(The president of the United States during Tocqueville’s visit, Andrew Jackson, reportedly commented that his proudest achievement in office was having blocked “the Bank.”)

But there’s no doubt that the modern Fed has an impact on American life and American democracy…. as Robert Scheer notes:

At home we are experiencing a social tsunami with the disappearance of a middle-class workforce of stakeholders who were assumed by observers as varied as Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville to be the very bedrock of America’s experiment in freedom. Many with jobs are struggling desperately to get by as the average workweek and pay scales fall, and countless workers find themselves settling for rewards well below their skill sets. Even those slim pickings…

View the rest of Scheer’s article at: “Bernanke: Full-frontal cluelessness,” Appeal-Democrat, 09 June 2011.

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Long before the appointed moment arrives, the election becomes the greatest and so to speak sole business preoccupying minds…. The entire nation falls into a feverish state; the election is then the daily text of the public papers, the subject of particular conversations, the goal of all reasoning, the object of all thoughts…. As soon as fortune has pronounced [the victor], this ardor is dissipated, everything becomes calm, and the river, one moment overflowed, returns peacefully to its bed.

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But recently, “marriage and family are declining in America,” writes the Heritage Foundation’s “Moral Liberal” (Charles A. Donovan). “This breakdown of the American family has dire implications for American society and the U.S. economy. Halting and reversing the sustained trends of nearly four decades will not happen by accident. The federal, state, and local governments need to eliminate marriage penalties created by the tax code and welfare programs and instead use existing resources to better encourage and support family life.”

As always, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution neither endorses nor opposes any of his particular conclusions… but we note that ML’s analysis is based on Tocqueville’s notion that the family and marriage were a central underpinning of the success of American representative democracy. You can read the rest of his analysis at “A Marshall Plan for Marriage,” the Heritage Foundation, 10 June 2011.

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“From Aristotle to Alexis de Tocqueville, Western thinkers have championed the middle class as essential for prosperous, enlightened societies,” writes Christa Case Bryant in the Christian Science Monitor. “They held it up as the engine for economic growth, the guardian of social values, and an impelling and protecting force for democracy.”

So it’s good news, as Bryant notes, that according to a recent study:

“The world will, for the first time in history, move from being mostly poor to mostly middle-class by 2022, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development projects.”

As Tocqueville himself might have noted, this development is easily overstated by partisans of both socialism and capitalism.

On the one hand, many members of the new middle class have fundamentally communitarian beliefs or come from traditionally non-materialist traditions. As well, in some surging emerging market countries, it’s clear that democracy — the concept and practice of political equality and popular sovereignty over legislative power — preceded economic reform.

On the other hand, there is no denying that the rise of the middle class in China and India, to name just two of the largest examples, have benefited from essentially free-market, low-taxation economic policies that go back now more than a generation.

Furthermore, for all the triumphalism of Beijing’s authoritarian regime, it’s clear that many members of China’s citizens, while they appreciate material prosperity, have not been bought off by it. Today the world celebrates the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Maybe, for a while at least, everyone can stop arguing about which comes first, the capitalist chicken or the democratic egg. It’s a prosperous time for the world. Can we just enjoy that fact for a few weeks and then get back to the debate over bailing out Greece, invading Libya, or raising the U.S. debt ceiling? Yes, of course. But there is something more to do.

“When Alexis de Tocqueville was making
his long trek across America….”

Continued at: “How many entitlements should we have?,” Fox Business News. (Caveat: The comment on bribing the people with their own money speaks, if you will think about it, to the corruption of democratic representatives, as distinct from, or anyway, prior to, that of the people; it may also be attributable to Bryce, not Tocqueville.)

We’re reminded of the American wag who commented, “If Patrick Henry thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see taxation with representation.”

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She infers, because Tocqueville did praise the experience of Americans under common law as formative, that Tocqueville would be reticent about the Arab Spring of democracy movements in 2010-2011, on the ground that the Arab nations lack comparable experience.

Of course, it isn’t necessary to strain for interpretation. Tocqueville wrote volumes about the state of the Arab mind and Arab experience with democracy — principally but not solely based on his extensive travels through Algeria.

