The wayward march of democracy
What would Alexis de Tocqueville think of America now?
When the French nobleman, diplomat and gifted observer Alexis de Tocqueville toured a young and expanding America in 1831 he found a nation of hardworking people willing to sacrifice their social and economic advances to the “good of the many.” He called this fledgling constitutional democracy a picture of “equality in action.”
These and his many other a…