Alexis de Tocqueville was right - despotism in America

[emazur]

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Alexis_de_Tocqueville_was_right_Despotism_in_Ameri ca_vid#
Tocqueville predicted that through a greater increase in the centralization of government and the erosion of free speech, a slow motion Coup d'état would transform America into a despotic nation where government decides what happiness is, thus creating a drugged nation where no one has to think b/c big brother will take care of you
YouTube - Alexis de Tocqueville - Despotism in America (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doXDlvBXRLA)

[RSLudlum]

Tocqueville also believed that historians in 'democratic' times tended to lean towards teaching the readers to 'obey'



Democracy in America, Vol. II, Book I, Chapter XX: "Characteristics Of Historians In Democratic Ages"

Historians who live in democratic ages, then, not only deny that the few have any power of acting upon the destiny of a people, but they deprive the people themselves of the power of modifying their own condition, and they subject them either to an inflexible Providence, or to some blind necessity. According to them, each nation is indissolubly bound by its position, its origin, its precedents, and its character, to a certain lot which no efforts can ever change. They involve generation in generation, and thus, going back from age to age, and from necessity to necessity, up to the origin of the world, they forge a close and enormous chain, which girds and binds the human race. To their minds it is not enough to show what events have occurred: they would fain show that events could not have occurred otherwise. They take a nation arrived at a certain stage of its history, and they affirm that it could not but follow the track which brought it thither. It is easier to make such an assertion than to show by what means the nation might have adopted a better course.

In reading the historians of aristocratic ages, and especially those of antiquity, it would seem that, to be master of his lot, and to govern his fellow-creatures, man requires only to be master of himself. In perusing the historical volumes which our age has produced, it would seem that man is utterly powerless over himself and over all around him. The historians of antiquity taught how to command: those of our time teach only how to obey; in their writings the author often appears great, but humanity is always diminutive. If this doctrine of necessity, which is so attractive to those who write history in democratic ages, passes from authors to their readers, till it infects the whole mass of the community and gets possession of the public mind, it will soon paralyze the activity of modern society, and reduce Christians to the level of the Turks. I would moreover observe, that such principles are peculiarly dangerous at the period at which we are arrived. Our contemporaries are but too prone to doubt of the human free-will, because each of them feels himself confined on every side by his own weakness; but they are still willing to acknowledge the strength and independence of men united in society. Let not this principle be lost sight of; for the great object in our time is to raise the faculties of men, not to complete their prostration.

[diggronpaul]

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Alexis_de_Tocqueville_was_right_Despotism_in_Ameri ca_vid#
Tocqueville predicted that through a greater increase in the centralization of government and the erosion of free speech, a slow motion Coup d'état would transform America into a despotic nation where government decides what happiness is, thus creating a drugged nation where no one has to think b/c big brother will take care of you
It wasn't a prediction, he was devising the foundations of a plan for his employers who sent him to the USA to study us.