“In America the people appoint both those who make the laws and those who execute them; the people form the jury which punishes breaches of the law. The institutions are democratic not only in principle but also in all their developments; thus, the people directly nominate their representatives . . . So direction really comes from the people, and though the form of government is representative, it is clear that the opinions, prejudices, interests, and even passions of the people can find no lasting obstacles preventing them from being manifest in the daily conduct of society. . . the majority rules in the name of the people . . . (and) is chiefly composed of peaceful citizens who by taste or interest sincerely desire the well-being of the country. They are surrounded by the constant agitation of parties seeking to draw them in and to enlist their support.”¹

A great historian wrote these words during the Administration of Andrew Jackson, perhaps our first truly “popularist” President. They capture the essence of a society not born of history, but of philosophy, as Margaret Thatcher once stated. Unlike the “old world” with its tribal, religious, territorial, and hegemonic turmoil, this “new world” chose to govern itself in a democratic system designed to represent the will of the people and subject to a Constitution based upon fundamental rights and the rule of law. And those rights were based upon a state of nature (“all men are created equal”) and enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitutional Convention subsequently designed a system that would defeat any recidivism into old world despotism or the chaos of special interest agitators or illiberal opportunists. In accordance with the Preamble to its Constitution, America’s majority of so-called “peaceful citizens” would rule to “insure (sic) domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence (sic), promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

This ideal America is not only revolutionary in concept, but also aspirational. Rarely has a new idea so captured a people that it would change the course of history. Our historian certainly is impressed, as he draws an almost idyllic portrait of this new world. Its founding principles evoke the natural state into which every human is born and the universal human need to create a system of government that would preserve those principles. Jefferson’s Declaration states the case for the former; and the Constitution outlines the latter. But our historian’s two-volume account of early nineteenth century America casts shadows which dim our view of this democratic idyll. This new world was created in the much too real world.

Perhaps predisposed by the Romantic Period, Tocqueville may have described America as seen through rose colored glasses. And the tinge on those glasses was distinctly Old World. Because he could foresee “the whole future of the English race in the New World spread before me,”² he could also look past any concerns about slavery in the South and the Hispanic population in the Southwest. In the same vein he could even disregard the displacement of the Indian nations and give no mention to the disenfranchisement of women. His assessment reminds us of the historical nearsightedness that can infect any contextual perspective. He perceived America through the eyes of a nineteenth century European: Indians were discounted as uncivilized savages; and women, unless born into royalty, were considered unfit for governance. The Constitution’s phrase “we the People,” therefore, must not include them. And his bias for the “future of the English race in the New World” also predisposes his non-acceptance of Black and Brown peoples into this new world of self-governance.

Nevertheless, he was an insightful historian who could predict two significant obstacles to his vision of an Anglo-America, both of which would threaten the future dominance of “the English race in the New World. . . In truth,” he states, “there are only two rival races sharing the New World today: the Spaniards and the English.”³ He foresaw the need to push the Mexicans out of Texas, to conquer/subjugate them throughout the Southwest, and to assimilate all remaining Spanish speaking peoples. It is revelatory that Tocqueville excludes African slaves and the native Indian population as obstacles to his grand vision. Instead, he thought the second significant obstacle would be the rise of a diametrically opposed system of totalitarianism in Russia. He explained that while America places ultimate power in its people, Russia gives absolute power to one man. In Tocqueville’s words, “One has freedom as the principle means of action; the other has servitude.”⁴ In this instance, he portended Roosevelt’s placating of the Russian bear after World War II, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war, and the ongoing adversarial relations between the two countries.

But Russia was not posed as an immediate threat to this new Anglo-America. Slavery, on the other hand, was. Tocqueville, rather surprisingly, rationalized its institution into a permanent state of stasis. Did he assume the slaves’ lot could never change and therefore not present an obstacle to his grand vision of an Anglo-America? While he demurred the Southerners’ attempt to justify the principle of Negro slavery, Tocqueville also believed they had no viable alternative. He believed they could neither assimilate freed slaves nor protect themselves from violent retribution if they abolished slavery. The South, then, was in a bind. The North, if it pressed for abolition, would occasion “the most horrible of civil wars, and perhaps in the extermination of one or other of the two races.”⁵ Why, you might ask, could this foresighted historian not anticipate the possibility of assimilation. Well, he explains, “I do not think that the white and black races will ever be brought anywhere to live on a footing of equality.”⁶ His explanation infers that the institution of slavery would never be abolished. And, of course, the Constitution, at the time, assured he would be right to think so.

So, we now know what dangers the Black and Brown races posed for Tocqueville’s Anglo-America. Why did he so casually exclude the Indian nations for whom he devoted an entire chapter? Though he describes a history already well documented, his Western European perspective focuses on the barbarous nature of the Indian tribes. They are, in his telling, proud savages, unable as a group to assimilate to civil society. Describing the dispossession of their land and resources in legalistic terms, he seems ignorant of the human suffering attendant upon their displacement and makes no mention of the genocidal effect of the many Indian wars. Ironically, he wrote during the term of Andrew Jackson, the premier Indian slayer of his time. Jackson had organized and led his Tennessee Volunteers to eradicate the Indian nations from the lands granted frontier settlers. Tocqueville could just as easily dismiss the Indians as he did the Black and Brown peoples. For, in his determination, they simply had no place in his Anglo-America.

