Monday, November 2, 2020

Tocqueville on the essential role of voluntary associations in American life

"Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association... I met with several kinds of associations in America of which I confess I had no previous notion; and I have often admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object for the exertions of a great many men and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it...

Feelings and opinions are recruited, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed only by the reciprocal influence of men upon one another. I have shown that these influences are almost null in democratic countries; they must therefore be artificially created, and this can only be accomplished by associations."

-Tocqueville, Democracy in America

See my article in Law and Liberty, "The Mother Science of Democracy"

Thompkins H Matteson's 1862 painting, Hop Picking.

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Indebtedness and Freedom

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