American Civic Culture

1
American Civic Culture

• Tocquevilles Critique

2
The Political Tyranny of the Majority

• Tocqueville first argues that, in American, the
  majority is potentially tyrannical politically.
  
  
• This is a similar point to the one we saw in
  Aristotle that the majority can potentially be
  just as much a tyrant as the rule of a single
  tyrant.
• Therefore, when I see the right and the ability
  to do everything granted to any power whatsoever,
  whether it is call people or king, democracy or
  aristocracy, whether it is exercised in a
  monarchy or in a republic, I say there is the
  seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under
  other laws. Tocqueville, Democracy in America

3
The Tyranny of the Majority over the Soul

• Tocqueville argues, however, that majority
  tyranny in America is worse than the political
  tyrannies of other countries, because it
  exercises a tyranny over the soul.
• Tocqueville begins this argument by observing
  that though we have more freedom of the press
  than other countries I do not know any country
  where, in general, less independence of mind and
  genuine freedom of discussion reign than in
  America. Is this true? If its true, why is it
  true?
• Chains .. are the coarse instruments that
  tyranny formerly employed but in our day
  civilization has perfected even despotism itself,
  which seemed, indeed, to have nothing more to
  learn. Princes had so to speak made violence
  material democratic republics in our day have
  rendered it just as intellectual as the human
  will it wants to constrain. Under the absolute
  government of one alone, despotism struck the
  body crudely, so as to reach the soul and the
  soul, escaping from those blows, rose gloriously
  above it but in democratic republics, tyranny
  does not proceed in this way it leaves the body
  and goes straight for the soul. The master no
  longer says to it You shall think as I do or you
  shall die he says You are free not to think as
  I do your life, your goods, everything remains
  to you but from this day on, you are a stranger
  among usGo in peace, I leave you your life, but
  I leave it to you worse than death.
  Tocqueville, Democracy in America

4
Tyranny exercised through Ostracism/Contempt

• Tocqueville says the tyranny of the majority in a
  democracy is far more effective than former
  tyrannies because it attacks the freedom of the
  soul directly, rather than merely attacking the
  body and allowing the soul to rise up above
  tyranny.
• Those who might say something different than the
  majority are ostracized and treated with
  contempt, effectively silencing them, and forcing
  them, after their resistance wears down, from
  even thinking things different than the
  majority.
• The majority, therefore, lives in perpetual
  adoration of itself and there is no freedom of
  mind in America.
  
• Is he right? Examples?

5
American Love of Equality

• Tocqueville now argues that, more than they love
  freedom, democratic peoples like the Americans
  love equality.
  
• I think that democratic peoples have a natural
  taste for freedom left to themselves they seek
  it, they love it, and they will see themselves
  parted from it only with sorrow. But for
  equality they have an ardent, insatiable,
  eternal, invincible passion they want equality
  in freedom, and, if they cannot get it, they
  still want it in slavery. They will tolerate
  poverty, enslavement, barbarism, but they will
  not tolerate aristocracy.
• What does this mean? Democratic peoples resent
  tremendously any notion of aristocratic
  difference, any notion that someone is better
  than someone else.
• Whats one of the worst insults in our times?
  He or she thinks theyre better than everyone
  else. Say that to an aristocrat, in an
  aristocratic age, and they say Thank you, glad
  you noticed. Say that to someone whos achieved
  something in a democratic age and they get
  defensive No, I dont. I just take pride in
  what Ive accomplished. It doesnt mean that Im
  better than others.
• Americans have an instinctive moral reaction
  against any kind of unequal differentiation.
  Well accept differentiation but only if its on
  the basis of what seems available to all of us
  hard work. We reject differentiation that claims
  superiority on the basis of intelligence.
• Ask Bill Gates why hes so successful, he might
  say I worked really hard and got lucky. We
  dont mind that. If he were to say, however
  you know, Im just smarter and better than
  everyone else wed think what a jerk.
• The love of equality shapes our mores.

6
Democratic Individualism

• Individualism is a reflective and peaceable
  sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate
  himself from the mass of those like him and to
  withdraw to one side with his family and his
  friends, so that after having created a little
  society for his own use, he willingly abandons
  society at large to itself.
• Thus not only does democracy make each man
  forget his ancestors, but it hides his
  descendents from him and separates him from his
  contemporaries it constantly leads him back
  toward himself alone and threatens finally to
  confine him wholly in the solitude of his own
  heart.
• Isolation from the local community is particular
  characteristic of democratic times. Suburban
  communities where we dont know our neighbors,
  where we know more about some abstract individual
  on the news than about who our next-door neighbor
  is.
• This is bad because it makes us weak, passive,
  and, most of all, unhappy. We lack the interest
  or the ability to extend ourselves to others in
  the community and so are confined within our own
  selfish, small hearts.
• By contrast Men who live in aristocratic
  centuries are therefore almost always bound in a
  tight manner to something that is placed outside
  of them, and they are often disposed to forget
  themselves. Democratic people are thrown
  continually back upon themselves and so can never
  forget themselves.
• Relation to components of fascist theory?

7
Aristocratic vs. Democratic Community

• In aristocratic peoples, families remain in the
  same state for centuries, and often in the same
  place. That renders all generations so to speak
  contemporaries. A man almost always knows his
  ancestors and respects them he believes he
  already perceives his great-grandsons and he
  loves them. He willingly does his duty by both,
  and he frequently comes to sacrifice his personal
  enjoyments for beings who no longer exist or who
  do not yet exist.
• Moreover, the different classes come to have a
  tie to one another because they remain in the
  same place for generations.
  
• By contrast, where aristocracy had made of all
  citizens a long chain that went from the peasant
  up to the king democracy breaks the chain and
  sets each link apart.
• Democratic people are in the habit of always
  considering themselves in isolation. We do not
  return to the homes that we grew up in. We make
  our own way and our children will make their own
  way as well. Very few of us feel a tie to
  anything beyond our own immediate interests.
  This means that communities are constantly
  threatened by dissolution. People grow up and
  leave their communities. Parents leave the town
  they raised their children. We feel an
  obligation only to ourselves and so end up
  feeling no tie to the community in which we
  merely reside.
• Creates the condition of individualism.

8
Associational Life as the Remedy for Individualism

• Tocqueville argues that the strong associational
  life remedies the problem of individualism.
  There is nothing, according to me, that deserves
  more to attract our regard than the intellectual
  and moral associations of America. Why?
• Creates a tie to our community and to those
  around us. In seeking to accomplish something as
  a community or even in just forming a bowling
  league, people feel connected to their neighbors.
  

9
Putnam Declining Social Capital

• Putnam in Bowling Alone shows how the formerly
  strong associational life in America is
  dramatically diminishing in the last thirty
  years.
• He calls this our social capital features of
  social organization such as networks, norms, and
  social trust that facilitate coordination and
  cooperation for mutual benefit.
• For a variety of reasons, life is easier in a
  community blessed with a substantial stock of
  social capital. In the first place, networks of
  civic engagement foster sturdy norms of
  generalized reciprocity and encourage the
  emergence of social trust. Such networks
  facilitate coordination and communication,
  amplify reputations, and thus allow dilemmas of
  collective action to be resolved.
• A stock of social capital does two important
  things
  
• It improves the lives of those within the
  community because they feel connected to those
  around them and thus are happier and can depend
  more on those around them
• It makes the government responsible for less
  because the people on their own can mobilize and
  take care of societal problems that need to be
  taken care of, i.e. community playground
  projects, etc.