and a special honor to be asked to speak on the fra jiflt ordered liberty and to speak on alexis de tocqueville. and in rereading tocqueville in preparation for this lecture, i began to think that he was something like mozart, that i was, that i was in the presence of a mind that was so far above the level of almost anyone else in history, that you know he almost works no comparison with anybody else. you can listen to the music of mozart and it sounds pleasant and melodic and know for the. but if you really think about it, if you really kind of analyze it, you realize that he's doing things no one else had ever done or was capable of doing, that it's so far above the level of ordinary, even impressive achievement that you're in the presence of something rare and i think you see the same thing with tocqueville. it's easy to read toke vil fairly fast. you're in front of a television set. there's a conversation in the next room. you're starting to think about what you have to do an hour from now and what you have to pick up at the store and you lose track of the fact that tocqueville really requi