Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America

by Mark R. Levin

  Tocqueville pointed out that in democracies there is a tendency for some who fall on hard times to submit voluntarily to government authority for their sustenance, seeing it as the only way out. However, as their reliance on government becomes more complete, Tocqueville argued, they do so proudly for they are no less considered citizens than those who do not submit to government authority. “As in periods of equality no man is compelled to lend his assistance to his fellow men, and none has any right to expect much support from them, everyone is at once independent and powerless. These two conditions, which must never be either separately considered or confounded together, inspire the citizen of a democratic country with very contrary propensities. His independence fills him with self-reliance and pride among his equals; his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of some outward assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them, because they are all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament he naturally turns his eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of universal depression. Of that power his wants and especially his desires continually remind him, until he ultimately views it as the sole and necessary support of his own weakness. This may more completely explain what frequently takes place in democratic countries, where the very men who are so impatient of superiors patiently submit to a master, exhibiting at once their pride and their servility” (II, 294–95).

  Even more, Tocqueville explained in greater detail that the tyranny that most endangers free societies is a soft tyranny. It is the gradual imposition of and acquiescence to radical egalitarianism, which is disguised as democratic and administrative utilitarianism. It is the belief in the infinite ability and capacity of elected officials to perfect life and in a vast, neutral administrative state to ensure its proper regulation. Tocqueville wrote, “Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger, but these crises will be rare and brief. When I consider the petty passions of our contemporaries, the mildness of their manners, the extent of their education, and purity of their religion, the gentleness of their morality, their regular and industrious habits, and the restraint which they almost all observe in their vices no less than in their virtues, I have no fear that they will meet tyrants in their rulers, but rather with their guardians” (II, 317–18).

  He wrote further, “I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it” (II, 318). Actually, it may be different or novel in the particulars of its evolution and form, but the species is generally known. It is utopianism.

  Tocqueville described a nation in which the civil society collapses. He wrote, “I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country” (II, 318).

  With the people denuded of spirit and exceptionality, dependent on the government for their welfare, the democracy gradually transitions into a powerful administrative state. “Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits” (II, 318–19).

  Tocqueville went on to portray the amorphousness and insatiableness of the administrative state, as it corrals, prods, and directs the individual at will in nearly all aspects of life, where existence becomes bleak and dark. “After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd” (II, 319).

  Tocqueville then made the profound observation that this dreary existence is accepted by the people, for they go through the motions of electing their guardians, deluding themselves that they and their fellow citizens remain free for they participate in self-government. However, as the administrative state grows, the vote is less effective and the individual is increasingly disenfranchised. “I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people” (II, 319). Elaborating on this point, he wrote, “Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.…” (II, 319)

  In the end, Tocqueville explained, what is left is a hollowed-out democracy consumed by administrative absolutism, against which there is little resistance. “Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own
will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity” (II, 319–20).

  The irony is not lost on Tocqueville. “The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of their rule, and his masters, more than kings and less than men.… It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people” (II, 321).

  In America, however, Tocqueville believed he found a different kind of democracy. Although still fraught with challenges and dangers, as Tocqueville warned repeatedly, and requiring the watchful and active resolve of the people, at the core of American society Tocqueville saw a conviction in the sovereignty of the individual and the people generally, unique in world history. Tocqueville observed that of all societies likely to effectively resist the soft tyranny that overtakes democracies, America would be that society. He believed that the American people would not be easily tempted by radical egalitarianism, dispirited, and willingly ruled over by a centralized governing authority, whether the tyranny of a single despot or an elected assembly and its administrative state, even in the unlikely event such an effort should be attempted. The history, traditions, experience, and mores of the American people, and their love of freedom, independence, pride, and self-sufficiency—as well as the breadth and diversity of American society, with its multitude of local governing bodies—would seem to make such an undertaking impracticable if not impossible. Tocqueville noted that the American constitution itself is a document of forethought and purpose, imposing detailed and defined limits and obstacles on the federal government, and beyond them, walling society from it.

