ing tocqueville in an earlier passage described the possibility that something far worse can come into existence. a very hardest pottism 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 toe talnairism. and he clearly tats 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 character that he saw as producing virtue and the democratic america of the 1830s. he writes, thus after taking each individual by turn in its powerful hands and needing him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as i an whole. it covers its surface with a network of small complicated pain steak 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 con