Monday, November 20, 2023

The irresponsible Donald Trump as Tocqueville's democratic despot

 
Headline:  New York Times, 10/15/2023
“Our contemporaries,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1840, in the second volume of “Democracy in America,” “are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free.” The result was a peculiarly American compromise, an abiding tension between state power and popular sovereignty. 
Tocqueville had faith that Americans could keep the two in balance. At the same time, he warned against a slide into “democratic despotism.” The people, he wrote, might someday vote to cede their power and place the government “in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons.” Having witnessed the rise of American democracy, Tocqueville also, it seems, foretold its decline.  [emphasis added]

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