Oh, Alexis de Tocqueville. How I love thee.

"There is no class, then, in America, in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor. Accordingly, there is an equal want of the desire and the power of application to these objects. A middling standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend." AdT

"There is , in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. this passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." AdT

Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.   


Why don't people talk like this anymore?  Why isn't there this level of critical thought, and why, oh why, is it so damned NOT acceptable to critique a culture without coming across as hating that culture?  AdT (yeah, I'm on that level with him)  was intrigued by democracy, and so he too his aristocratic ass on a big ol' trip to see what all the hubub was about, and the wrote a phenomenal piece looking at the system of democracy, as it unfolded, and then identified the probably issues that might arise in such a system.  

He was not wrong.  

And yet, most of us are not required to read this amazing piece.  Many of us have never heard of it.  Are we that afraid to look at critiques of ourselves, short of the now all-too-common self hatred that the PC movement of the last turn of the century has so firmly foisted upon us?   

 There will be more on this as I reread.  In the meantime, grab yourself a copy.  They're on Amazon for like, two bucks.  Read it.  Don't get reactionary.  Just...read it.  And then look around.  And then think about how we can turn this shit around.