Status Updates From By Alexis de Tocqueville De...

I see other peoples of America enjoying the same physical conditions of prosperity as the Anglo-Americans but without their laws and customs, and these nations are miserable. Anglo-American laws and customs represent, therefore, the particular and predominant reason, which I have been seeking, for their greatness.

Americans so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive the one without the other; and this is not one of those sterile ideas bequeathed by the past to the present nor one which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

In the lucky circumstances which have supported and confirmed the establishment and continuance of the democratic republic in the United States, the most important is the choice of the country itself which Americans inhabit. Their fathers have given them the love of equality and freedom but it was God himself who granted them the means of long remaining equal and free by his gift of this boundless continent.

There exists a patriotism which springs mainly from that instinctive, disinterested, and indefinable feeling which binds a man's heart to his birthplace. This unreflecting love blends with the liking for ancient customs, respect for ancestors, and the memories of the past. Those who experience it cherish their homeland as they love their father's house.

Causes which Tend to Maintain Democracy.
"Fortune has been promised to [the Americans] somewhere in the West, and to the West they go to find it."

..."Mitigations of the Tyranny of the Majority"
Ch ends p 287, discussing jury duty. I'm often miffed how many say they'd lie about their biases/prior engagements to escape jury duty. I get not wanting to weigh in on a trial re: a serious wonton act, or not wanting the inconvenience. But we truly are given so much by this country, giving back seems right. Ntm, the gift of fellow citizens judging us vs The State.

The Unlimited Power of the Majority.
"Mr. Madison expresses...'it is of great importance in a republic...to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.'
Jefferson also said: '...The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared...The tyranny of the executive power will come...but at a more distant period.

The Unlimited Power of the Majority.
"The authority of a king is physical & controls the actions of men w/o subduing their will. But the majority possesses a power that is physical and moral at the same time... I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America."-p. 263
T's observations are intriguing & call to mind "cancelling" ppl. He might be right.

Advantages of Democracy.
T gives democracy more backhanded compliments in the finish to this chapter. His most interesting point to me being that one of the hardest things about trying to strip democracy from a ppl who have already lived it, is not their love of freedom, but their habits of actively taking ownership of and acting on the improvement of their towns. Seems T thinks this alone could work against tyranny.