Post: #1

Alexis de Tocqueville

From Democracy in America
What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear

Emphasis mine.

Quote:I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.

Post: #2

Funny, I just read that in intro to international studies class.

I was nodding my head to what I read the entire time.

However, I only read an excerpt - do you know where I can find the whole book?

Post: #3

That Tocqueville quote reminds me of this:



I used to think America was the best country on Earth. People would criticize America, and I'd just say, 'well, that's not truly American, that's contrary to traditional American values.' And eventually I stopped doing that. Every time I look, I see America making the world a worse place, at a stunning pace. It is exporting obesity, feminism, fat acceptance, vulgarity, celebration of homosexuality, hatred of men, multiculturalism, the erosion of traditional culture, unbridled commerce, electronic attention whoring, Instagram, Facebook... Instinctively, I felt compelled to defend America, while accepting the criticisms. Now I won't even bother.

Post: #4

By the way, in case anyone gives a shit, Tocqueville gets his criticism from Rousseau, who argued in the Social Contract that representative governments are not legitimate forms of democratic authority:

Quote:Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards, and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void — is, in fact, not a law. The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them.

Emphasis mine.

Post: #5

All the more reason to become a Global citizen then

Post: #6

I'm through with feeding the beats

Post: #7

All of the histrionics brought to you in the above message are over the fear of 4 percentage points in income taxes.

Post: #8

(11-08-2012 01:49 PM)porscheguy Wrote:  All of the histrionics brought to you in the above message are over the fear of 4 percentage points in income taxes.

If you really don't get what 'those above' are saying or talking about just say so ...........

I'm sure some will be willing to explain to you. Maybe you need to go over it all again......

Post: #9

(11-08-2012 01:49 PM)porscheguy Wrote:  All of the histrionics brought to you in the above message are over the fear of 4 percentage points in income taxes.

Taxes have not been mentioned in the thread anywhere except in your post and the replies to it.

Post: #10

(11-08-2012 01:49 PM)porscheguy Wrote:  All of the histrionics brought to you in the above message are over the fear of 4 percentage points in income taxes.

Uh, no.

But tell me this -- would the Democrats agree to a 4 point increase income taxes IF

--they would abandon the takeover/nationalization of the healthcare system
--abolish the useless Departments of Education, Commerce, and Homeland Security
--roll back the onerous regulatory regimes of the EPA and other agencies
--engage in entitlement reform that actually turns entitlements into a safety net rather than a government provided benefit?
--actually create budgets that get us on path to reducing our national debt?

Of course, you know, and I know, the answer is no.

The Democrats ARE the political entity that de Tocqueville is talking about. They want to take money from producers and wealth creators, and re-distribute that wealth to others...a government that is

Quote:the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances...

For the Democrats, and the left, there is no limiting principle to government. Government, in their mind, "takes care" of you; it's a "nurturer." (THE reason why most women vote Democrat/left -- it's the feminine/feminist party). Government knows what's best for you. It controls, organizes, taxes, and regulates, all for "your benefit."

It is "soft despotism." And it requires more rules and more money, until it chokes off the vitality and energy of a free society.

And it's coming. This is what the electorate voted for. My ashes will be spread in the Pacific Ocean 25-30 years from now, but for those of you in your 20s and 30s, I feel sad for you. The economic enervation of Greece, Spain, Italy, France is your future.

(my 1500th post; alas, too bad it had to be about this subject).

Post: #11

'The Democrats ARE the political entity that de Tocqueville is talking about. They want to take money from producers and wealth creators, and re-distribute that wealth to others...a government that is

It is "soft despotism." And it requires more rules and more money, until it chokes off the vitality and energy of a free society.'


You are wrong. De Toqueville is not talking about just Democrats, since the Republicans are just as or even more guilty of taking from producers and redistributing it to themselves than Democrats.

Republicans do it under the guise of "security", "defense", "strengthen the military", "war on terror". They never turn down an opportunity to run up massive debt to pay for idiotic wars and over priced weapons programs. The money for that is borrowed, then "redistributed" to crony contractors, bloated Pentagon, etc....and then the rest of us who work and pay taxes have to pay back that debt and the interest.

De Toqueville is talking about the process whereby the politics itself have been so corrupted, that people view the government the means through which to steal the people's money - the productive people's money....The 51% realizing they can steal from the 49% - the politicians aiding and abetting the theft.

Both Parties are guilty of this - run away socialism

As matter of fact it is the Repubs who pushed the pedal on the 'soft despotism' - in order to keep/maintain control during the fleecing:
-Homeland Security
-TSA
-Guantanamo
-NDAA
-Patriot Act
-Torture
....etc........

Post: #12

(11-09-2012 12:20 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  --roll back the onerous regulatory regimes of the EPA and other agencies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...04118.html

The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely. ...

The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.
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WIA