July 29 – Happy Birthday, Alexis de Tocqueville

nPostednon July 29, 2014

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Bornnin Paris on this date in 1805, Alexis de Tocqueville was a politicalnthinker, historian, and writer. He did the important work ofntraveling around a country that was not his own, studying livingnstandards and social conditions, and then carefully analyzing andnwriting about his findings. The country he studied was the relativelynnew nation called the United States of America.

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nTocqueville’sntwo-volume work on the U.S. is called Democracy in America;nthe book was published in 1835 and 1840. This glimpse of pre-CivilnWar America is invaluable to historians today, and many peoplencontinue to read and quote Tocqueville.

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nTheynalso MISquote Tocqueville. Here is one misquote: “The AmericannRepublic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it cannbribe the public with the public’s money.”

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nHmm…IsnCongress spending “public money” (money raised from the publicnthrough taxes) on public projects like parks, roads, bridges,neducation, etc., etc. – could it ever properly be called a “bribe”?

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nAnbribe is getting someone to act in one’s favor by illegally orndishonestly giving him or her money or “some other inducement.” n

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nInguess a Congressional Representative somehow laying his hands onnpublic money and slipping it to individual citizens to make them votenfor him might qualify as a bribe – and is, I’m sure, against thenlaw. But nobody thinks that is going on. Nobody uses that quote tonmean that, and nobody reads that quote and thinks that.

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nNo,nI think that the quote is used to make it seem as if CongressionalnRepresentatives advocating projects in their own district isninherently wrong. But projects to “provide common defense” andn“promote general welfare” are actually what government is for,nand what else would fund them other than public monies?

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nAtnany rate, this misquote has been traced back to a similar sentimentnwritten by Elmer T. Peterson but attributed to Alexander FrasernTytler (without any citation of Peterson’s source).

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nIfnyou want to read an actual quote from Tocqueville, here is one:

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nAMONGnthe novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in thenUnited States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the generalnequality of condition among the people. I readily discovered thenprodigious influence that this primary fact exercises on the wholencourse of society; it gives a peculiar direction to public opinionnand a peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to thengoverning authorities and peculiar habits to the governed.

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nInget from that quote that Tocqueville was surprised at how littleneconomic “class” seemed to matter in early American politics.

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