paradox that, again, i think was something that he thought would astonish his french aristocratic readers. diminishing the apparent force of a religion came to increase its real power. if people were not forced to attend and financially support a church, they would have more adherence to the church which they voluntarily supported and its teachings would mean more to them. tocqueville believed that religious belief was more prevalent and stronger in america than in france and that americans believe it necessary to the maintenance of republican institutions. so in his view, religion was not hostile to democracy and the republic. it was the friend and the support of democracy in the republic. religion, he writes, which among americans never mixes directly in the government should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions. for if it does not give them the taste for freedom, it singularly facilitates their use of it.

religious belief he could observe was the impulse behind the movements for temperance and women's rights and abolition of slavery. it was an impulse which gave strength to the observation of limits of the powers of the state and indeed we're just debating in our politics of today an issue involving what power should the state have over the free exercise of religious beliefs by individuals and by organizations they establish to work together, which have a religious basis. it was -- it gave strength. religion gives strength to the observation or the limits of power on the state and the limits on the power of temporary voting majorities. at the same time that the law permits the american people to do everything tocqueville writes, religion prevents them from conceiving everything and forbids them to dare anything. so instead of having external state limitations you have individual self-restraint and group self-restraint through groups of which people voluntarily associate.

religions could produce movements that could be described as liberal or liberating, but it also fostered a stubborn conservativism that would prevent the excesses and the despotism produced by the anti-religious french revolution with its bloody executions and its defiance of due process of law. tocqueville also saw that religion and law also combined to produce material prosperity. another conservatizing effect if you will of the american system. one is astonished by the growing prosperity of the people he writes at one point. in the two decades before tocqueville's visit, americans had been building canals. he traveled on a number of them. and just before he arrived, the first tracks of the baltimore and ohio railroad were being laid down. steamboats were plying the mississippi river with disastrous safety records as he noted.

mark twain and life on the mississippi gives you an idea what those were like a couple of decades later. travel times and transportation costs were being hugely reduced. and internal trade hugely increased. it's hard to overestimate the difference that it made. i mean, new york was closer in travel time to europe than it was to my home state of michigan before the completion of the erie canal. after the erie canal and lake travel, steamboat travel through lake erie, suddenly products, goods produced in michigan can be transported to new york where they can be disseminated around the east coast and to different domestic markets or shipped abroad at hugely decreased costs. so you're spreading capitalist economic activity across the country and the internal trade in the country is hugely increased. the frontier farmers or people near that are no longer living in a situation where they can expect to be totally

self-sufficient in goods and services their whole lives. they're being part of an economy that's being knit together. at the same time, american merchants were plying "the atlantic caring on the trade. american whaling vessels were pursuing their prey in the south pacific. you can read melville's wonderful "moby dick" about that and don't skip the whale chapters. they're actually kind of interesting about that. that travel. you know, we have an image from some 20th century political rhetoric that americans before world war i or world war ii at some point in the early 20th century that americans before that were isolationists, were penned up in their own country. that simply isn't true. what you saw were you had merchant ties all over the world and some of these were immensely profitable.

sara delano roosevelt the mother of franklin roosevelt her fairly warren del know made two china voyages in the china trade and sometime not much longer after tocqueville came to america. he retired after that at the age of 31 and built a castle on the hudson river and the family was rich ever since off the profits from that kind of trade. that was america traveling around the world. and in the decades after that tocqueville, it starts where his time, you also have american churches sending missionaries around the world. hawaii was annexed by the united states in 1898 but the missionaries were there in the 1820s. and so, the religious impulse which tocqueville traces in america is one that america is also tracing in the world. and so, tocqueville doesn't i believe mention this is development. this is the kind of activity, the hyperactivity that the this country is producing, this country with its multiple religions. its very thin federal government.

its strong belief in its increasing transportation and communication as the telegraph comes in in the 1840s. and its ability to basically cut space and time in half. so this buzzing activity that tocqueville is describing in america is also penetrating in various ways around the world. within the country, americans are moving westward in vast numbers. they're creating new new englands, and they had done so in upstate new york and northeast ohio. in michigan, where tocqueville was there when it was the michigan territory scarcely settled ten years later, it was a state six years later and filled up largely with new england yankee stock people from upstate new york. had you pennsylvanians going sort of directly west from philadelphia so they go to cincinnati where if you look at the downtown street grid and adjust it to the side, you will see that the street names are

exactly -- almost exactly the same as center city, philadelphia. they've copied the street grid. and the accent, local accent in cincinnati to the extent it persists, is very much like the local accent in philadelphia. they sort of say ut instead of out and things and so therefore. the new england yankees are very much setting up these voluntary associations making a lot of noise. moralistic. the philadelphians coming kinds of from the quaker tradition are more quiet. they're tolerant of corruption outside their own circle but they insist on moral behavior within it. they're part of the anti-slavery movement, too. and in the south, you've got the great movement of slaveholders and of the slaves themselves. across from the atlantic states, you know, virginia becomes a state exporting slaves in large number. south carolina, many of the great planters in south carolina are buying plantation land from

