Includes group discussion guide. Democracy has not always been associated with freedom. Most thinkers from ancient Greece until the American Revolution viewed democracy as little better than mob rule. The French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville was a student of government and knew these arguments well. And the executions of many of his relatives during the French Revolution gave him a personal understanding of the compatibility of democracy and tyranny. Yet he went to America in 1831 looking for democracy. He wanted to know why a democratic government was succeeding in the United States when it had failed in so many other places, not least France, which had just gone through another revolution in 1830. The official reason for his visit was to conduct a survey of American prisons in support of French efforts at penal reform. He completed that report, but more importantly collected over a nine-month journey fourteen notebooks filled with interviews and documents that he later distilled into a classic work of political analysis. Tocqueville famously found three reasons for America’s success: its circumstances and geography, its government structures and laws, and its unique customs. Of these, he emphasized, the customs—the “habits of the heart” of the American people—were by far the most important. He traced America’s unique national character directly to the role of faith (itself freed from government control) in the young republic. Tocqueville also saw dangers in the American experiment. He was particularly concerned about the possibility of its democracy following others into despotism too, whether from the tyranny of a majority or the natural tendencies of government to centralize control. It is from these dangers to liberty that he turns again to religion: “Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot . . . How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?”His concerns are prescient even for our own day, for underneath our current political struggles lie questions of the proper balance between liberty and equality and of the proper role of government. In such a context, we should celebrate and defend our liberties by reflecting on their sources, and Tocqueville’s view of the necessary connection between freedom and faith is indispensable in such a task. 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.Our Reading of selections from Democracy in America includes some of Tocqueville’s most pointed insights into the once-unimaginable American experiment. A foreword by our Founding Chairman Alonzo L. McDonald invites us to relate Tocqueville’s findings to present-day challenges and helps us consider how the our character and institutions have changed since Tocqueville’s time. Summer 2010. 48 pages including group discussion guide. |