Alexis de Tocqueville - the tyranny of the majority

Prof. William R. Cook describes Tocquevilles experiences as described in Democracy in America. "The omnipotence of the majority appears to me such a great peril for the American republic's that the dangerous means used to limit it seem to me even a good"

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• tocqueville
• democracy
• america
• majority
• minority
• libertarian
• ron
• paul

[KrugmanTheKing]

@MichaelYMiles

I got better:

"Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter."

That's published in 1838 by a liberal thinker.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@MichaelYMiles

I don't know how you call that, but that's from a prominent advocate of freedom and is also a classical liberal. The person who wrote this is Tocqueville and you do not have to work hard to find these lines: they're all in the same page!

And I do not know what you think of these lines, but they presented a concern much akin to that found in Marx... that wage labor is slavery, that it's not to choose between justice and freedom, but to either have them both or loose them both.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@MichaelYMiles

"The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and their differences increase every day. They are connected only like the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave; the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to command. What is this but aristocracy?"

[KrugmanTheKing]

@MichaelYMiles

"When a workman has spent a considerable portion of his existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits, which it can never shake off; in a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the calling that he has chosen."

"[...] [A]t the very time at which the science of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the class of masters."

[KrugmanTheKing]

@MichaelYMiles

"I have shown how democracy favors the growth of manufactures and increases without limit the numbers of the manufacturing classes; we shall now see by what side-road manufacturers may possibly, in their turn, bring men back to aristocracy."

"He every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him that in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded."

Let's just pursue for the sake of our education.

[MichaelYMiles]

Classical liberalism is not the same as libertarianism- classical liberalism is more concerned with negative freedom and a freedom from governments than neo-liberalism!!

[RKAddict101]

@LeglessPabloSmithe Classic liberalism is also the same thing as libertarianism.

[JeresyMike18]

@jakster2 I (old screen name LeglessPabloSmithe) never said Dr. Cook subscribes to it. I said what he was speaking about. On a side note, that is pretty awesome you had Cook as an instructor. From watching these videos he is a great teacher.

[robertquentincobb]

Great discussion.. Our Senate, along with adopting to pledge and read the constitution weekly or monthly, should read the principles of Alexis de Tocqueville on the Senate floor as well. I think it would be a great start for America to get back on track.

[TheCIAsucks]

Proporational representation and election reform are necessary to free us from the tyranny of the corporate and banker elites who are a minority and who control the majority of wealth and political power in this nation. We need equal political power and more demcracy, even direct democracy on a vaste number of issues. One person, one vote. Both parties are turning this nation into a police state.