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By Root 318 0

for equality that 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. Not that those nations whose social condition is democratic naturally despise liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and, if they miss their aim, resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would rather perish than lose it.…” (I, 53–54)

But the strength of the sovereignty of the American people, Tocqueville argued, helps arrest the usual and historic rise of tyranny. He explained: “The Anglo-Americans are the first nation who, having been exposed to this formidable alternative, have been happy enough to escape the dominion of absolute power. They have been allowed by their circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and especially by their morals to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the people” (I, 54).

Tocqueville added that for Americans, the sovereignty of the people is deep-rooted and widespread. By this he meant that Americans have a say in, and are actively involved in, all aspects of their society. The sovereignty of the people includes their influence over their government, but it is bigger than that. It resonates throughout the culture. It is a mind-set. “Whenever the political laws of the United States are to be discussed, it is with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people that we must begin.… In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as it is with some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote consequences. If there is a country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in its application to the affairs of society, and where its dangers and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America” (I, 55).

The American society—the personality of its people and their spirit—is everywhere. It is vibrant and ingrained. America’s government is not coercive or repressive, Tocqueville argued, because it reflects and respects the temperament and disposition of the people, including their traditions, customs, experiences, and mores. The people would tolerate no less. “In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society governs itself for itself. All power centers in its bosom, and scarcely an individual is to be met with who would venture to conceive or, still less, to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate. The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them” (I, 58).

Consequently, Tocqueville observed, the American government is nothing like the governments in Europe, where the latter governments are central to European societies and lord over them, where their societies are formed and directed by their governments, and where their