If we have heard of Alexis de Tocqueville, we remember him as the Frenchman who came to the United States around 1830 and published DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA in 1835. We know of his praise for American democracy, but is that the whole picture?

Recently, I went through a self-enlightening exercise entitled “From History to Hysteria,” through which the conclusion was reached that what we learned in school was a secular faith, not history. http://www.mymontebello.com/life_tc_fhth1.html

As for Tocqueville, check out these quotations, taken from an excellent source of quotations, http://www.quoteopia.com/:

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it. How could he have made that statement in the 1830s?

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. We have been fond of saying that of Communists.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in? Oh, my goodness. How could he have discerned that back then?

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. I should read the book. In which context would he say this? What did he observe back then to lead to this conclusion? Was Henry David Thoreau not imprisoned later for his protest against the Mexican-American War?

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. We still have this problem, and mocking political correctness has not solved the problem.

In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned. Has history amply demonstrated this?

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. Woah! He did say that?

There is hardly a pioneer’s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin. This is cause for pride, but in the age of television and gadgets, I wonder what Tocqueville would say.