Why Democracies Need Religion, According to Tocqueville

Video from ThinkingWest

Why Democracies Need Religion, According to Tocqueville

"In 1831, French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the US to study democracy. He saw some positives, but also noted a few flaws such as: tyranny of the majority, isolated individuals, and materialism. He claimed religion was essential to prevent these dangers..." from the video introduction

"The Revolution of 1848 brought about a new political situation for France and for Tocqueville. Having decried apathy as the chief danger for France, Tocqueville recognized even before the revolution that France was faced with a politically awakened working class that might well propel French politics into socialist and revolutionary channels. Tocqueville considered economic independence as necessary for the preservation of his own intellectual independence. He thus viewed the pressures of the dependent poor for state welfare and of the unemployed for state employment as the initial steps to a universal and degrading dependence on the state by all social classes. Unsympathetic to revolutionaries and contemptuous of socialists before the revolution, Tocqueville opposed the demands of the Parisian workers during the June days of 1848, when their uprising was bloodily suppressed by the military dictator General Louis Cavaignac, as well as in the debates over the constitution of 1848. The only intellectual change produced in Tocqueville by the events of 1848 was a recognition of the strength of socialist ideas and of the problematic nature of the proprietary society. Although he had sought to reconcile the aristocracy to liberal democracy in Democracy in America, he rejected social democracy as it emerged in 1848 as incompatible with liberal democracy..." from the article: The Revolution of 1848

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