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De Tocqueville's Democracy in America

By giving his study of American culture and mores the title Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville was calling attention to what he considered the most striking and dominant characteristic of American culture, namely democracy. In de Tocqueville's view, the scope of American democracy extended far beyond the specifics of a formally democratic political system. Indeed, by our standards, political democracy in the United States of the 1830s was distinctly limited; not only could slaves not vote, but nor in practice could free blacks, and nor could women. But to de Tocqueville, American democracy reached beyond the political sphere to embrace a very large part of American culture. Our education, our habits of thought, even our religion were all in his view shaped by deeply democratic impulses. Democracy, to de Tocqueville, was the great distinctive feature of American life.

We may be immediately drawn to ask "distinctive in comparison to what?" Modern Americans, when we consider the alternatives to democracy, or what democracy could be distinguished against as a point of comparison, are likely to answer "Communism," or "fascism," or perhaps, in less specific and ideological terms, to answer "dictatorship," "authoritarianism," or "a police state." De Tocqueville uses none of these terms, but he does use a term with the same connotation, despotism. Despotism, to de Tocqueville, conveys the general connotation of all the modern terms mentioned earlier: arbitrary government controlled by one person or a small group, exercised through functionaries who are answerable only to their superiors, and against which the people as a whole have no appeal and no recourse.

To Americans of the late twentieth century, authoritarianism or despotism in some form is the only alternative to democracy with which we are familiar--and an alternative which is rejected by almost all Americans of whatever political stripe. (Indeed, we are far m...

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De Tocqueville's Democracy in America. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:42, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1693230.html