On Democracy in America

De Tocqueville made a comparison which I wonder is still valid. Listen to what he says in these two paragraphs:

What is understood by a republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself. It is a regular state of things really founded upon the enlightened will of the people. It is a conciliatory government, under which resolutions are allowed time to ripen, and in which they are deliberately discussed, and are executed only when mature. The republicans in the United States set a high value upon morality, respect religious belief, and acknowledge the existence of rights. They profess to think that a people ought to be moral, religious, and temperate in proportion as it is free. What is called the republic in the United States is the tranquil rule of the majority, which, after having had time to examine itself and to give proof of its existence, is the common source of all the powers of the state. But the power of the majority itself is not unlimited. Above it in the moral world are humanity, justice, and reason; and in the political world, vested rights. The majority recognizes these two barriers; and if it now and then oversteps them, it is because, like individuals, it has passions and, like them, it is prone to do what is wrong, while it discerns what is right.

But the demagogues of Europe have made strange discoveries. According to them, a republic is not the rule of the majority, as has hitherto been thought, but the rule of those who are strenuous partisans of the majority. It is not the people who preponderate in this kind of government, but those who know what is good for the people, a happy distinction, which allows men to act in the name of nations without consulting them and to claim their gratitude while their rights are trampled underfoot. A republican government, they hold, moreover, is the only one that has the right of doing whatever it chooses and despising what men have hitherto respected, from the highest moral laws to the vulgar rules of common sense. Until our time it had been supposed that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared. But it is a discover of modern days that there are such things as legitimate tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name of the people.

Does this distinction between Europe and the United States still hold true? I have my doubts.

In the campaign just concluded, how much deliberate discussion of the issues was there? Precious little by either side. How much consideration of morality, and by this I mean of programs and policies offered, which was the most moral? That answer is easy, none. How then, can honest choices be made?

Consider the second paragraph. Have we not become a nation ruled by "those who know what is good for the people?" Look at the large scale abdication of legislative functions by Congress to the unelected bureaucrats of the Executive branch. What about the insistence that those in power are our leaders rather than our servants? We see evidence of abuse around us every day, regardless of which party is in power at the moment. I am unabashedly a conservative/libertarian, but I am often appalled by the actions of "my" party. It is no comfort that I find its opponents more often in error.

The establishments of both sides have come to see themselves as the rightful heritors of power, rather than the heirs of a democratic tradition holding sovereign power in the people's hands. These are not Republican or Democrat issues. They are issues we must consider as a free people. We purport to have a government of, by, and for us. If we are to heed the  President's call to a new era of responsibility, we must accept the necessity of self-government, lest we lose it forever. Political arguments are nothing new in our history, and to dismiss them as the old tired dogmas of the past, does us a disservice. Political argument is the essence of democracy and the life-blood of our republic. We abandon them at our peril.