Brilliant breakdown of how Tocqueville weaponized providentialism against the reactionaries. The way he flipped the Maistre argument to make democracy itself divine will is honestly genius level rhetoric. I've noticed when people today try invoking inevitability like this (AI, climate, whatever) they loose that religious framing and it just sounds fatalistic. Tocqueville knew his audince needed the theological wrapper to accept what terrified them.
de Tocqueville did not 'turn on his own.' He simply recognized the difference between British/American democracy and French democracy. British/American democracy is grounded in natural rights and individualism, whereas French democracy is grounded in codes and legislation. Simply a choice between natural laws and the laws of man & men. France is now on its Fifth Republic and is still trying to legislate their vision of utopia.
In the case of the country he wrote that book about, well, we haven’t been system that can be described being primarily a lower case “d” democracy in at least fifty years, but you have to go back to pre WW2 to very firmly say we were; most all people of almost all kinds are locked out of any meaningful system decision making. Are you guys referring to another country?
Also, Tocqueville also seemed to think America would be soon turning Catholic? And he barely mentions the Bank War despite being in the country right in the thick of it, weird. And the few fleeting times he does mention he seems to think its great just because most “educated” people supported it, despite just a couple years after him leaving most of them turning against it too once it had been thoroughly proven that even many of them had been getting, in various ways, often quite tailored to specific sectors and circumstances, being worked over by the network it was a part of, he wasn’t too perceptive in some regards…
Yes well democracy has a deep flaw, a crack in the Liberty Bell. As long as there was free land it worked. When no more free land the frontier closed in and wealth inequality grew into the monster it is that as destroyed democracy. We need a new form of democracy that I call Earth Rights Democracy.
Brilliant breakdown of how Tocqueville weaponized providentialism against the reactionaries. The way he flipped the Maistre argument to make democracy itself divine will is honestly genius level rhetoric. I've noticed when people today try invoking inevitability like this (AI, climate, whatever) they loose that religious framing and it just sounds fatalistic. Tocqueville knew his audince needed the theological wrapper to accept what terrified them.
de Tocqueville did not 'turn on his own.' He simply recognized the difference between British/American democracy and French democracy. British/American democracy is grounded in natural rights and individualism, whereas French democracy is grounded in codes and legislation. Simply a choice between natural laws and the laws of man & men. France is now on its Fifth Republic and is still trying to legislate their vision of utopia.
In the case of the country he wrote that book about, well, we haven’t been system that can be described being primarily a lower case “d” democracy in at least fifty years, but you have to go back to pre WW2 to very firmly say we were; most all people of almost all kinds are locked out of any meaningful system decision making. Are you guys referring to another country?
Also, Tocqueville also seemed to think America would be soon turning Catholic? And he barely mentions the Bank War despite being in the country right in the thick of it, weird. And the few fleeting times he does mention he seems to think its great just because most “educated” people supported it, despite just a couple years after him leaving most of them turning against it too once it had been thoroughly proven that even many of them had been getting, in various ways, often quite tailored to specific sectors and circumstances, being worked over by the network it was a part of, he wasn’t too perceptive in some regards…
Yes well democracy has a deep flaw, a crack in the Liberty Bell. As long as there was free land it worked. When no more free land the frontier closed in and wealth inequality grew into the monster it is that as destroyed democracy. We need a new form of democracy that I call Earth Rights Democracy.