Indeed, he was critical of those who simply assumed the Arab peoples, and Moslem thought, as little experience with democracy — not so, said Tocqueville. This experience, indeed, was part of his basis for concluding that France would be wise to base its policy throughout this part of the world on recognizing that the Arab world is not necessarily unfamiliar with democratic ideals, norms, and practice.

Another tack indeed…

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It falls the day after “tax day” in the country Tocqueville so admired — perhaps, no small irony, that.

Indeed, in the U.S. today, one can expect a major debate over taxation, as a newly Republican congress works with Democratic President Obama to restructure, reform, and revive the country’s tax code.

(But of course, there is always a tax debate in America — usually, more than one.)

For more about Tocqueville’s life, see the André Jardin biography — simply, the best — and our Alexis de Tocqueville timeline.

“There is a great democratic revolution going on among us; everybody sees it, but by no means everyone judges it the same way. Some see it as a new theory, and, supposing it to be an accident, hope they can check it; others find it irresistible, because it represents the most ancient, permanent tendency know to man.”

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… goes to the Islamic forces for democracy

From the lawyers’ guild of Pakistan to Indonesia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and the West; from Benazir Bhutto to Muhammed al-Baradei — they have fought for democratic ideals, and exposed as a myth the notion that their great peoples are not ‘ready’ for democracy.

Click for: Tocqueville Statesmanship winners, 1987-present.

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Tocqueville had asked for the likely outcome of a public policy dispute in Britain concerning the handling of certain French claims.

The minister answered with a standard foreign-office reply summarizing the speeches of the British Prime Minister, the advice given him by Britain’s Foreign Office, and so on.

“No, I have not made myself clear,” Tocqueville messaged, in our weak French translation. “I need to know, not what the leaders of the ministries and even of the parties think — certainly, not that alone — but what the popular opinion is among the workers, businessmen, labor unions… In the long run, this sentiment will become policy.”

So was born the notion of populist, or a popular-advised, foreign policy. In fact, it was not so much born of Tocqueville. Frenchman from Charlemagne to Napoleon had, wisely, focused much of their strategic thinking not on the mere opinions of elites, but on the deeper, more permanent, and ultimately, sovereign will of the people. But Tocqueville gave this notion a clarity of expression, an articulation, that makes his mere articulation seminal.

It’s a thought worth remembering as the U.S. deals with the European Union, the former Soviet Union, and most especially, with the aging despotisms of China and the Middle East.

A foreign policy built only upon the transitory calculations of foreign tyrants is a foreign policy built on sand… Today, the Shah; tomorrow, the Ayatollah.

A strategy built on fundamental principals and the wisdom of foreign peoples is not only more idealistic. It is more realistic. The ultimate in realpolitique, which is to say, ideopolitique.

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Riche et complexe à plusieurs égards, on peut saisir l’essentiel de la pensée de Tocqueville en la reconstruisant autour d’une grande idée maîtresse et de deux idées secondaires qui lui permettent de tracer un constat fort juste de la vie politique au sein des démocraties occidentales.

Toute l’œuvre de Tocqueville a pour fonction principale de réfléchir à la manière dont on doit s’y prendre pour préserver la démocratie en conciliant les forces exogènes et endogènes de la société civile. De fait, marqué par les ruptures créées par la Révolution française au sein de sa société, il cherche à en comprendre les origines par l’étude d’une société ayant vécu une telle révolution tout en évitant ses ruptures. À ce titre, son analyse emprunte tout autant à l’observation qu’à la réflexion pure

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We’re looking for information about excellence in teaching regarding Alexis de Tocqueville as well.

We’ll even consider an occasional comment criticizing your elders if they garble, err, or downright mis-state or mis-quote Tocqueville. Our emphasis lies on rewarding the positive, but there is some merit in chastising the negative as well.

Send us an email at info@alexisdetocqueville.com, or join our Tocqueville Fan Group at Yahoo below and post your report there.

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Here, National Public Radio’s Eric Weiner comments on “Alexis de Tocqueville’s persistent political clout,” on the eve of our Tocqueville Bicentennial in Tocqueville, France.

BRAND: De Tocqueville’s classic work “Democracy in America” was published in 1835. It is still widely considered the best description of American political life ever. De Tocqueville was born 200 years ago today. NPR’s Eric Weiner has this birthday greeting.

