Tocqueville, Federalism, and Virtue

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According to Tocqueville, America seemed successful at balancing individual self-interest with citizenship and community spirit, at least in part because of the federal structure of the government. It was the vitality of local government that especially impressed him. It was through local government that individuals were drawn into public affairs and a sense of community was instilled that seemed to moderate the natural tendency to pursue one's self-interest. Local institutions placed liberty



within the people's reach. Local liberties which induce a great number of citizens to value the affections of kindred and neighbors, bring men constantly into contact, despite the instincts which separate them and force them to help one another.

The federal system and vital local government, according to Tocqueville, promoted a type of patriotism or civic virtue that "in the end becomes, in a sense, mingled with personal interest." The citizen, he observed, comes to view his nation's prosperity "first as a thing useful to him and then as something he created." It is a civic virtue born of enlightened self-interest and, in Tocqueville's eyes, it was the great virtue of American government.

Tocqueville identified two factors which were critical to the maintenance of this public spirit in America: active local governments in a federal system and a belief on the part of the people that they are free to be the masters of their own fate. An individual's belief in himself seemed to matters as much as his commitment to community.

In a particularly moving and prescient passage in Democracy in America, Tocqueville warned that it would be difficult for America to maintain the balance it had achieved through federalism. Citing a unique sort of despotism that tends to undermine democracies, he warned of the dangers that accompany the centralization and consolidation of government. Seeking to "trace the novel features under which despotism may appear," he wrote that "the first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives." He sees the potential for a nation of strangers-individuals so self-interested and self-involved as to be indifferent to the fate of others or of the state. It is a nation in which the individual "exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country". It is a nation in which individuals are governed by the state as opposed to the state governed by them.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. The power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manges their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, subdivides their inheritances: What remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of learning?



Such a government, argued Tocqueville, "renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent" and "generally robs a man of all the uses of himself." It is a government that promotes individual self-interest because it caters to it; a government that weakens the spirit of individuals and communities, leading to a decline in community and citizenship because the people no longer care. They no longer care because the government is doing what needs to be done. It is a transformation in the minds of men that is brought about by the nature of government. The despotism Tocqueville warns of is a tyranny of men's minds, as citizens no longer practice citizenship while they reside in communities in which there are no neighbors.
( Eugene W. Hickok. Why States? The Challenge of Federalism. Heritage Foundation. pp 88-90)

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