Posted: 7/22/2013
A Quote From His Masterpiece
Today, I came across following quote from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy In America (Emphasis added):
“The Anglo-Americans place moral authority in universal reason, as they do political power in the universality of citizens, and they consider that you must rely on the sense of all in order to discern what is permitted or forbidden, what is true or false.
Most of them think that knowledge of his interest well understood is sufficient to lead a man toward the just and the honest.
They believe that each person by birth has received the ability to govern himself, and
that no one has the right to force his fellow to be happy.
All have an intense faith in human perfectibility; they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily produce useful results, ignorance must lead to harmful effects;
all consider society as a body in progress; humanity as a changing scene, where nothing is or should be fixed forever, and they admit that what seems good to them today can be replaced tomorrow by something better that is still hidden.
I do not say that all these opinions are correct, but they are American.”
(Source: “CHAPTER 10: Some Considerations on the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States”)
Were Tocqueville To Return Today
Tocqueville would be surprised would he come back to visit the U.S. today to see that elected big government is forcing happiness on its citizens for at least the past 113 years and that the ability to govern themselves has diminished so drastically in this country.
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