youtube.com/watch?v=ZtiJQZTqu9M
Tocqueville, “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 sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but 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.
“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?
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work 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 it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
Houellebecq adds, “This was published in 1840 in the second part of Tocqueville's masterpiece 'On Democracy in America'. It's dizzying. As for the ideas, this passage contains almost all of my written work. I just had to add one thing, and that is that the person who still has friends and family in Tocqueville no longer has them with me. The disconnection process is complete.”
I've quoted him twice:
linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2018/09/bla…
Tocqueville wrote in 1835, “Among the ancients, the slave belonged to the same race as his master, and often he was superior to him in education and enlightenment. Freedom alone separated them; freedom once granted, they easily intermingled. The ancients therefore had a very simple means of delivering themselves from slavery and its consequences; this means was emancipation, and when they employed it in a general manner, they succeeded.”When slaves and masters are biologically identical, full equality between them is possible, post-slavery, but if they are physically distinct, what you’ll have is exactly what the United States must endure, for as long as it exists.
linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2022/08/nam…
This extreme touchiness and constant demand for universal praise has such deep roots, it may be the defining American trait. After visiting the infant country in 1831, Tocqueville observed:"Americans, in their relations with foreigners, appear impatient at the least censure and insatiable for praise. The slimmest eulogy is agreeable to them and the greatest is rarely enough to satisfy them; they pester you at every moment to get you to praise them; and if you resist their entreaties, they praise themselves […] Their vanity is not only greedy, it is restive and envious. It grants nothing while demanding constantly. It is entreating and quarrelsome at the same time […] One cannot imagine a more disagreeable and talkative patriotism. It fatigues even whose who honor it."
In a French article, "Linh Dinh et l’autodestruction européenne par haine de soi," Tocqueville is also cited:
eurolibertes.com/tribune/linh-dinh-laut…
“Mais Linh Dinh ajoute que la culpabilisation européenne est devenue folle et qu’elle vire maintenant à une auto-extermination qui ira à son terme, selon moi, pour trois raisons : l’héritage de soumission judéo-chrétien, le despotisme démocratique de Tocqueville et la volonté US d’exterminer l’Europe par la guerre nucléaire contre la Russie.”
We should all spend more time on Tocqueville.
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