it was an impulse which -- 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 of 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 in which people voluntarily associate. religions could produce movements that could be described as liberal or liberating, but it also fostered a stubborn conservatism that would prevent the excesses of

the despotism produced by the anti-religious french revolution which its bloody executions and its defiance of due process of the law. tocqueville also saw that religion and law also combined to produce material prosperity. another conservativizing 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. steam boats were supplying the mississippi river with disastrous safety records, as he noted. mark twain and "life on the mississippi" gives you an idea of what those were like a couple 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 the completion of e erie canal. suddenly products, goods produced in michigan can be transport today new york where they could 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 carrying on the whaling trade. american vessels were pursuing their trade in the south pacific. you can read melville's wonderful "moby dick" about that. don't skip the whale chapters. they're actually interesting. about that travel. 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. sarah delano roosevelt, the mother of franklin roosevelt, her father warren delano made two china voyages in the china trade. 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. 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 about his time, you also have american churches sending missionaries around the world. hawaii was annexed by the united states in 1898, but mission's 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, 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 18, 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 niew englands, in upstate new york, in michigan, ohio, michigan territory scarcely settled ten years later was a state six years later and filled up with largely with new england yankee stock people from upstate new york. yet pennsylvanians sort of going directly west from philadelphia. so they got 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 exact -- almost exactly the same as center city, philadelphia. they've copied the street grid. and the accent, local accent in cincinnati with the ex end it persists is very much like the

accent of philadelphia. they're going directly -- the new england yankees are very much setting up these voluntary associations, making a lot of noise moralistic, the philadelphians coming sort of from the quaker tradition are quiet, they're tolerant of corruption outside their own circle but they insist of moral behavior within it. they're part of the anti-slavery movement, too. in the south you've got the great movement of slave holders and of the slaves themselves. across from the atlantic states. 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 on per capita wealth, at least of the

free population of 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 seat is naches, on the mississippi, cotton lands on the mississippi river. this was 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 the authentic which are 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 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 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. he foresaw the possibility of civil war, but he thought the north could not subdue a south based on independence. which 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, 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 could descend into what he called a soft despotism. in that i think 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, certainly true in the 19th century with all due respect for our authors and writers. we did have good ones. but people will still buy louis vuitton language. france had the sort of high arts knack for that that was ere. he says more generally that a democratic society is less likely than an aristocratic one to tolerate immediate jocksy. he said it's more benign in america than in france because it's not the product of a violent revolution which leaves classes violent against each other but springs from a society that was not very aristocrats to begin with. that's a prognostication that could be defended if i had time to go into some of the history of europe. on the whole that we've seen he's positive about what he sees. 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 work. he sees religion and the non-privileged place of different churches and sects to produce behavior and reduce destructive impulses. he sees america creative in commerce and imagination. he also sees the threat. the things which have produced america's success could in times produce a future much gloomier and keep a 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 in some of my own comments because i can't really improve on tocqueville's prose. "i do not fear that in their chiefs americans will find

tyrants but rather school masters in this phrase. not a hard despotism but a soft despot im. i think that therefore the kind of oppression which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that has preceded it in the world. our con term prayers would not find its image in their memories. -- reduces the idea that reform from it from myself contains it. the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. the thing is new therefore i must try to define it. i want to manage with what new features despotism could be produced in the world. i see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who resolve without repose pro curing the small and vulgar pleshs with which they fill their souls, each of them withdrawn and apart is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others. his children and particular friends form the whole human species for him. this is individualism again. for dwelling with his fellow citizen, he is beside them but does not see them. he touches them and does not --

he remains and the family remains firm. one can say he no longer has a native country. 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. when tocqueville came here, paris had 800,000 people. america's largest city, new york, had 200,000. charleston 30,000. second largest city in the south after new orleans. over the next century, industrialization and vast immigration changed thdemograph.

later -- charleston was 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. you start having a lot of immigration from southern and eastern europe, which is very alarming tomorrow americans. we have as many as year 1907, 1 million 200,000 immigrants alive in a country of 86 million. that's as much immigration as we've had in the last decade per annually in a country of more than three times that size. so you're talking about a huge inundation of people who come with strange languages, strange mores. they work in garment sweat shops and steel assembly lines. these were people who end up owning no property. they rent their homes, often don't even have bank accounts.

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 drink for everybody. but it's in there. the property holder's democracy that we seem to be in 1830 suddenly is not a property holder's democracy anymore. we've suffered what robert nesbitt calls a loss of community. and as robert putnam, a sociologist found the parts of america today with the greatest racial and ethnic diversity are also the part with the highest degree of lack of trust in others and participation or voluntary association. tocqueville was looking forward, i think here, to a threat that in a different kind of america you would have a super intending 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 takes charge of ensuring their enjoimts and watching over their fate. it is absolute, detailed, regular, far seeing and mild. it would resemble paternal power if like that it had for its object to prepare men for manhood. but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevokably in childhood. it likes citizens to enjoy themselves. it willingly works for their happiness but it wants to be the unique agent and sole aar bit of that. it facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principle affairs, 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 is prepared man 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 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 superintendenting 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 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 earlier passage described the possibility that something far worse can come into existence, a very hard despotism or tyranny that try to take over the operation of every institution in society and aabolish freedoms of speech and religion. he forecease 20th century totalitarianism. 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 its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole. it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking uniform rules. bureaucracy. through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear away to surpass the 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 itself to one that is acting. it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born. it does not tyrannize. it extinguishes, dazes and reduces each nation to be nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is a shepherd. i've always believed that this sort of regulated, mild and

peacef peaceful servitude would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people. and stop to consider a moment that he's describing a democratic people as a herd of these are people who have taken the place for the authorities of which most of the century at touqueville wrote. one that emphasized the special character of american life. but the aim of progressive education is not to enable people to rise in life, they

want to teach people enough and give them enough sense of absorbing the discipline of the ringing bell s 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. which produced anti-congress

during the 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 and full of hopes. i see great perils are