Status Updates From Democracy in America (Every...

Choose any American at random and he should be a man of burning desires, full of initiative, enterprising, and, above all, an innovator. In fact, this outlook permeates all his works, enters his political laws, his religious doctrines, his theories of social economy, and his domestic occupations; he carries it everywhere with him, deep in the woods as in the heart of his cities.

"Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy"
Sect. "Indirect influence of religious opinions upon political society in the United States."
T calls the US a Christian nation, it seems not so much b/c of the laws as written but b/c of the ppl living therein. To him, this influence emphasizes equality, fosters freedom & encourages order, a type of conservativism/anti-revolutionaryism.

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.