ERIC WEINER reporting:

Dear Alexis, 200 years old, I can hardly believe it. It seems like just yesterday you were traipsing through a young United States, from upstate New York to Louisiana, observing us, knowing us better than we know ourselves. You’ll be happy to hear that your books are as popular as ever. You’re on every politician’s bookshelf, right next to Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” I don’t know if they’ve actually read you, Alexis–940 pages is a bit daunting–but they sure love to quote you, and from both ends of the political spectrum. Ronald Reagan invoked your name often, and so did Bill Clinton. Here he is delivering his 1995 State of the Union…

(Continued, here…. Or, click here to listen to the NPR report.)

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“In the democratic family the father exercises hardly any power other than that which one is pleased to accord to tenderness and to the experience of an old man. His orders would perhaps be neglected; but his counsels are ordinarily full of power.”

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It should be pointed out that in addition to being English and Protestant, Marie Mottley was older than him and was far from being well-off. None of these characteristics made her the ideal aristocratic spouse that Alexis’s family and friends desired for him. He nevertheless attempted to convince them by assuring them that Marie possessed everything to make him happy and, resolute in his choice, he married her on October 26, 1835 at the Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin church in Paris, after which she converted to Catholicism.

Although Louis de Kergorlay et Gustave de Beaumont finally agreed to serve as witnesses, Alexis’s mother did not attend the ceremony, and it is not clear whether it was her poor health or her disapproval of the marriage that kept her away. We do know for certain, however, that relations between Marie and her husband’s family – who particularly resented her difficult character and fiery temper – remained fairly strained.

For his part, Alexis de Tocqueville never appeared to have regretted the marriage, and he was the first to acknowledge that differences in culture and station, which might have kept them apart, were never able to affect their relationship. Even if their life together was not without difficulties, Marie Mottley forever remained Alexis’s soul mate and his greatest support.

(For more information, visit the Tocqueville culture pages, here.)

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Talks by Richard Reeves, Charles de Gaulle III, Prof. Alex Kalina, Comte de Beaumonte, and others will accompany a discussion of Tocqueville’s classic works, with a special focus on his correspondence from America.

For more information, contact info@alexisdetocqueville.com.

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July 29 – Tocqueville is born in Paris and spends most of his younger years in Verneuil, where his father, Herve, is mayor.

“Tocqueville’s family had close ties to the old Norman nobility were traceable as far back as the twelfth century. Tocqueville considered himself the descendant of a warrior who fought valiantly alongside William the Conqueror in the Battle of Hastings, although [historians have been unable to prove this, to our knowledge.]” (Enotes.com)

Tocqueville’s parents were both imprisoned during the French Revolution, but eventually released. (Robespierre had scheduled their execution, but was overthrown before it was carried out.) His maternal great-grandfather, Guillaume-Chrtien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, having defended many of the philosophes before the royal court prior to 1789, had the courage to defend Louis XIV before the Court of Revolutionary Justice. (In this, he resembled, perhaps, the American patriot and President John Adams, who defended the British soldiers found guilty in the Boston Massacre.) Malesherbes lost the case, and was himself executed.

1814-1828

Tocqueville’s father serves as prefect throughout France – Angers, Beauvais, Dijon, Metz, Amiens and Versailles. In 1817, Tocqueville moves from Metz to Paris with his mother, Louise.

1820-24

Alexis returns to Metz at his father’s request to attend secondary school and the college royal, where he studies rhetoric and philosophy.

1825-27

Tocqueville tudies law in Paris while living with his mother in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

1826

Tocqueville travels to Italy with his brother Edouard and visits Rome, Naples and Sicily; writes Voyage en Sicile.

1827

Alexis is appointed juge auditeur at the court of law in Versailles.

1828

Takes an apartment in rue d’Anjou with Gustave de Beaumont, the deputy public prosecutor at the court of Versailles.

In Versailles, Tocqueville meets Mary Mottley of England, who later becomes his wife. More about Tocqueville’s wife, Mary Mottley, here.

1829-1830

Reads and discusses history with Beaumont; both of them are taking Francois-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot’s course in the history of civilization in France.