which the indians have been expelled recently in alabama and mississippi and building huge plantations so that the charleston in many ways is the richest significant city and per capita wealth at least of the free population at the time of the beginning of the civil war and the richest colony -- county in the united states by that measure is adams county, mississippi, which the county see the is naches on the mississippi. cotton lands on the mississippi river. this is a westward migration for the slaves for the african-americans. that migration involved really more people than moving people across the atlantic and it was also a huge trauma. slaves were taken, families were taken apart. they were taken away from their churches where you know, the authentic which are you know the kind of worship that you can hear in black american churches today i think is one of our closest connections with how people actually lived in the 18th century. it's a tradition that's been carried on for a long time with the hugely strong musical

tradition which has been related in our popular music but you also had the sort of huge trauma of people being moved across the country in a variety of ways. tocqueville saw the slave market in new orleans. he saw this stuff that was going on. as i say, he was concerned about it. and at the same time, he could hardly not but be impressed by the huge economic growth, by the bustle and change, by the vigor of this somewhat disorganized very much decentralized but also vital and free and productive country. and he was eerily prescient about the future. as i said, he foresaw the possibility of civil war but he thought the north could not subdue a south based on independence. which i -- as i look back was probably true when he wrote

since the north's victory 30 years later depended on the industrialization and the vast population growth that occurred between his time and the civil war between 1831 and 1861. tocqueville mused in one of his last chapters in volume one about the possibility that the world in the 20th century would be dominated by two great powers one democratic and one despotic, america and russia. hit the spot again, didn't he? and he foresaw that a democratic nation cogs descend into what he called a soft despotism. in that, he thinks he anticipated the conservative critique of many of the public policies of the last 100 years. and it's about this critique and tocqueville's thing that i want to speak about now. tocqueville's vivid picture of soft despotism appears almost abruptly at the end of the second volume of "democracy in america." the picture he has painted up to

that point is a picture of a democratic america is not entirely complimentary. he takes it for granted the democratic america cannot produce the high culture of fine arts fostered by aristocratic nations like france which is certainly true in the 19th century with all due regard for our artists and writers who we did have some pretty good ones but people are still buying louis vuitton luggage and chanel perfume and things. france does have that sort of high arts knack for that that was there. he says and he says more generally that a democratic society is less likely than an aristocratic one to value excellence, more likely to tolerate mediocrity. maybe so. he thinks dhok sy is more benign in america than it would be in france because it's not the product of a violent revolution which leaves classes divided against each other. but rather, springs from a society that was never aristocratic to begin with. i think that's a prognostication that can be defended if i had

time to go in some of the history of europe. but on the whole, as we've seen, he's positive about what he sees. and he's writing remember for an audience that he thinks doesn't like america, doesn't like democracy and is prepared to see it as a threat. tocqueville sees americans overcoming the dangers of individualism by their involvement in local self-government and by their proclivity to create and work in voluntary associations or the little platoons. he sees religion and the nonprivileged place of different churches and sects in america as tending to produce virtuous behavior and to place limits on destructive impulses. he sees an america bursting with prosperity, resourceful in commerce, creative in imagination. but he also sees a threat, the things which have produced america's success could in time produce a future much gloomier and could keep democratic america from living up to its potential. i think i want to quote at some length some of the things he was saying and intersperse it with

my own comments because i can't really improve on tocqueville's prose. i do not fear in their chiefs americans will find tyrants he says but rather schoolmasters in this phrase. not a hard despotism but a soft despotism. i think that therefore the kinds of oppression of which democratic people will resemble is nothing that has proceeded it in the world. our contemporaries would not find its image in their memories. i myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that i formed of it for myself and that contains it, the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. the thing is new, therefore i must try to define it since i can't name it. i want to the imagine what new features despotism could be produced in the world. i see an innumberable crowd of like and equal men who resolve without repose procuring the small and vulgar pleasures each of them withdrawn and apart is like a stranger to the destiny of all the other. his particular children and friends form the whole human

species, this is the individualism again. for dwelling with his fellow citizen, he is beside them but does not see them. he touches them but not feel them. he exists only in himself and for himself alone and the family remains for him. one can at least say he no longer has a native country and it's a view in other words in which the forces that he sees as holding people together and avoiding the threat of isolation and individualism is a threat to america. and he's writing about an america he's presaging here i think an america that is much larger than he sees than he's describing here. you know, when tocqueville came here paris had 800,000 people. america's largest city new york had 200,000. charleston 30,000. the second largest city in the south after new orleans. over the next century industrialization and vast immigration changed that

