Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings: Poverty, Public Welfare, and Inequality: de Tocqueville, Alexis

Interesting! A new book on the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville! I did not know that he wrote apparently much more than Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution.

Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings: Poverty, Public Welfare, and Inequality: de Tocqueville, Alexis, Dunn Henderson, Christine: 9780268109059: Amazon.com: Books

Who Killed Civil Society, and How to Revive It

Recommendable! However, the article has a great title, but the content does not meet the expectations, it is disappointing! The author's book by the same title is perhaps a better source!

The massive takeover of civil society associations by government funding etc. is a very serious concern. That this happened in the U.S. is even more disturbing!

Who Killed Civil Society, and How to Revive It | Manhattan Institute: Alexis de Tocqueville may have come to America from France ostensibly to gather information about prisons, but his book, Democracy in America, would be an astute observation about the country’s political and social life in the 1830s. One aspect that particularly got the French aristocrat’s...

Tocqueville On Islam

Posted: 4/11/2015

Trigger

Recently read this posting “Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam”, which made me aware of other, remarkable and prescient observations by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Selected Quotes

Citations below were taken from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville and are well attributed.

1. “I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”
   (Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843. I tried to Google for this letter, but came up only with footnotes in other publications mentioning this letter, but not the full text of it.)
   [These are some strong words by Tocqueville.]
2. “Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.”
   (Democracy in America, Book One, Chapter V.)
   [Is it not true that the New Testament is in this respect quite different from the Old Testament? So did the Quran also make the mistake to prescribe too much in detail?]

Tocqueville On Self Government

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.

Democracy In Crisis

History Is Littered With Fallen Empires

The title of this blog post is intentionally patterned after the famous book “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Democracy is arguably the best form of government humans have ever come up with, but democracy is by far no guarantor that such governments will not share the fate of decline by their own doing.

The Great Recession

First, the global housing crisis, then the financial sector crisis, followed by a sovereign debt crisis of overextended welfare states all have exposed the ineptitude of our elected politicians. Politicians who understand how the free market economy works are extremely rare. Most of them are as clueless as the current two-term US President Obama.

First of all, our elected politicians are responsible for all these crisis by having implemented over decades flawed policies like affordable housing for everyone; financial sector overregulation and bailout; recklessly low interest rates over long periods; a major ever expanding monetary union (EMU) at any price and by breaching key contracts; and so on.

Inherent Expansion Of Soft Despotism In Democracies

The term soft despotism is believed to be coined by Alexis de Tocqueville. Almost 200 years after his death we can note that the trajectory of soft despotism lead to the big governments we all are now so familiar with in western democracies. This unhealthy growth of paternalism is to be reversed. The sooner, the better.

Long forgotten are the ideals of the founders of America such as individual liberty and limited government.

In Tocqueville’s own words:

“It [big government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.”

“Democracy, Tocqueville argued, was capable of breeding its own form of despotism, albeit of the “soft” variety. He spoke of “an immense protective power” that took all responsibility for everyone’s happiness—just so long as this power remained “sole agent and judge of it.” This power, Tocqueville projected, would “resemble parental authority” but would try to keep people “in perpetual childhood” by relieving people “from all the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living.”” (source).

Restore Limited Government

1.       Amend the constitution to limit the size of all government to less than 33% of GDP.

2.       Amend the constitution to require balanced, comprehensively defined government budgets except in times of major emergencies or war.

3.       Privatize the public sector to the maximum extent possible. No exceptions!

4.       Amend the constitution, for as long as government is responsible for monetary policy, that short-term nominal interest rates cannot be set lower than the inflation rate plus productivity growth.

Strict Term Limits For The Entire Public Sector

What is good for the diplomatic corps, i.e. the rotation of diplomats and staff every so often is good for elected politicians, police officers, judges, and bureaucrats.

Anybody involved in public service ought to be term limited no matter which branch of government, legislative, administrative, law enforcement, or judiciary. If appointed or elected or hired in the public sector you will be in public service for a limited time only. Nobody should plan on a lifelong career in public service.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Democracy of all forms of government that have been tried before has a better chance to heal itself.