The first volume was published forty-six years after the French Revolution. “It prevents candidates from wining an election by focusing only on high-population urban centers (the big cities), ignoring smaller states and the more rural areas of the country — the places that progressives and media elites consider flyover country.”, Most people who watch the election returns know that a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes to win. Work through each of the paragraphs, discussing how each of the developments Tocqueville mentions favors equality and therefore democracy. Now, according to Tocqueville, these “intermediary” institutions that exist in aristocracies serve as a “dike” against the force of the majority. If a majority is not entitled to do so, then it is thereby deprived of its rights; but if a majority is entitled to do so, then it can deprive the minority of its rights. We have an Electoral College. After having a student read a paragraph, have the class discuss it, asking how the development or event fostered or encouraged equality. It was first and foremost for such people that Tocqueville wrote the book. The Founders were determined to forestall the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.”. When the class has worked through these three pages, the teacher may want to look at the list and ask which one of the developments the students think was most important for promoting equality. Suppose that the final result is "8 votes for X and 5 votes for Y", so 8, as a majority, purple wins. some prefer the homogeneous color style, and all other voters have no style preference; To examine in more detail Tocqueville’s description of equality in specifically American conditions, read Part One, chapters 1-3. This passage highlights how important the human mind is for democracy, for it points out that the great intellectual and creative talents of humanity are distributed seemingly at random, without any thought for rank or power or class. The tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of the masses) is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions. The subsequent creation of the Confederate States of America catalyzed the American Civil War. Tocqueville lists four main developments, each of which established a new route to political power: the clergy, law and lawyers, money and trade, enlightenment or the taste for literature and the arts. This great book remains arguably one of the two most important books on America political life, the Federalist Papers being the other one.

But it’s important that the rest of us know. Being a republic, we also don’t pick our president through a direct, majority-take-all vote. But my point is that these are built into the very nature of the process itself. The core of the lesson is what Tocqueville says in this history in the next two and a half pages. Republican”. They should also define the following words: generative, clergy, Providence, enlightenment, feudal, haphazardly, arsenal (Link to Definitions Worksheet). Finally, ask students to reflect on the significance of the two images Tocqueville uses in this passage: the reference to the creation of the stars and to men floating backwards down a rapidly flowing river (both on p. 7). If you care about your rights, it is. But majorities aren't always perfectly logical. This practice provides a legislative bulwark against tyranny by a Senate majority. When Tocqueville visited America, Andrew Jackson was President.

The Founders were determined to forestall the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” So they constructed something more lasting: a republic. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Why might democratic tyranny be worse than other forms? Who would care what the people in Iowa think? Edwin J. Feulner is the founder and former president of The Heritage Foundation. What if a majority suddenly took the rights away from the minority, or even ordered them killed? Each state presumptively held the Sovereign power to block federal laws that infringed upon states' rights, autonomously. Voters have some arguments against "each room with its color", rationalizing the centralization: some say that common rooms need uniform decisions; And this belief is what motivated his deep interest in America, for his visit convinced him that America had achieved in a peaceful and natural way almost complete “equality of conditions.” By understanding America, he thought that we could not only understand what democracy means, but in a way even glimpse the world’s future. Such groups do exist in democracies, but they do not have an independent political position. The Internment of Japanese Americans. After an initial statement that the “very essence” of democracy is majority rule, he contrasts the means by which state constitutions artificially increase the power of the majority with the U.S. Constitution, which checks that power.

That great upheaval had destroyed the “ancient regime” — the political order comprised of divine right monarchs, hereditary aristocrats, and peasants — but France had still not found political stability. Centralization excess is the most usual case. [citation needed] They continue that direct democracy, such as statewide propositions on ballots, does not offer such protections. Does anyone think such an enactment would be warrantable? Volume One describes and analyzes American conditions and political institutions, while Volume Two examines the effect of American democracy on what we would call culture (literature, economics, the family, religion, etc.). For, by doing so the majority would deny the minority the rights necessary to the democratic process.

This is of course something he calls the “equality of conditions.” Tocqueville does not say much about this here; he doesn’t even define it or tell us what it is. Big deal, you say? Americans are so used to thinking that church and state should be separate, that we might wonder how it can be a good thing (i.e., how it can favor equality) for clergymen to have political power? As the website for the National Archives notes, “Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.”.

[9] In 1994, legal scholar Lani Guinier used the phrase as the title for a collection of law review articles.[10]. Property rights were perceived… Read More The first lesson introduces students to Tocqueville’s thesis about the omnipotence, i.e., the all power character of majority opinion in a democracy and his way of developing an argument through well-chosen historical examples. But why was Tocqueville so certain that democracy was inevitable and irresistible? “The American political system has long contained features designed to constrain the ability of majorities to impose their will — what John Adams, among other founders, called ‘the tyranny of the majority.’ But the current situation is unusual in that it has consistently empowered a minority to drive the nation’s agenda.” While historians have viewed Democracy as a rich source about the age of Andrew Jackson, Tocqueville was more of a political thinker than a historian. Since Democracy in America was published in 1835, Tocqueville’s history begins in approximately 1100 CE. Many still worry that the process can be used to harm gays and lesbians as well as ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. They are acting collectively to preserve the gym room for a local cyclists group. Have the students read pp. He visited the bustling Eastern cities, explored the wilderness on the northwestern frontier, and had several adventures on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Of course they do.

There is no “right” answer to this question, but the paragraph on p. 5 that begins “Once works of the intellect had become sources of force and wealth” is very important (“Tocqueville Reading B” in the reading packet). What is the moral authority of the majority in a democracy based upon? Calhoun's contemporary doctrine was presented as one of limitation within American democracy to prevent traditional tyranny, whether actual or imagined.[2]. He does not mean that the majority in a democracy always does act tyrannically, only that nothing can prevent it from so doing. In these conditions some perception of tyranny arrives, and the subsidiarity principle can be used to contest the central decision. And it is precisely these talents that, according to Tocqueville, reveal “the natural greatness of man.” Moreover, their products, especially literature, are “an arsenal open to all, from which the weak and the poor came each day to seek arms.” It seems to be Tocqueville’s view that the development of the human mind fosters and goes naturally together with equality and democracy. There are many surprising things in Tocqueville’s brief history and students should begin to get a sense for his view that every development and major event in European history, promoted equality, including a great many that had no intention of so doing. The annihilation of the American Indians. Suppose a deliberative assembly of a building This "localism" strategy was presented as a mechanism to circumvent Calhoun's perceived tyranny of the majority in the United States. For most of this passage, each paragraph elaborates a different thing that has contributed to the advancement of equality. Second, because of the Christian idea that all men are equal before God, anyone — serf, peasant, or lord — could become a clergyman. To put it bluntly, if you can get power through the church, you don’t need land. condominium with 13 voters, deciding, with majority rule, about "X or Y". Lacy K. Ford Jr., "Inventing the Concurrent Majority: Madison, Calhoun, and the Problem of Majoritarianism in American Political Thought". And let’s face it — that’s often not a great place to be. Of course democracy has limits. The notion that, in a democracy, the greatest concern is that the majority will tyrannise and exploit diverse smaller interests, has been criticised by Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action, who argues instead that narrow and well organised minorities are more likely to assert their interests over those of the majority.

Suppose that each floor has some kind of local governance, so in some aspects the condominium is a "federation of floors". The "no tyranny" and "tyranny" situations can be characterized in any simple democratic decision-making context, as a deliberative assembly. Have them prepare a class presentation that explains their analysis of Tocqueville’s argument. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville is universally regarded as one of the most influential books ever written about America.