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1 " To drive the point home, Tocqueville stressed the need for individual initiatives in democracy. Tocqueville had shown in his central theoretical part that democracy had severed the aristocratic chain and, with it, social hierarchies. But in concluding, he saw a multitude of atomized individuals lacking in energy and initiative. He blamed widespread popular indolence on the supervisory grip of the state on citizens' lives that amounted to soft despotism. Democratic men submitted to the authority of 'an immense tutelary power, which assumes sole responsibility for securing their pleasure and watching over their fate. It is absolute, meticulous, regular, provident, and mild. It would resemble paternal authority if only its purpose were the same, namely, to prepare men for manhood. But on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them in childhood irrevocably. "
― Olivier Zunz ,
2 " Tocqueville admired this small group of so-called Radicals, which had no counterpart in France. Unlike the French, these English Radicals respected the principles of democratic rule, they were not trying to impose utopian systems on an unwilling society; they respected the right to property as the basis for civilized society, they saw the political necessity of religion, and they were well educated. Tocqueville felt at ease with them, perhaps because, like them, they combined elitist manners with reformist ambitions. He recognized in them the type of politician he wanted to become. "
3 " Citizens were truly free when they could engage 'what is just and good without fear.' Liberty was therefore a positive act of will. Liberty was not an 'enemy of all authority' but 'a civil and moral' quality that made it possible for individuals, singly or in groups, to realize their potential. Tocqueville, who believed in the possibilities of human achievement, embraced the idea of liberty as capable of fostering equality. With liberty empowering individuals, equality could spread. There began the great challenge of modern history, that of balancing liberty and equality. Tocqueville kept arguing in successive formulations that the two concepts of liberty and equality, so easily at odds, actually touch and join. For one cannot be free without being equal to others; and one cannot be equal to others, in a positive sense, without being free. For Tocqueville, the combination of equality and liberty was the best possible human condition, while equality without liberty was among the worst, as he had argued in the prison report.Although Tocqueville asserted that equality and liberty ideally should be mutually reinforcing in democratic life, he recognized that men loved equality passionately but often resented the kind of demanding liberty that democracy required. It was simply too much work to set positive liberty in motion and sustain it. Indeed, Tocqueville underscored that 'nothing is harder than the apprenticeship of liberty.' As a result, Tocqueville charged, too many accept 'equality in servitude' (the result of leveling) and prefer it over the more demanding condition of 'inequality in freedom.' Only by acquiring the habit of liberty, Tocqueville argued throughout the book, could a democratic society make creative use of equality and liberty was the precondition for the dogma of popular sovereignty to 'emerge from the towns,' take possession of the government,' and become 'law of laws. "
4 " Tocqueville charged that Americans lived under the constant threat of a tyranny of the majority - an alternative despotism - that muzzled dissent and killed freedom of opinion in America. He claimed, 'I know of no country where there is in general less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion that in America.' What Tocqueville feared most from equality was a deadening uniformity of thought, which he believed he detected in America. he depicted Americans as victims of a crippling conformity of opinion, justified only in part by the great instability of conditions inherent in a new country, yet aggravated by an extreme case of national pride that made self-criticism unlikely. He complained that one could not even criticize the weather in America. "
5 " In exposing his core theory of democracy, in part 2, Tocqueville largely reiterated the relationship between equality and liberty already proposed in 1835. Tocqueville was concerned about repeating himself, but he could not avoid it; it was the 'necessary result of such a large work done in two stages.' He explained in abstract but carefully reasoned terms: 'One can imagine an extreme point at which liberty and equality touch and become one. Suppose that all citizens take part in government and that each has an equal right to do so. Since no man will then be different from his fellow men, no one will be able to exercise a tyrannical power. Men will be perfectly free, because they will all be entirely equal, and they will al be perfectly equal because they will be entirely free. This is the ideal toward which democratic people tend.'But in the real world, Tocqueville insisted, people desired equality so much that they were willing to sacrifice their political liberty for it. They would rather limit opportunity for all than see some people getting ahead at the expense of others. To combat this degrading form of submissiveness, one had to work constantly at keeping political liberty alive. Tocqueville expressed again his sense that liberty was fragile and all too easily sacrificed to the drive for equality. This was the axiom on which he built his new political science. "
