Writing near the end of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville expressed an apprehension that this new form of government in the United States might eventually yield to a new kind of despotism under which a central authority would minister to the wishes of the people while depriving them of the independence required for active citizenship. Tocqueville foresaw a “soft” despotism that, as he wrote, “does not break men’s will but softens, bends, and guides it; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.” He feared that the democratic revolution in America might eventually produce a passive population that has traded its liberty and independence in exchange for comfort and security.
Americans across the political spectrum are caught in a “nostalgia trap.”
Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs magazine and a widely cited author in his own right, dissents somewhat from Tocqueville’s prognosis in his insightful book-length essay The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism. Americans, he points out, far from being mired in comfortable passivity, are afflicted today by something far different: anger, discontent, and frustration with national politics and the performance of government at all levels. Public opinion polls and election campaigns—the rise of Donald Trump!—provide ample evidence of the public’s unease with
