerful and wealthy citizens. Each of these can execute great undertakings by himself. In aristocratic societies, men have no need to unite the act because they’re kept very much together. In democratic peoples, on the other hand, all citizens are independent and weak. They can do almost nothing by themselves. They therefore all fall into impotence if they do not learn to aid each other freely. A government could take the place of some of the greatest American associations. But what political power would ever be in a state sufficient for the innumerable multitude of small undertakers and American citizens execute every day with the aid of an association? The morality and intelligence of a democratic people would risk no fewer dangers than its business and its industry. If the government came to take the place of associations everywhere.” He had a vision that as government took over and commandeered the role that had formerly been delegated to associations, associations would weaken their hold. They would weaken their force. They would weaken their capacity to bring about civic unity, civic consciousness, civic cohesion, civic capital. Tocqueville was a great admirer of the American Constitution, and particularly its federalism, its division of powers between the elements of the national government and the elements of the state governments and unities. Even below this level of the state government: counties, municipalities, and the way that this dispersal of power among the states affects American life itself. Here’s what he has to say about that: “In great centralized nations, the legislators obliged to impart a character of uniformity to the laws, which does not always suit the diversity of customs and of districts. As he takes no consequence of special cases, he can only proceed upon general principles, which is the cause of endless trouble and misery.” This disadvantage.