Roger Kimball, founder of The New Criterion, has cited my favorite passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous tome, Democracy in America, in his comments about gun control and the Second Amendment. Kimball is a scholar, art critic, stalwart conservative and trenchant observer of American culture, as well as having bad taste in neckwear.
When I consider political candidates, I always reflect on Tocqueville’s observations on Democratic Despotism in 1835. He contrasts it with the more traditional violent despotism of tyrants throughout history. Democratic despotism would, Tocqueville writes:
” resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves… . It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living? … [This power] extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; … it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd. “
Alexis was thirty years old when he published Democracy in America.
14 Responses to “Democracy, Guns and Liberty”
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December 12th, 2007 at 10:55 am
“herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd. “
Was he saying sheeple?
December 12th, 2007 at 11:05 am
#1. Yes. Without a doubt.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:35 am
…and the experiment in democracy will fail when the people finally figure out that they are being bribed with their own money - or something like that.
December 12th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Liberty or Equality?
December 12th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Great post Texpat. I can always count on you to educate.
December 12th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Equality is a figment of the French imagination. Equality before the law is a realistic ideal. Liberty is the adult form of the modern day, liberal concept of freedom.
December 12th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Liberty is three wolves encountering well armed, well informed sheep.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
“Socialism values equality more than liberty.”
-Dennis Prager
December 12th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville
December 12th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Faster
I tried to e-mail you yesterday on your commercial site. Did you get it ?
December 12th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
10
uh, no…. I didn’t get it. Get my personal G-mail from Squawk or ahmous. I check that one all the time. The bidness one, has so many spam and virus filters on it it’s a wonder anything gets through.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
BTW, I’m real close to making a career change. I’ll ’splain soon. Big-time change!
December 12th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Capital post, Texpat. Capital post, Fasternu. De Tocqueville should be required reading for anyone running for any office higher than dog catcher, no?
Sarge, right on target.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Much obliged, Adee.