Two Words, One Answer.
democracy
 The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World $17.00 Good book, one of the many I'm using for my thesis on democracy, delivered on time.  Democracy in America (Penguin Classics) $12.00 I've tackled - or tried to tackle - my share of the great classics. I've been disappointed as often as I've been impressed. Some of them, like "The Education of Henry Adams," simply lack the substantive content that would justify their reputations as classics. Others, like most of Aristotle's stuff, require more effort to read than a lot of people might be willing to put forth. But with Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," we have a book that both lives up to its reputation and can be easily read. Perhaps some of the credit for the fluidity of the language should go to Gerald E Bevan, the translator of this edition. Regardless of who gets the credit, there is no reason for any ordinary reader to be intimidated by this book. It's long (over 800 pages), but the length is fully justified by the breadth, depth, and richness of Tocqueville's observations and reflections on what he has seen. There's far too much material in the book for a detailed description of the contents, but here are a few comments that come to mind: Tocqueville wrote for a French audience, not American. He hoped to examine and evaluate American democracy so that the French could learn lessons from America's successes and failures. The ostensible reason for Tocqueville's trip to America, believe it or not, was to study the American prison system! Democracy was not then the universally shared aspiration of all nations that it is today. Today, even the most despotic governments claim to be democracies. But in Tocqueville's day, there was serious debate among political theorists about whether democracy was practical at all. Tocqueville was not an uncritical admirer of American democracy by any means. He found as much to criticize as he did to praise. Even when he approved of certain democratic practices, he expressed reservations about the transportability of those practices to countries which had different cultures, geography, history, and ethnic composition from America's. Tocqueville did not write the book for the purpose of predicting the future. Far too much emphasis, in my opinion, has been placed on the accuracy of some of his predictions about the United States and the world in general. The fact is that his predictions were wrong about as often as they were right, and those predictions are by no means the primary focus of the book. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the book is Tocqueville's ability to see us as others see us instead of how we would like to see ourselves. One striking example is the deluded propensity of Americans to proclaim themselves as individualists. Tocqueville puts that false notion to rest when he observes that there is "no country where there is generally less independence of thought and real freedom of debate than in America." He uses as an example the almost total absence of any public displays of religious unbelief - an example that could be repeated, verbatim, with equal truth today. (Can you imagine any admitted atheist or even agnostic ever being elected President of the United States?) The book provides an interesting picture of what Constitutional government was like in the earlier days of the Republic, when the Constitution was much more of a living document than it is in our day, when it is seen largely as an obstacle to be circumvented when the federal government wants to undertake or regulate something which it has no power to do under the Constitution. Modern readers will chuckle at Tocqueville's assertion that the Presidency is an inherently weak office, empowered to do nothing but administer the laws which Congress has passed. Equally quaint is his interpretation of the entire federal government as nothing more than an agency for conducting foreign policy, since all domestic concerns are handled by the states and localities. As a result, the book spends a disproportionate (to modern minds) amount of its attention on the structure and practices of local and state governments, making careful distinctions between the political habits of New Englanders and frontiersmen, for example. The book gives little support to those who would (and do) quote it for partisan political purposes. No one who isn't promoting his or her own political agenda could state with certainty that Tocqueville would today be a Republican, Democrat, Socialist or Libertarian; or a liberal or a conservative. Most of the issues that concerned people in the 1830's are far removed from our attention today, and neither Tocqueville nor anyone else of that era could have anticipated the topics of debate that preoccupy 21st century Americans. Tocqueville credits the churches with many of the aspects of American democracy that he admires. However, he never said, "America is great because she is good, and when she ceases to be good she will cease to be great," - or anything like it. Tocqueville discusses the problems of the African slaves and the American Indians at considerable length. (That's one way that you can tell that the people who criticize the book for a single-minded focus on White/European people haven't read the book at all.) He is justifiably pessimistic about both problems. There is nothing which we could go back to and say, "If we had only followed Tocqueville's advice, the problems of African-Americans and Native Americans would have been solved long ago." But then, there are few policy prescriptions of any kind in this book - that wasn't Tocqueville's purpose. This book is, in my experience, incomparable and irreplaceable. I admit to not having yet read Mill, Montesqieu, or Locke. But those men were political theorists rather than observers on the ground, so to speak. If I were the Vice President of Academics for some university, I would eliminate the social science distribution requirement in favor of handing each incoming freshman a copy of "Democracy in America," and requiring an in-depth report on the book before advancement to sophomore status.  Democracy $20.99 Prof. Tilly's analysis of democratic theory and practice was insightful and supported by excellent historical examples. I highly recommend it to students and scholars of democratic theory. Steve Parliament University of Wisconsin River Falls |
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