{"id":7734,"date":"2016-04-27T17:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T21:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7734"},"modified":"2016-04-27T17:00:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T21:00:28","slug":"tocqueville-on-the-tyranny-of-the-majority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7734","title":{"rendered":"Tocqueville on the Tyranny of the Majority"},"content":{"rendered":"

And if you want a refutation of the wisdom of crowds\u2014the \u201ctheory of equality applied to intelligence,\u201d Tocqueville scoffs\u2014look no further. As someone who believes that \u201cfreedom of the intellect is a sacred thing,\u201d as Tocqueville does, \u201cwhen I feel the hand of power weigh upon my brow, it scarcely matters who my oppressor is, and I am not more inclined to submit to the yoke because a million arms are prepared to place it around my neck.\u201d<\/p>\n

That same majoritarian tyranny explains why America\u2019s elected officials are so mediocre. To win votes, they have to flatter public opinion with the obsequiousness of Louis XIV\u2019s most sycophantic courtiers. Andrew Jackson is Tocqueville\u2019s Exhibit A. He \u201cis the slave of the majority,\u201d Tocqueville sneers; \u201che obeys its wishes and desires and heeds its half-divulged instincts; or rather, he divines what the majority wants, anticipating its desires before it knows what they are in order to place himself at its head.\u201d Like most politicians, he cares only about reelection, so that \u201chis own individual interest supplants the general interest in his mind.\u201d His (ultimately successful) vendetta against the Second Bank of the United States is a perfect example. Even though it inestimably benefits the nation by ensuring its monetary stability, Jackson happily attacks it, accusing its directors of being an aristocracy in the making, opposed to the democratic majority\u2014and, incidentally, to Jackson as well. But of course, Jackson\u2019s Democrats, the party that stands for the infinite expansion of the power of the people, have a permanent majority over the rival Federalists, who could win election only when the country needed to navigate the perils of the Founding, a unique emergency that prompted the Federalist Party\u2019s superior men to accept public office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Myron Magnet’s essay, “<\/a><\/span>The End of Democracy in America”<\/a>\u00a0on Alexis de Tocqueville’s\u00a0Democracy in America <\/i>and\u00a0The Old Regime and the French Revolution. (via Prufrock<\/a>)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And if you want a refutation of the wisdom of crowds\u2014the \u201ctheory of equality applied to intelligence,\u201d Tocqueville scoffs\u2014look no further. As someone who believes that \u201cfreedom of the intellect is a sacred thing,\u201d as Tocqueville does, \u201cwhen I feel the hand of power weigh upon my brow, it scarcely matters who my oppressor is, … Continue reading Tocqueville on the Tyranny of the Majority<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[142,163,182],"class_list":["post-7734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","tag-alexis-de-tocqueville","tag-america","tag-andrew-jackson"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}