I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville I subscribe to The Writer's Almanac email written by Garrison Keeler. Strangely, I don't usually enjoy his radio program too much, but that could be because they play too many reruns on weekends when I'm driving and tuned into NPR on 90.1 here in Atlanta.
Anyway, here is one essay that struck a chord with me today. It is about Alexis de Tocqueville and his 1835 book Democracy in America. The excerpt is on this page:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/07/23/#sunday
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, born in Paris (1805). He's remembered for the book Democracy in America (1835), which he wrote after he took a trip to the United States when he was just 26 years old. He wanted to write about the American style of government as a way of improving the government of France. After a brief stop in Newport, he arrived in Manhattan at sunrise May 11, 1831. Over the course of the next nine months, he traveled more than 7,000 miles, using every vehicle then in existence, including steamer, stagecoach, and horse, going as far west as Green Bay, Wisconsin, and as far south as New Orleans.
More than anything else, Tocqueville was impressed by the fact that American democracy actually worked. He wrote, "America demonstrates invincibly one thing that I had doubted up to now: that the middle classes can govern a State. ... Despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough."
He also believed that one of the fundamental characteristics of all Americans was a certain kind of restlessness. He wrote, "An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing ... he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere. ... In the end, death steps in and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of happiness, which always escapes him."
For those of us who prefer to be YouTubified, we are in luck.
This video is more about the United Way, but it covers its Alexis de Tocqueville society celebration and describes his life:
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