but toqueville was unknown to these people. he wasn't important and he would have been seen as hopelessly pettis bruzual. there is a great short essay by a d.h. lawrence. is anyone familiar with this? it is how the bourgeoisie is not metaphorical. it's this attitude that gets picked up and sometimes they may get literally. >> my name is tom. i had trouble fitting what i thought was my understanding of liberalism or progressivism with what you said. you used the phrase it was the worst of all possible places. if you think about what happened a few years before the period that you are talking about, woodrow wilson signed into law against child labor and was struck down and in the new deal it was banned. it's not that liberals and progressives thought that american society was contempt or incapable of being redeemed, they thought it was capable of being improved. your view it seems back to schubert humphrey for example, your country never would have said american society was utterly contemptible. he wanted to improve it. >> herber

so compte had no use for toqueville whatsoever considered him beneath him. i don't recommend anyone read him today. unless you are interested in this. it is very interesting because it is kind of -- socialism pre marks and a great deal of what survives of socialism -- let me talk over this a second over h. g. wells. you would not be well aware of this because little has been written about it but h. g. wells was a great admirer about the utopian socialist experiment. new harmony for instance was something he studied closely. in upstate new york, he studied closely, h. g. wells's socialism derived in part from the american utopian socialists. welfare -- his father was a cricket here who never made a real living, the family thought about moving to america and new the did so. hd will always thought he had one leg in america. toqueville was unknown to these people. had he been read he would have been seen as hopeless. there is a great short essay by d. h. lawrence, how beastly the. what --bougois. all about how they are subhuman, not metaphorically. it is this at

so we have a political culture of affection that might in toqueville's mind be considered odd and extremend not very self reflective. but at the same time the congress that we voted by the way, we don't like the president or the things he tries to do even though he said he would try to do that when he was elected for the most part we don't like the court when they do something we don't like or we think the court is a very important push back against the dangers of society. so, americans are not very reflective. it's wonderful to have love but where is the interior? do we think about where we fit into the dysfunction, a word he wouldn't necessarily understand but it's one that's very powerful. who is to blame for the dysfunctions in the united states? in a free society where voters have a lot of opportunities to participate, we blame them and we don't often blame ourselves and when we distrust politicians are we really saying that we distrust ourselves and then it breaks down the question what is so great about the united states and it might be that we acknowledge these types of breakages