Tag: Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville and American Exceptionalism: Exegeting Tocqueville
Whether America ever was or is exceptional is a matter for further discussion; but Tocqueville’s own estimate of America in the early nineteenth century was mixed at best and negative at worst. He obviously wished that democracy had produced a more learned and refined culture than it had in America; and he was quick to argue that democracy would likely produce better fruit in better (French?) circumstances.
Deracinated Meritocrats and the Marriage “Debate”
Devon, PA. I just received a link to a video that records the encounter of members of the TFP (The American Society for the...
History’s Long Road to Tyranny: Tocqueville and the End of Equality
Devon, PA. I have just finished teaching Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with my freshmen students. In a way I have not witnessed...
The Homeless Modern
The disposition that characterizes the modern mind--a disposition that favors as its ideal a skeptical “view from nowhere,”--serves to undermine the very elements that make community possible.
Distracted Achievement Gap
The problem is that public schools inherit children who are "overentertained and distracted."
Citizens of the World, Divide!
Moorpark, CA. We are told to be careful with our words, to be aware of how our words might make other people feel or...
Imitation and the Art of Flattery: the Cold War of the...
Washington, Connecticut. At the end of his introduction to a re-publication of the Marquis de Custine’s "Empire of the Czar, A Journey Through Eternal...
Against “American” Home Ownership
Devon, PA. Thomas J. Sugrue's new article in the Wall Street Journal proves considerably more nuanced and insightful than its headline and summary suggest. ...
A Disposable Society
Princeton, NJ At most cafes today there is a station where packets of sugar, canisters of milk and cream, and coffee stirrers are conveniently...