Donald Trump and "Democracy in America"

The classic work Democracy in America (1835,1840) was originally published in multiple volumes by the French author and aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, who made a nine-month trip to the United States in 1831.  It contains a wealth of insight, some of which is very pertinent, some less so.  Here is a glance through the text and its possible bearing on Donald Trump.

     Nowadays, one can say that the wealthy classes of United States society stand entirely outside politics and that wealth, far from being an advantage, has become a real source of unpopularity and an obstacle to the achievement of power.[1]

     In a country where education is almost universal, it is claimed that representatives of the people cannot always write correctly.[2]

     In the United States, except for slaves, servants, and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making.  Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation’s opinion or trample its wishes underfoot.[3]

     My main complaint against a democratic government as organized in the United States is not its weakness, as many Europeans claim, but rather its irresistible strength.  And what I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom that prevails there but the shortage of any guarantee against tyranny.[4]

     I am not suggesting that, at the present time in America, there are frequent instances of tyranny, I am saying that no guarantee against tyranny is evident and that the causes of the mildness of the government should be sought more in circumstances and habits than in laws.[5]

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     But I think that if we fail to introduce and gradually set up democratic institutions in France, and that if we abandon the attempt to inspire all citizens with the ideas and feelings which first of all prepare them for freedom and consequently allow them to enjoy it, there will be no independence for anyone … but only equal tyranny for all; and I foresee that if we fail to establish among us the peaceful authority of the majority in time, sooner or later we shall arrive at the boundless power of one man.[6]

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[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, tr. Gerald E. Bevan, intro. by Isaac Kramnick (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 208.

[2] Ibid., p. 233.

[3] Ibid., p. 281.

[4] Ibid., p. 294.

[5] Ibid., p. 296.

[6] Ibid., pp. 369, 370.