Click on the headline to link to a "Sunday Boston Globe" article, dated April 18, 2010 reviewing Leo Damrosch's "Tocqueville's Discovery Of America".
Markin comment:
When I was nothing but a run-of the mill Americans For Democratic Action (ADA) left liberal youth in the 1960s I spent many an hour reading and figuring out ways to use deTocqueville’s “Democracy In America” in arguments with Goldwater Republican-types. The core of the argument centered on the collective plebeian experiences that de Tocqueville noted in his travels in the 1830s as quintessentially American and that I was foolish enough to believe still were operative in post -World War II America. Silly me.
Now, today, I do not cast aspirations on deTocqueville’s work, such as it was, because he was an outsider, a tourist really. Some of the most insightful and trenchant commentaries have come from such sources. But, rather, because whatever limited observations he made back in the day are indeed pretty well worn out by now. Thus, I become infuriated at later day devotees, liberal and conservative alike, who drag out his name and works, seemingly at every opportunity, to prove that American is the best thing since the invention of the wheel, or as Lincoln said “the last best hope of mankind”.
I will say two words that will put paid to that notion. Iraq and Afghanistan. If you need more I will be happy to oblige. Notwithstanding that if you have not read de Tocqueville and are looking for a different look at this tired old subject this does not seem to be a bad place to look. But, please, read something by Karl Marx to get the real ‘skinny’ on what modern American society is really all about.
Markin comment:
When I was nothing but a run-of the mill Americans For Democratic Action (ADA) left liberal youth in the 1960s I spent many an hour reading and figuring out ways to use deTocqueville’s “Democracy In America” in arguments with Goldwater Republican-types. The core of the argument centered on the collective plebeian experiences that de Tocqueville noted in his travels in the 1830s as quintessentially American and that I was foolish enough to believe still were operative in post -World War II America. Silly me.
Now, today, I do not cast aspirations on deTocqueville’s work, such as it was, because he was an outsider, a tourist really. Some of the most insightful and trenchant commentaries have come from such sources. But, rather, because whatever limited observations he made back in the day are indeed pretty well worn out by now. Thus, I become infuriated at later day devotees, liberal and conservative alike, who drag out his name and works, seemingly at every opportunity, to prove that American is the best thing since the invention of the wheel, or as Lincoln said “the last best hope of mankind”.
I will say two words that will put paid to that notion. Iraq and Afghanistan. If you need more I will be happy to oblige. Notwithstanding that if you have not read de Tocqueville and are looking for a different look at this tired old subject this does not seem to be a bad place to look. But, please, read something by Karl Marx to get the real ‘skinny’ on what modern American society is really all about.
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