by Sean Ring
Daily Reckoning
In a time when democracy is often held up as the ultimate expression of human progress, it can be jarring to consider the views of someone who saw its dangers as much as its strengths.
The French aristocrat and political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville traveled across the United States in the early 1830s and distilled his observations into a landmark work, Democracy in America. Tocqueville’s insights—astute, prescient, and dark—reveal a truth: democracy, while often framed as the fairest form of governance, contains within it seeds of potential destruction.
Why revisit Tocqueville’s warnings now?
