/lit/ - Literature

>>15559293
Democracy in America is what everyone talks about when they talk about Tocqueville. Most people read exerts (but never the full book)in University, so in the Anglo world Tocqueville is essentially synonymous with his first book.

If you want to read about Tocqueville as a man, Recollections gives a charming and intimate portrait of him as a Parliamentarian running from one riot to the next, gun in his pocket, giving speeches and trying to calm the passions of the angry mob. In my opinion it is the best book to understand Tocqueville as a human being.

For the purpose of this thread, Tocqueville was a young aristocrat that traveled to America, he wrote an extremely comprehensive book on American democracy for the King which jump started his political career. Many state intellectuals have tried to copy this success, notably Kissinger in his publication of "A World Restored"and Huning as we are discussing now, but Tocqueville did it first and he did it best. Later he became the foremost French expert on Algeria during the colonization, and was an outspoken liberal critic which eventually got him barred from public life by Napoleon III.

>>15552915
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.