This blog was not intended to be a book report. But, as an early historical account of our nation’s beginnings, “Democracy in America” clearly illustrates how our founding principles had not yet been fully realized. America may have been born of a rational humanistic philosophy, but its people were matriculated in the womb of European social and political history. Tocqueville captures both the ideals that founded our nation and, inadvertently, an honest assessment of its limitations. If you place his account within the background of manifest destiny, you can visualize something other than the land of the free. What you see, instead, is the seeds of white nationalism. What could so easily be dismissed in the early nineteenth century, continues to haunt us today, specifically, the assumption of white privilege. And that assumption still defines American racism.

America’s roots are grounded in both its founding documents and its two and a half million English colonists. Its present incarnation now includes 330 billion heterogeneous inhabitants, descended or immigrated from nearly every nation in the world. And its influence is global with an economic and military footprint greater than any nation in human history. Although we still are an English-speaking nation, we are far removed from that small coterie of Anglo colonists. For most of us, our shared heritage was/is adopted, not primarily prescribed by ancestral origins. The wisdom of this heritage, though, is its ability to transform diversity into a unified democratic nation. But that transformation cannot happen unless the unifying principles of our democracy are understood and accepted by most Americans. And at the core of those principles is acceptance of all humans as equals regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity. Innately, we all share the same genetic code. As social mammals, we share similar needs for family and social relations. As homo sapiens, we share a need to understand and develop ourselves and our place in the world. At birth, we share the same human nature and therefore deserve an equal opportunity to live our lives and pursue our individual paths to whatever goals might make us happy. Equality, then, is at the root of those “unalienable rights.” We inherit this equality at birth. It is the foundation for a democratic society and nation. It engendered the birth of our nation. Its full realization is our destiny. How, you might wonder, are we progressing with this destiny-mission?

Our founders designed a government that assured the peoples’ voice would be heard through elected representatives guided by law and metered by three equal branches of government. They did not, however, prescribe political parties. The latter did not come into existence until our third President. By the time our population had more than quadrupled, the two dominant political parties were deeply divided over slavery as an economic system, a democratic anomaly, a political firestorm, and a humanitarian crisis. The Civil War that ensued challenged the concept of democracy where a diverse population could govern itself as one nation (E pluribus Unum). Today, when our contemporary population is more than a hundredfold greater than it was in 1776, we are once again torn apart into fractional political debates over the state of our economy, our democracy, and basic human values.

Once again, racism runs beneath the surface of many debates, whether it is criminal justice reform, police profiling, real estate red lining, de facto segregation in our schools, inhumane treatment of Hispanic immigrants, or the delivery of social services to the less fortunate that still disproportionately include people of color. Complicating America’s ability to address what may be termed its original sin is the breakdown of our system of self-government. Consider the contemporary relevance of Tocqueville’s statements about America in the early nineteenth century:

• “. . . the people directly nominate their representatives . . .” Tocqueville is right if you include the way the electoral college was initially formulated. As with members of Congress, the electors were selected by voters in each state. If no Presidential candidate received a majority of electors’ votes, then the elected members of the House of Representatives “shall select out of the candidates who shall have the five highest number of votes the man . . . best qualified . . . (assuring) the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Obviously, Hamilton, when he wrote Number 67 in the Federalist Papers, did not foresee a time when these electors would no longer be nominated by voters in each state. Instead, they would be nominated by the dominate political party in each state legislature.
• “. . . direction really comes from the people . . .” Most often, however, direction now comes from Party leadership. And the positions taken by leadership reflect the will of large campaign donors more than that of voters. There are too many examples of this practice to enumerate here. Let’s just name two: more than 90% of those citizens polled want reasonable gun control policies in place; and, in the last Federal election, a vast majority voted for affordable healthcare. But Republican Party leadership has steered the ship of state away from any form of gun policy reform and away from any furtherance of affordable healthcare. In fact, it has relentlessly attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act without any reform or revision that might extend coverage or reduce costs.
• “. . . the majority rules in the name of the people . . .” Really? Two of our last three Presidents won a term as President without winning the popular vote. Also, except for the last general election, we have had a series of Congressional elections where the winning Party did not gain a majority of the votes. But this issue cuts deeper than gerrymandering and voter suppression laws. For Congress is more beholden to special interest groups than to the majority interests of the electorate. Those interests are too often tabled in lieu special interests. As a result, the congressional agenda is governed by political leadership, rather than by the public welfare. (In February of 2016, I wrote a blog, “A Clash of Minorities,” disclaiming the reality of majority rule.)
• “. . . the majority . . . is chiefly composed of peaceful citizens who by taste or interest sincerely desire the well-being of the country . . .” In fact, I believe peaceful well-meaning people do comprise the majority of Americans. But they obviously do not all vote.
• “They (the majority) are surrounded by the constant agitation of parties seeking to draw them in and to enlist their support . . .” When cable news, social media, and state sponsored propaganda is considered, the state of agitation created by self-interested parties, demagogues, hate groups, and foreign adversaries threatens to overwhelm the will of the people. The latter threat from foreign intervention in America’s electoral process currently goes undeterred as a result of one Party’s obstinance. That Party’s leader, the President, seems to believe he will benefit from such interference, as he did in 2016. The Senate Majority Leader refuses to consider bills that aim to contain this threat of foreign intervention. Once again, political leadership refuses to consider the will of the people or even the security of our democracy over its potential political benefit.

