![]() Though praising our pioneering restlessness and drive, as well as our willingness to assist neighbors in trouble, he nonetheless worries that democracy too readily fosters intellectual and social conformity, resulting in a culture of complacent mediocrity. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French sociologist and political theorist who traveled to the United States to study its prisons and wrote Democracy in America (1835), one of the. After noting that the laws governing inheritance provide an essential key to understanding human affairs, he goes on to critique the American’s inordinate love for money. The two volumes made Tocqueville famous, and he became a celebrated. ![]() ![]() University of Chicago Press, 1980 - Political Science - 391 pages. In the commanding translation by Arthur Goldhammer for the Library of America, Tocqueville declares that his book simply aims “to familiarize the reader with the laws of the United States.” In its many pages, he duly explains the advantages of a political system both regulated by checks and balances and divided between state and federal governments, devotes his most brilliant chapter to the sociological impact of the republic’s “three races” - the exploited and abused Native Americans, the enslaved Blacks and the mainly Christian Anglo-Europeans - and repeatedly stresses our country’s peculiar intertwining of religious zeal and jingoist patriotism. Democracy in America appeared in two parts: the first in 1835 and the second in 1840. Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy, Revolution, and Society. ![]()
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