De Tocqueville: Democracy In America

There is no doubt that the central idea in the “Democracy In America” is the discussion of American democracy. In this book, he discusses a lot about the problems and solutions to the democracy system in USA and tries to express his own idea of how democratic society should operate. Seeing the failure of democracy in his home country, he puts efforts to understand how democracy should work in a country that has been isolated from the rest of the world. During his discussion, one important topic is his separation between democracy and aristocracy. It seems that he tries to compare these two totally different types of regimes and puts democracy on a superior position. De Tocqueville is definitely a democrat in the first place since in his book he states many problems of current democratic system of USA and observes ways to solve these problems in order to let the system to endure. However, in his observations of solutions to keep America from dangers of democracy, we can identify several parts of aristocratic elements and he seems very supportive to such an idea. Thus, from my perspective, Alexis De Tocqueville is both a Democrat and an Aristocrat. …show more content…
It is originated from democracy, and it” threatens to develop as conditions become equal”(483). When people live under aristocratic society, social binds between people are very tight as “all citizens are placed at a fixed post”(483). However, in democratic society, “the bond of human affections is extended and loosened”(483). That is to say, in democratic society, people tend to focus more on themselves and live in isolated lives. This trend of life style pushes society closer to despotism and the reason is that if everyone decides to focuses on themselves, it is very suspicious they will fulfill their obligation to the whole society and pursue the right of freedom as equality in society had been