1830

Charles X, the last Bourbon king, is overthrown and replaced by Louis-Phillippe, a constitutional monarch, who obliges all civil servants to swear an oath of loyalty. Tocqueville reluctantly takes the oath August 16 and again in October when he is promoted to juge suppleant (substitute judge).

August – Tocqueville and Beaumont begin discussing a trip to the United States. Tocqueville was unhappy with the loyalty oath, and both friends agreed that the reign of Charles might be a propitious time to be away from France for a time.

October – Beaumont writes a report to the minister of the interior on the reform of the French penal system. This grant application later yields one of the most famous, and important, trips in history — Tocqueville’s visit (and Beaumont’s) to America.

1831

February 6 – Tocqueville and Beaumont are given an 18-month leave to study the penal system in the United States.

April 2 – They embark for America from Le Havre, France.

May 9 – Tocqueville and Beaumont arrive at Newport, Rhode Island, continuing on to New York, disembarking on Courtlandt street, on the Southern tip of Manhattan near Wall Street; thereafter they travel as far west as Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, north to Quebec and south to New Orleans.

1832

February 20 – Tocqueville and Beaumont sail for France, arriving home in late March. Beaumont begins writing Du systeme penitentiaire with Tocqueville supplying facts and ideas. Although both men later wrote best-selling books based on their journey, the report on the penal system alone had a significant influence throughout Europe and the United States.

May 17 – Tocqueville resigns his position as juge suppleant when he learns of Beaumont’s dismissal (May 16) as deputy public prosecutor.

1833

January – Tocqueville and Beaumont publish Du systeme penitentiaire aux Etats-Unis et de son application en France, winning the French Academy’s Montyon Prize.

August – Tocqueville visits England and meets Nassau William Senior.

September – Tocqueville begins writing Democracy in America at his parents’ home in Paris, 49 rue de Verneuil.

1834

August 14 – Tocqueville finishes the first part of Democracy in America.

December 24 – a prepublication article by Leon Faucher appears in Le Courier Francais.

1835

January – Gosselin publishes an edition of fewer than 500 copies of Democracy in America.

March 16 – Tocqueville meets Henry Reeve, who becomes a lifelong friend and the official translator of his work into English, in Paris.

March 31 – Chateaubriand introduces Tocqueville to the select salon of Mme Recamier.

April -August – Tocqueville and Beaumont visit England and Ireland, studying industrial towns such as Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

June – The book’s success leads to a second edition (the eighth edition, in 1840, will include the second and final part).

October – John Stuart Mill’s highly complimentary review of Democracy in America appears in the London Review.

October 26 – Tocqueville and Mary Mottley are wed at the Church of Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, Paris, with his cousin Louis de Kergorlay and Beaumont as witnesses.

1836

Tocqueville’s mother, Louise, dies. When her property is divided, Tocqueville receives the chateau and lands of Tocqueville and the title of Comte, which he seldom uses.

Tocqueville receives the Montyon prize from the French Academy for Democracy in America.

July – Beaumont marries Clementine de Lafayette, granddaughter of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834)

1839

March – Tocqueville is elected deputy from Valognes, sitting on the left of center, and is considered an expert on prisons and slavery.

July 23 – As rapporteur for a committee on slavery, Tocqueville files a report advocating the immediate emancipation of all slaves in French possessions, which is published as a pamphlet by the Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

November – Completes the manuscript of the second part of Democracy in America.

1840

April 20 – Democracy in America, part II, is published simultaneously in Paris and in London, in a translation by Henry Reeve.

October – John Stuart Mill writes a perceptive review of Tocqueville’s work in the Edinburgh Review

1841

May-June – Tocqueville goes to Algeria with his brother Hippolyte and Beaumont, visiting Algiers, Mostaganem, Philippeville (now Skikda) and other cities and villages.

October – Tocqueville writes Travail sur l’Algerie.

December 23 – Tocqueville is elected to the French Academy.

1842

Tocqueville actively engages in debates in the Chamber of Deputies on issues such as the slave trade, Algerian colonization and reforms and the question of succession after Louis-Phillipe’s death, in which he favors an elective regency.

1844

June 29 – Tocqueville and a group of partners purchase the newspaper Le Commerce.

August – Le Commerce fails; it is sold in November.

