After last nights blog on the two most prevalent values across all cultures being equality and freedom, I thought I would follow up with what Alexis de Tocqueville said on the two ways of equality.
Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans:
"So, for a people who have reached the Anglo-Americans' social state, it is hard to see any middle course between the sovereignty of all and the absolute power of one man. One must not disguise it from oneself that the social state I have just described may lead as easily to the one as to the other of those results. There is indeed a manly and legitimate passion for equality which rouses in all men a desire to be strong and respected. This passion tends to elevate the little man to the rank of the great. But the human heart also nourishes a debased taste for equality, which leads the weak to want to drag the strong down to their level and which induces men to prefer equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. It is not that peoples with a democratic social state naturally scorn freedom; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it. But freedom is not the chief and continual object of their desires; it is equality for which they feel an eternal love; they rush on freedom with quick and sudden impulses, but if they miss their mark they resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing will satisfy them without equality, and they would rather die than lose it.
On the other hand, when the citizens are all more or less equal, it becomes difficult to defend their freedom from the encroachments of power. No one among them being any longer strong enough to struggle alone with success, only the combination of the forces of all is able to guarantee liberty. But such a combination is not always forthcoming. So, nations can derive either of two great political consequences from the same social state; these consequences differ vastly from each other, but both originate from the same fact." (Democracy in America)
No comments:
Post a Comment