demography hugely. by 1912, 100 years ago, new york had 5 million people, chicago 2 million, philadelphia 1.5 million although charleston was still down there with only 58,000. and you had these vast waves of immigration starting from ireland and germany in the 1840s which were different cultures. many of these immigrants were catholics in a mostly protestant country that was suspicious of catholics. you had immigration from the 1890s. ou have immigration from southern and eastern europe which is alarming to many americans. we have as many as year 1907 1,200,000 arrive in a country of 6 million. that's as much as we've had in the last decade annually in a country more than three times that size. so you're talking about a huge inundation of people who come with strange languages, strange morays. they work in garment sweatshops

and steel and assembly lines. these are people who end up owning no property. they rent their homes, often don't even have bank accounts. you know, the workmen are paid with cash in a pay envelope or with a check that they cash at the bar outside the factory and the wives line up outside the factory gate to get the check before they go into the bar and stand drinks for everybody. but it's america. the property holders' democracy that we seem to be in 1830s suddenly is not a property holders' democracy anymore. we've suffered what robert nisbit call a loss of community. and as robert put nam a sociologist recently found to his dismay, the parts of america today with the greatest ethnic and racial diversity are also the part with the lack of highest trust in others and participation in voluntary associations. tocqueville was looking forward, i think, here to a threat that

in a differently kind of america, you would have a superintending government creating soft despotism that would break the ties between individuals and put them in a situation of isolation, of individualism. and he describes this process in these words "above these an immense tutelary power is elevated which alone takes charge ensures watching over their fate. it is absolute, detailed, regular, far seeing and mild. it would resemble paternal power if liking that it had for its object to prepare men for manhood, but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood. it lacks citizens to enjoy themselves. it works for their happiness but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that. it foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principle affairs, directs their industrial, divides their

inheritance. can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?" so it is that every day it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare. it confines the action of the will in a smaller space and little by little steals the very use of it from the citizen. equality has prepared men for all these things. it has disposed them to tolerate them and even to regard them as a benefit. and i think here tocqueville is providing 80 or 100 years, 80 years before the progressive movement, 100 years before the new deal the conservative critique and credential of these programs. it is not simply that they are economically harmful that they tend to deter economic activity prosperity and economic growth. it is their effect on the character of people, the effect that a superintending government that tends to try to protect you from all damage and provide perfect security, one that's run

by a centralized bureaucratic apparatus, run by alleged experts, justified by the supposed inability of ordinary people to take care of themselves and navigate the shoals and reefs of an advanced industrial democracy. this soft despotism tends to destroy human character. this despotism that assumes that people are incompetent children and treating them like that tends to make them behave like that and be like that. tocqueville in an earlier passage described the possibility that something far worse can come into existence. a very hard despotism or tyranny that would try to take over the operation of every institution in society and to abolish freedoms of speech and religion. in other words, he foresees 20th century totalitarianism. and he clearly states that soft despotism is better than that. but he goes on to insist that to

describe how it will have a bad effect on people's character and that it will tend to eradicate the aspects of american in the democratic america of the 1830s. he writes, thus after taking each individual by turn in it's powerful hands and needing him as it likes the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole. he covers its suffer wisa network of small, complicated, painstaking uniform rules. bureaucra bureaucracy, through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear away to the surpass crowd. it does not break wills but it softens them, bends them and directs them. it rarely forces one to act but it constantly opposes one to ones who is acting. does not destroy, it prevents one ifs being born. it does not tyrannize, it henders. compromises. and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious

animals. could be combined than one imagines with some external forms of film on and that it would not be impossible to be established in the very shadows of the sovereigntist people and stop to consider a moment of what he's taught. that he's describing a describing people as a herd of timid and industrial animals. what this reminds me of is the ideas of progressive education. which have dominated the education schools and much of our public school system since the 1920s. the tut larry power of the teachers colleges and lately the teacher unions. these are people who have taken the place of the local authorities who super intended the public schools for which much of the century after tocqueville wrote intended to require a more rigorous course of study and one that emphasized

the special character of american life as described by tocqueville. the aim is not to produce excellence. not to enable people to rise in life. they don't really like that very much. they want to teach basic -- they want to teach people enough and give them enough sense of observing the discipline of the ringing bells and the time clocks to work in henry ford's model t factory and vote for the kind of people that these people would like them to vote for. they could make enough money for food, clothing and shelter, enough time for leisure, radio or movies or tvs. facilitating their pleasures as tocqueville put it and to endorse in their occasional vote or as tocqueville puts it, citizens leave their dependence for a moment to indicate their master and re-enter it. that's how he sees the democratic process, the political process working in a system of soft despotism. in this -- and in this view, he