  Still, Tocqueville knew that the governing despotism of which he wrote, and which can accurately and broadly be characterized as utopianism, is, for free men, living in civil societies, a perpetual and existential threat—even in America. In the end, he wondered if any democracy could withstand it. He concluded that ultimately it is up to the people. They will decide whether they shall be free or not. “I am full of apprehensions and hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off, mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will it.… The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness” (II, 334).

  PART III

  ON UTOPIANISM AND AMERICANISM

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  POST-CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA

  WHEN JOHN LOCKE WROTE about the nature of man in the state of nature, he faced skepticism from some contemporaries. But his description was not theoretical. Indeed, not only was his influence on the American founding significant, but he rightly pointed to America as evidence for his observations and conclusions that individual self-interest and self-preservation, the right to life and liberty, the use of labor to improve and possess property, and equality in justice formed the natural state of human existence. And the quality of this existence promotes industriousness, sociability, civility, economic prosperity, and charity among men. “Everyone as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life or what tends the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (Second Treatise, 2, 6). “It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were, there any men in such a state of Nature? … The promises and bargains for truck [trade], etc.… in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a state of Nature in reference to one another for truth, and keeping the faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of society” (2, 14).

  Concisely put, this is the heritage and lineage of the American people, which dates hundreds of years before the American Revolution and transcends all else. From the earliest settlers escaping persecution or seeking opportunities in the New World, to the original colonies asserting self-rule through popular sovereignty and numerous local governing bodies; from the demand for independence, the assertion of inalienable individual rights, and the Revolutionary War, to the founding of the constitutional republic to secure individual liberty and the civil society, the American people engaged in the most widely considered and far-reaching exploration of humanity—its meaning, cultivation, and application—in world history. Even half a century after the adoption of the Constitution, the character and psychology of the American people were apparent to Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote, “They have been allowed by their circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and especially by their morals to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the people” (Democracy in America, I, 54).

  When the fifty-five delegates met in Philadelphia in 1787 at what became known as the Constitutional Convention, their purpose was not to transform American society but to preserve and protect it. In Federalist 51, James Madison later explained the decisive task this way: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Charles de Montesquieu’s advice guided the Framers. He wrote that laws “should relate to the degree of liberty that the constitution can sustain, to the religion of the inhabitants, their inclinations, their wealth, their number, their commerce, their mores, and their manners.…” (Spirit of the Laws, 1, 1, 3)

  The debates between the Federalist and Anti-Federalist camps did not involve fundamental disagreements about the nature of man and inalienable rights, about which there was near-universal consent and for which a revolution had been fought and won, but how best to arrange a government, after the revolution, to ensure the perpetuation of American society. The delegates at the constitutional and state conventions feared above all else the concentration of too much power in the new federal government. In fact, at the Constitutional Convention, the delegates specifically considered and rejected a proposal by Delaware’s Gunning Bedford for a broad grant of power to Congress to pass laws of general interest, or where states might be said to be incompetent, or where state action might be said to disrupt the harmony of the nation. Although the delegates sought to establish a federal government that would overcome the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, Bedford went much too far. Virginia’s Edmund Randolph objected that under Bedford’s scheme, state constitutions and laws would be of no consequence and Congress could intervene at will in state affairs.1 Bedford’
s proposal went nowhere.

  Not only was there no support for an all-powerful central government, but the delegates at the Constitutional Convention spent most of the summer trying to figure out how to ensure that no office or officeholder in the new federal government would become too powerful. As is well-known, they separated powers between and among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches and enumerated the powers within each branch in considerable detail.

  The delegates also opposed majoritarianism in its purest forms for it encouraged factionalism and threatened individual sovereignty, should a group or majority succeed in controlling the government and imposing their will on society. Consequently, the only direct elections would occur in selecting members of the House of Representatives; senators would be chosen by the states; although the people would vote for president, the president would ultimately be elected by members of an electoral college; and judicial candidates would be nominated by the president for confirmation or rejection by the Senate.