indeed were just debating in the politics of today, an issue involving what power should the state have over the free exercise of religious beliefs by individuals and by organizations that establish to work together which had a religious basis. it was -- he gave strength, he gave strength to the observation and the limits of you poor on the state and the limits of the power of temporary voting majority. at the same time the law permits the american people, religion prevents them from conceiving everything and forbids them to dare anything. so instead of having external state limitations, you have individual self-restrain and group self-restraint through groups which people voluntarily associate. they produce movements that could be described as liberal or liberating, but it also fostered a stubborn conservatism that

would prevent the excesses 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 the material prosperity. another conservativizing effect. the prosperity of the people, american his been building canals and he traveled and just before he arrived the first tracks of the baltimore in ohio railroad were laid down and steam boats were plowing down the mississippi river and mark twain gives an idea of what it was like decades level and transportation costs were being

hugely reduced and it's hard to overestimate the difference that it made. new york was closer in travel time to europe than my home state before the completion of the erie canal. after the erie canal and it traveled through lake erie and it could be transported to new york where they could be disseminated around the east coast into different domestic markets or shipped abroad and spreading economic activity across the country and the internal trade in the country is hugely increased. the frontier farmers are no longer living in a situation where they can expect to be totally self-sufficient in goods and services their whole lives and they're being part of an economy that's being knit together.

at the same time, american merchants were plowing the atlantic and american whaling vessels were pursuing their prey in the south pacific. you can read "moby dick" about that and don't skip the whale chapters and they're very interesting. we had an image from 20th century political rhetoric that americans before world war i and world war ii at some point in the early 20th century that before that were isolationists and were penned up. that simply isn't true. what you saw were you had merchandise ties all over the world and some of them were immensely profitable, and the, sarah roosevelt, the mother of president roosevelt, not long

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 tocqueville, it starts around his time and you also have american churches sending missionaries around the world. hawaii was next by the united states in 1898 and 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 that tocqueville doesn't, i believe, mention this development. this is the kind of activity, the hyperactivity that this country is producing and this country with the multiple religions and it's very thin, federal government and the strong belief and it's increasing transportation and communications that 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 at vast numbers and they're creating new new englands and they did so in upstate new york and northeast ohio. in michigan when tocqueville was there when it was the michigan territory and it was scarcely settled six years later and filled up with largely with the yankee people from upstate new york. the pennsylvanians were going west from philadelphia and they go at the downtown street and you adjust it that the street names are almost exactly the same as center city, philadelphia. they've cop ed the street grid and the local accent persists and it is very much like the local accent of philadelphia and

they say old, and things, and so forth. they're going directly -- and the new york yankees are making a lot of noise, and the philadelphiians are more quiet and they're tolerant of corruption and they insist that it's part of the anti-slavery movement. in the south, you have a great movement of slave holders and of the slaves themselves across from the atlantic states and virginia becomes the state exporting slaves in large number. south carolina, many of the great planters in south carolina are buying plantation land from where the indians had been expelled in alabama and mississippi and building huge plantations so that charleston, in many ways, is the richest

significant city per kap capita the beginning of the civil war and the richest colony -- county in the united states is adams county, mississippi, which the county seat matches with the mississippi river. this is the western migration for the slaves and for the african-americans. that migration involved more people than moving people across the atlantic and it was also a huge trauma when slaves and families were taken a part and they were taken away from their churches where they're the kind of worship that you can hear in black, american churches is the closest connection to how people lived in the 18th century and it's a tradition that's been carried on for a long time with a hugely strong musical tradition which came later in popular music and you also had this sort of huge trauma of people being moved across the

country in a variety of ways and tocqueville saw the slave market in new orleans. he saw the 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 and by the bustle and change and by the vigor of this somewhat disorganized and very much decentralized and also vital and free and productive country and he was eerily freshent about the future and it was not bent on independence which i, as i look back, was probably when he wrote since the north's victory 30 years later dependent on the industrialization and the vast population growth that occurred between his time and the civil war between 1831 and 1861.

tocqueville mused about the possibility that it would be dominated by two big powers, one democratic and despotic american russia. hit the spot again, didn't he? he fore saw that a democratic nation could descend into -- and the conservative of the public policies for the last 100 years. it was about this critique and tocqueville's thing that i want to speak about now. tockville's vivid picture of soft despotism appears abruptly at the end of the second volume in america. the picture he's painted up to that point is the picture of a democratic america and is not entirely complimentary. he takes it for granted and the democratic america cannot produce the high culture of fine

arts fostered by aristocratic nations by france that was certainly due in the 19th century with all due regard from artists and writers that we had good ones and they had louie vuitton luggage and french perfume. france does have that that was there and he says more generally that a democratic societiy is more likely to tolerate mediocrity. maybe so. he thinks democracy is more benign in america than it would be in france because it's not the product of a vile revolution which leaves classes divided against each other, but rather springs naturally from a society that was never aristocratic to begin with and i think that was a prognostication, and if i had time to go into the history of europe. but on the whole he's positive about what he sees and he's writing a number for his

audience that he thinks doesn't like america and doesn't like democracy and prepared to see this as a threat. tocqueville sees americans overcoming the dangers of individuals and by their involvement in local self government and by their proclivity to have work and associations and he sees religion in the non-privileged place of churches and sects where they place limits on destructive impulses. he sees an america bursting with prosperity and creative in imagination, but he also sees a threat. the things which produced america's success could in time produce a future much gloomier and can keep america from living up to its potential, and i think i want to quote at length some things that he was saying and intersperse it with my own comments because i can't improve on tocqueville's prose. i do not feel that in their

