De Tocquevilles "democracy In America"

Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

delves deep into how the American States and the federal government would grow

politically and socially under the umbrella of democracy. He sees the United

States as a unique entity because of how and why it started as well as its

geographical location.

De Tocqueville explains that the foundations of the

democratic process in America are completely different from anywhere else on

the globe. The land was virginal and the colonies had almost complete sovereignty

from England from the very beginning because they were separated by an ocean

and financial troubles. The people who came to America were the oppressed

and unhappy in England and all were trying to find a place where they could

start anew and create a political structure that would facilitate an individual

freedom unlike anything that they had previously experienced in Europe. De

Tocqueville believed that the nature of democracy in the New World rested within

the fact that all of the emigrants were basically from the same social strata,

resulting in the first new country where there was no preliminary basis for

an aristocracy. "Land is the basis of an aristocracy…and… [in America] when

the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich

a proprietor and a farmer at the same t

ime(41)." He saw that even the soil

of America was opposed to the structure of an aristocracy.

There

were also outside influences lending unvoiced support for the creation of this

new democracy. Being an ocean apart from its mother country, who at this time

did not have the financial reserves to oversee its colonies, let the Americans

govern themselves. If they had not had this sovereignty at the beginning America

might have become something completely different than it is today, but that

was not the case, so these emigrants now had a fertile place to plant their

ideas of a country founded upon the many ideas of the Enlightenment. Another

large influence was the lack of neighbors. America had no ...

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...man

responsible for herself.

De Tocqueville has left no aspect of American society

out of his publication. He rips the American body open and examines all the

things that are inside right down to the bare bones. It is a little scary

to read of ones’ own nation and its culture. To realize that one’s own life

is not how he made it, but of how his ancestors have created society. Whether

it be as to how Americans view their politics, or their social afflictions,

de Tocqueville voices his opinions as to what is commendable, are conversely,

what is wrong with every aspect of America. He sees America through the eyes

of intelligent outsider who has no reason to make America sound anything

other

than it is. He has done a very thorough job, and his vision of nineteenth

century America will surely help lead America into the twenty-first century

with a better definition of itself.