1847

Tocqueville delivers a report to parliament on the new federal democracy forming in Switzerland.

1848

January 27 – Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, Tocqueville prophesies the coming revolution and attacks the too-narrow base of the French political system.

February 24 – Louis-Philippe abdicates and the Second Republic is declared dead.

April 24 – Tocqueville is elected to the Constituent Assembly.

May 17 – Tocqueville is elected to a committee charged with drawing up a new constitution.

December 10 – Louis-Napoleon is elected president and forms a new cabinet led by Odilon Barrot.

1849

May 7 – Tocqueville goes to Germany to observe the revolution there firsthand.

May 13 – Tocqueville is elected to the new legislative Assembly by a large margin. Less than a month later, Louis-Napoleon appoints him minister of foreign affairs.

October 31 – Louis-Napoleon replaces Tocqueville and other ministers after the Barrot ministry topples.

1850

March – Tocqueville suffers his first pulmonary attack and is seriously ill with tuberculosis.

July – At the Chateau de Tocqueville, he begins writing his Souvenirs, reflections on the February Revolution and on his ministry. He is reelected president of the departmental council of la Manche.

November 1 – April 14 – With Mme de Tocqueville, he goes to Sorrento, Italy to convalesce.

1851

July – Tocqueville finishes Souvenirs.

December 2 – Louis-Napoleon seizes control of government in a coup d’etat.

December 3 – Tocqueville, along with about 50 other representatives, is imprisoned overnight at Vincennes for his opposition to the coup.

December 11 – Tocqueville secretly conveys and anonymously publishes an article in the London Times condemning the coup.

1852

July – Once more at the Chateau de Tocqueville, Tocqueville resigns from the departmental council of la Manche when the new regime requires an oath of allegiance.

1853

June – Tocqueville settles for a year in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, in Touraine, where he tries to regain his health and begins research on his work on the Ancien Regime.

1854

June – September – With Mme de Tocqueville, he visits Germany to study the vestiges of feudalism and the fading revolution there.

November 6 – He settles in Compiegne, where his father lives.

1855

July – Tocqueville moves to the Chateau de Tocqueville in Normandy.

1856

January – Tocqueville finishes revising his study on the Ancien Regime. The manuscript is read by his father, Herve, his brothers Edouard and Hippolyte, Beaumont and others.

February 16 – In Paris, Tocqueville negotiates with Michael Levy for the publication of L’Ancien Regime et la Revolution.

June 9 – His father, Herve, dies.

June 16 – L’Ancien Regime is published simultaneously in France and England (translated by Henry Reeve) and is a great success. Tocqueville mediates between the radical interpretation of Paine, and the conservative interpretation of Burke, and adds a wealth of research to our modern understanding of the revolution. For example, he examined and reports on the correspondence between the cities and townships of France, and their complaints about taxation and the judicial system to the etats general and the crown in the years prior to the revolution.

1857

June 19 – Tocqueville goes to the British Museum in London to do research on the revolution.

October – Begins writing the first book of his sequel to L’Ancien Regime.

1858

April – Goes to Paris to study papers of municipal authorities, at the archives.

1858

May – He returns, ill with tuberculosis, to the Chateau de Tocqueville.

October 28 – At the advice of physicians, he goes to Cannes and soon hires a reader for intellectual stimulus.

December – His brother, Hippolyte, comes to Cannes for three months.

1859

April 6 – Beaumont arrives at Tocqueville’s bedside.

April 9 – Tocqueville’s cousin, Louis de Kergolay, arrives in Cannes.

April 16 – Tocqueville dies. A religious ceremony is held in Cannes, after which his body is moved to Paris and placed in the crypt of the Eglise de la Madeleine and then transported to the village of Tocqueville. He is buried in the cemetery there May 10.

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joindre à notre groupe de Tocqueville aujourd’hui à Yahoo pour les mises à jour périodiques.

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Now comes the world of YouTube, on which Yale has posted an excellent introductory lecture. Covering Tocqueville’s thought in 40 minutes inevitably leads to some acts of synthesis we might disagree with. But now you can get an introduction to his thought from Yale, even if you’re not lucky enough to be in New Haven, which, come to think of it, may make it an unmixed blessing after all.

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