Question re: Alexis de Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America'

[Deborah K]

The French visitor came to the US in 1831. Then he went home and wrote one of the best books ever on American culture and a Constitutional system.

What I want to know is, why if we were founded as a republic did he call our country a democracy?

[Krugerrand]

I suspect that it was not written as an objective analysis but rather with the intention of influencing his intended audience.

[ScoutsHonor]

Interesting question.

[apropos]

To understand the answer to this question is to understand the modern age.

On the one hand, Tocqueville was aware of the unfolding shift in power...in his time, the aristocracies were all dying out and giving way to representative government and rule grounded in the masses. Since Machiavelli, rulers and thinkers had found it more acceptable/useful to base their power in the common people instead of the nobles...mainly because there were more commoners than nobles and the commoners were often not that hard to please.

According to Machiavelli, commoners just wanted to be left alone. (Does this sentiment sound familiar?) So some people started to harness that sentiment, to topple the old order or perhaps to be first among equals in the new world. The ascendancy of the common people to power is what Tocqueville means by democracy. A republic is just a happy medium between aristocracy and democracy.

On the other hand, Tocqueville was a big proponent of Rousseau, and some of his writing is a gentle introduction/indoctrination to the more radical ideas of the French philosopher. Rousseau single-handedly created the "compassion" and "self-esteem" industry, albeit ours is an Americanized version of his thought.

My understanding on this is imperfect, so perhaps someone can answer this better. But Allan Bloom's Giants and Dwarfs is an interesting look into this topic.

[Galileo Galilei]

The French visitor came to the US in 1831. Then he went home and wrote one of the best books ever on American culture and a Constitutional system.

What I want to know is, why if we were founded as a republic did he call our country a democracy?

The publisher picked the title, not Tocqueville.

We are a democratic republic, something unknown in history up until that time.

When Tocqueville wrote, the monarchies had just retaken control of France and all of Europe.

[apropos]

We are a democratic republic, something unknown in history up until that time.

If that's true, why was the word democracy not used in any of our founding documents? The fact that for many decades only property owners could vote seems to fly in the face of any accepted definition of democracy.

[Krugerrand]

If that's true, why was the word democracy not used in any of our founding documents? The fact that for many decades only property owners could vote seems to fly in the face of any accepted definition of democracy.

I don't know French ... but there could be some translations issues here, too.

In a property based system ... you have to own some to a have a say in the laws that govern it ... I'm all for it.