chiefs americans will find tyrants, but rather school masters in this phrase, not a high despotism, but a soft despotism. the democratic peoples that are threatened will resemble nothing that's perceived in the world. our contemporaries will not find its image in the memories and it reproduces the idea that i form for it and myself and it contains it. the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. the thing is new and therefore i must try to define it since i cannot name it. i want to imagine with what new features despotism can be produced in the world. i see a new crowd of like and equal men who procure the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls, each of them withdrawn like a stranger to the destiny of the others. his children, his particular friends form the whole human species and this is theed innism again and dwelling with his fellow citizen, he's beside them and he does not see them. he touches them and does not

feel them and one can at least say he no longer has a native country and it's the view in which the forces that he sees and is holding people together, and avoiding the threat of isolation and individualism. it is a threat to america, and he's writing about -- and he's presaging here an america that is much larger than he see -- than he's describing here. you know, when tocqueville came here, charleston had 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 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 and many of these immigrants were catholics and the protestants were suspicious of catholics and you had immigration from the 1890s and you start having a lot of immigration from southern and eastern europe which was very alarming to many americans and you had 1 million, 200 thousand and that's as much immigration as we've had in the last decade per 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 and strange mores. they work in sweat shops and assembly lines and these are people who rent the property and they rent their homes and often don't have bank accounts and

they, you know, the workmen are paid with cash in ann envelope and the wives line up outside the factory gate to get the check before they go to the bar and get drinks for everybody, but it's -- the property holders' dechl democrat see that we seem to be in 1830 suddenly is not a property holders' democracy anymore and it's what robertes in bit calls a loss of community and as robert putnam, the sociologist found to his dismay and wanted to report it, the parts of america today with the ethnic and racial diversity are a part of the highest degree of lack of trust and others and participation of the voluntary associations and tocqueville was looking forward, i think, here that in the threat that was the kind of america that you would have a superintending government creating soft despotism that

would break the ties between individuals and put them in the situation of isolation of individualism, and he describes this process in these words above these in the immense tutilary, and it was detailed and far and mild and it would resemble paternal power to prepare man for manhood, but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep the fixture of the child like citizens to enjoy themselves and it willingly works for their happiness and it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that. it provides for their security and secures their needs and facilitates their pleasures and directs their industry and regulates their estate and cannot take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living. so it is that every day it renters the employment of free

will less useful and more rare, it confines the action of the will in the smart space and little by little steals the very use of it from the citizen. equality has prepared men for all these things and has exposed them and to regard them as a benefit and i think here tocqueville is providing 80 or 100 years, 80 years before the progressive movement and 100 years before the new deal. it is not simply that they are economically harmful, that they tend to deter the economic activity, prosperity and economic growth. it is their effect on the character of people, the effect that the superintendent government that tends to try to protect you from all damage and provide them perfect security. one that's run by a centralized, bureaucratic apparatus and run by alleged experts, justified by the supposed inability of ordinary people to take care of

themselves and navigate the shores and reefs of the advanced, industrial democracy. this soft despotism tends to destroy human character. this despotism that assumes that people are incompetent children in 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 everien stugz in society and to abolish freedoms of speech and religion, in other words, he fore cease totalitarianism and he clearly states that soft despotism is better than that, but he goes on to insist to describe how it will have a bad effect on people's character and that it will tend to eradicate the aspects of american character

that he saw as producing virtue in the democratic america of the 1830s. >> he writes, thus after taking each individual by turn in the powerful hand, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole and it has the painstaking uniform rules, bureaucracy, through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear the way to surpass the crowd. it does not break the will, but softens them, it forces 21 act, but it constantly opposes himself, and it does not destroy it and prevents things from being born. it does not tir nice, it hinders. it finally reduces each nation to be nothing more than a herd of timid, industrious animals of which the government say shepherd. i've always believed that this mild and peaceful servitude whose picture i just painted

could be combined better than the external forms of freedom and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people. stop to consider a moment what he's -- that he's describing a democratic people as a herd 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 tutelary 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 of progressive education 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 counterveiling evidence 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 rigorous medical schools that 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 tutelary power, does not have the 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 are 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 years. lyndon johnson, great society was rebuked in the elections of

1966 and '68 and the stagflation that prevailed during jimmy carter's presidency produced a 44 state 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 1994 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 railroads and shipyards was ended after 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 and communication which squeezed huge costs out of services like the transportation, communication revolutions that happened on either side of toqueville'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. imitated and adapted by the leaders of many other states and cities, most of them republicans but 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, has instead become so unpopular he barely mentioned it in the state of the union address last month. silence tells 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 and to ponder. often single paragraphs have insights that can produce an academic career for most people.

but this extraordinary man, he's one of the great thinkers of our age, of any age, a person whose piercing intelligence is so much greater than that of almost anybody who ever tried to do what he tried to do, at the same time also had a faith in the capacity of ordinary people to, in the right circumstances, govern themselves and contribute to the building of a decent and virtuous society. those who advocated the course of what he calls soft despotism lacked this faith. they see ordinary people as incapable of self-governance in need of a shepherd to guide the herd the right direction. tocqueville sees us ordinary mortals, so far below him as something better. nobody says it better than himself. let me conclude with a final passage in the second volume of democracy in america. as for myself, having come to the final stage of my course to discover from afar but once all the diverse objects that i've contemplated separately in advance, i feel full of fears an