portrays a situation where we have gone far along the road to soft despotism and there is no turning around. i want to suggest something a little different. something that's from my point of view a little more optimistic. first of all, many of the features of america that tocqueville describes are still part of american life. america still abounds in voluntary associations more than any other nation in the world. there's some indications the percentage of people involved in such associations are declining as robert putnam suggests in his book bowling along. i think there's important counterevidence that's come forward. so voluntary associations are part of american life. americans give more money and volunteer more time for charity than people in any other significant nation in the world and by a lot. arthur brooks, the president of american enterprise institute, has documented this. it's part of an american tradition. the tradition of american philanthropy is still strong. remember that a century ago in that progressive era, a masters

of great fortune like andrew carnegie and rockefeller gave enormous sums to charity and changed america life through building our system of libraries. rockefeller created our medical research institutions and the meadow owe rigorous medical schools we have today and the teaching hospitals. that was the creation of john d. rockefeller. a contribution to american life that was above that of many government policies and government programs. so the federal government does not have the power -- does not have a monopoly in many areas. we've still got philanthropy. bill gates is trying to be a smart philanthropist. he's done some dumb things and taken metrics and trying to do better. so we do have a vital philanthropic thing. two important respects, i think we still remain an exceptional nation in the way that tocqueville was the first to recognize. one is that we're still by and large a religious people and a people who are respectful of the

religion of others. there's an increasing percentage of people that identify themselves as unbelievers. it is still very low. the sociologists and sophisticateds that predicted that europe is secular and the united states when it advances enough will go secular too, have simply been proven wrong by events. if anything, forms have strengthened religion that demand greater devotion from their followers have gained strength at the risk of -- at the expense of religions whose doctrines have become undifferentiatable from the george mcgovern platform in the 1972 presidential election. second way that we've remained an exceptional nation is we are as we were at tocqueville's time arguably we're not a century a ago in the progressive era, but i would submit, i again, is we are a property owner's democracy. most persons in the course of their working lives accumulate significant amounts. hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property in the form of real estate and financial

estimates. we're in an economic downturn period now. by no means the most severe in our history. but the fact that most americans, i believe, continue to look forward to and with good reason to accumulating property means they're less likely to sign up to be a member of a herd of timid industrial animals. finally, i believe a case can be made that american voters have not supinely ratified the creation of soft despotism. they've tended to resist it. when parties in power have tried to expand the size and scope of government, they've been sharply rebuked by the voters. woodrow wilson, new freedom and attempted abolition of congress' prerogative of declaring war was rebuked by the record majority cast for warren g. harding's return to normalcy in 1920. franklin roosevelt's plan to pack the supreme court, new

deals governor refusal to enforce the law against the sit-down strikes was rebuked in 1938 and subsequent 20 years. lyndon johnson, great society was rebuked in the elections of 1966 and '68 and the stagflation that prevailed during jimmy carter presidency produced a landslide for ronald reagan in 1980. two the most recent democratic presidents after raising taxes and advancing a national health care plan were rebuked sharply by record republican victories in the off-year elections of 2004 and 2010. now, many conservative thinkers, the pessimists would reply that these victories do not change the trajectory of public policy. the creeping socialism kept creeping. there's something to this. but i think the argument is overstated. tax rates were vastly cut, in wartime nationalization of railroadings and shipyards of ended arch 1920. by the way the latter policy was not repeated in the next world war. the republican congress elected in 1946 rejected new deal

policies for national health insurance, federal education, government dominance of the housing industry. it ended wartime wage and price controls and significantly restricted the power of labor unions. these public policies were enduring. some for a generation, some to this day. and they led to post-war prosperity when almost everybody expected a return to depression. the elections rejecting the great society led over the next 20 years, the administrations of both parties, to deregulation of transportation, which squeezed huge costs out of services. kind of like the transportation communication revolutions that happened on either side of tocqueville's visit. that enabled americans to live much better and to be much more productive. in the 1990s we saw a vast decrease in welfare dependency and crime resulting almost entirely from the pioneering efforts of reformers at state and local governments. subsidiaries. governor tommy thompson of

wisconsin, new york mayor rudy giuliani leading the way. adapted by other states. and cities. many of them democrats as well. in which the federal government was basically an interested and occasionally helpful bystander. the 2010 elections have not yet been followed by major public policy. reversals. but could be depending on the outcome of the elections this year. we do know that the president's health care law, which he expected to be popular that 2 barely has become popular, he barely mentioned in his state of the union address last month. silence temps you a lot in that situation. let me let tocqueville have the last word. the aristocrat so alert in the strengths of democracy even while keenly identifying its weaknesses was a man of piercing intelligence and to read him, you really have to read him slowly and take in a little bit, someone of my acquaintance has tocqueville to read a chapter or so every so often d