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“America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.”
“The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standards of their judgement in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding."
“The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.”
“A nation can not remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak.”
“Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic as the life of a man in the United States.”
“In the United States it is not easy to make a man understand that his presence may be dispensed with; hints will not always suffice to shake him off. I contradict an American at every word he says to show him that his conversation bores me; he instantly labors with fresh pertinacity to convince me.”
“The great privilege of the Americans does not simply consist in their being more enlightened than other nations, but in their being able to repair the faults they may commit.”
~Alexis de Tocqueville “Democracy in America” c. 1835
The United States has from its inception as a “country” been a balancing act. We are a union of states, a nation of individuals. Our superficial differences have always been so vast that in 1787 the United States seemed like little more than a delusional experiment to “educated” outsiders. In 2019 the blogosphere —where, it seems, all the “educated” all-knowing Monday Morning quarterbacks spend their time sharing their predictions— is filled with naysayers eager to label the United States a “failed” experiment.
Opinions are, well, opinions. Some opinions are more valid than others. Personally, in my opinion, an opinion rooted in facts is generally more valid than an opinion based on feelings. (Or, worse, an opinion based on someone else’s feelings.)
The fact is that very few of the educated outside observers of 1787 knew enough about the colonies, the states or even a handful of representative Americans to have enough facts to base an opinion on anything other than feelings. I suspect —I don’t “know”— that relatively few of the naysayers of 2019 have enough grounding in the “facts” of America to form opinions about our country that are based on anything except feelings.
Data is not actual knowledge. And trends, especially the trends of 2019, are not necessarily representative. They aren’t necessarily real either. Twenty-first century “media influencers” still seem to believe they influence America as a whole rather than just the media.
Historically it is better not to assume that simply because something was printed two hundred years ago and quoted ever since that it has a deeper meaning. Some quotes become perennial quotes not because they concisely explain an instant in time, but because they are good quotes.
Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States barely half a century after the “experiment” began. Today he is still perhaps the most quotable “observer” of early 19th century post-colonial America. His book, “Democracy in America” is quotable, intriguing, sprinkled with strong opinions and snide witticisms, by turns deeply flattering and subtly condescending. Over one hundred and seventy years after it was first translated into English (de Tocqueville was a French national and wrote in French) it is still in print and still lauded as one of the best portraits of the early American state. It was also based on less than a year of actual on the ground observation.
Should we dismiss de Tocqueville for not really knowing America? His quotes seem to capture the spirit of America so perfectly. (At least sometimes.) Should we simply take all the observations of professional observers with a spoonful of salt? Most people, even if they don’t have a proverbial axe to grind, have preconceived opinions and are quick to make facts fit theories. (It is often much much easier to force a handful of facts to fit a theory than it is to come up with a more customized explanation for a series of events.)
What de Tocqueville did succeed in pinpointing is that the United States in its first half century, was very much a nation of individuals, a confederation of states. The United States was a nation with laws (and an occasional democratic impulse). Notably the United States was not a democracy. (As a Frenchman of a certain generation de Tocqueville understood the bloody chaos and eventual authoritarianism of a truly untempered democracy.) The sometimes crude, anti-hierarchical, block-headed and perpetually commercial attitude of the Americans of the 1830s may have grated on de Tocqueville’s aristocratic French nerves, but he admired the fact that Americans —despite their differences— somehow made it work.
Americans did make the Republic work. They would never give up arguing. There would be a bloody civil war. (As early as the 1830s de Tocqueville could see the gap widening between slave states and non slave states.) But, in general, the United States worked because of an acceptance of the idea that the country was a confederation and that individuals had unalienable rights. (By the middle of the 19th century a shooting war would break out over the question of states’ rights.)
But, for its first half century, the United States succeeded by balancing the rights of the individual with the duties of the state and the powers of the confederation. Government, as it expanded in those early decades, provided practical services and protection to the individual citizens; a postal service, roads and a navy prepared to defend the sovereignty of American citizens and American ships on the high seas.
The United States survived because early Americans were willing to focus on the larger picture rather than tear each other apart to create a “more perfect union” of complete agreement. A willingness to focus on the practical created the governing structure of the United States. A complex and near religious belief in the idea of America kept the heart of America beating through those first seventy years