Has our constitutional framework become unworkable in the face of these political party dynamics?

Now, I recognize the founders feared mob rule or the overthrow of our government by an opportunistic despot or a foreign power. The majorities enumerated in the Constitution are counterbalancing: Congressional majorities in proportioned Districts, Senatorial majorities in each State, and Electoral College majorities in Presidential elections. And, of course, our founders established checks and balances in the three equal branches of our government. Only the Executive Branch was given exclusive powers to assure the preservation of the Union from foreign or domestic adversaries. With so many balancing and protective mechanisms, how could America avoid chaos and still hold a steady course toward its perennial self-realization—that is, Lincoln’s “rebirth,” Reagan’s “shining city on a hill,” Obama’s becoming “who we can be”? Our lifeline, our beacon of light, or our hope is and always has been the full realization that we are born in an equal state of nature that preordains our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This realization is the fulcrum that levers America through the chaos of history. But nowhere in our founding documents will you find references to political parties. In fact, our initial Presidents warned against the establishment of political parties. James Madison, in Federalist Paper Number 39, defined a fundamental prerequisite for a republican form of government:

“It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.”

In this quote, Madison is not addressing political parties per se. But the gist and tone of his statement argues against a “favored class,” such as “a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions.” He did not assume that future elected representatives would organize into political parties that would govern not “from the great body of the society . . . (but) from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it.” Given these quotes, how do you think Madison would assess the influence of large campaign donors over the political agenda in Congress? Would he consider the current operation of political parties consistent with a democratic republic?

As I reflect on the relevance of Tocqueville’s America to contemporary America, two questions come to mind. First, have we ever been or even now fully able to embrace the ideals expressed in our founding documents? And, second, does are current government preserve and enhance a self-governing society composed of diverse peoples and races? Of course, America has changed in the last 243 years. We are no longer a nation of farmers/landowners and frontier settlers who need to defend their land with muskets. We exist in a globally interdependent world where trade, technology, and the earth’s natural resources are the field for international competition. We no longer face an existential threat from a foreign monarchy or an Indian revolt to reclaim their lands. Instead, we live under threat of nuclear war, extremists’ violence, and the growing intensity of natural disasters. The answers to the questions posed here encompass more than racial prejudice and the political Parties’ subversion of democracy. At their core, these questions ask who we are as a society and how we choose to govern ourselves.

I believe there is a convergence in political and individual action that could provide America with a fresh start toward a representative democracy. First, let’s restore classical liberalism, currently reincarnated as conservatism, to the Republican Party. It anchors our government in its founding principles. Secondly, we need the Democratic Party to assure its programs of economic and civil liberties align with those founding principles. Here is where the two Parties should converge as guided by the Articles of the Constitution and clearly specified in its Preamble. Therein is plenty of common ground for compromise. As private citizens we need to exercise a staged revolt at the ballot box, beginning with campaign reform and demands for those government programs that preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone living in America. Remember Jefferson wrote his Declaration before American citizenship was defined. But the principles he defined therein have guided America to award full citizenship to former slaves, to women, and to immigrants in the course of the last two centuries. In addition, those demands must include clean air and water, the safe use of land and natural resources, equal protection under the law, fair and equal access to healthcare, the provision of a liberal education for our children, and, in general, all government actions that preserve Americans’ “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

But even more is demanded of us as members of a free society. The issue of white nationalism and racism, for example, can only be addressed effectively at the individual level. As a famous legislature once said, “you can’t legislate morality.” Although true, this dictum does not preclude the persuasion of enlightened leaders, both in government and in communities. Civil rights and voting rights laws set guardrails that protect minorities from injustice. But they cannot change the hearts and minds of individuals. That change must occur in each of us before it can become part of the social fabric that makes us one America. Each of us as individuals must question and openly confront personal biases and racial prejudice. It is not that difficult to engage and connect with others. Although de facto segregation does exist, there are still many opportunities in our diverse society for people to come together. Personally, I was raised with the Christian belief in loving “thy neighbor as thyself.” But that aspiration did not become real for me until I attended high school and college and subsequently served in the military with schoolmates and comrades of every race and ethnicity. While citizenship makes us real or potential neighbors in America, our unique backgrounds can define those personal biases that divide us. But our diverse backgrounds also offer an enormous opportunity to broaden individual perceptions about each other and the America we create. We can define our shared future together.

Seriously, if we Americans truly believe in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, then America can recover its idealism, realize its potential, and fulfill its promise.

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1. Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America,” Volume 1, p. 159.
2. Ibid. p. 374.
3. Ibid. p. 375.
4. Ibid. p. 379
5. Ibid. p. 331
6. Ibid. p. 327