"Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom"
--Alexis de Tocqueville

Very profound Jerry - and definitely food for thought

That was written in the late 1700's / early 1800's.  Amazing how prescient he was.

Your post caused me to look him up. My best guess is 1835 - prescient indeed.

Thanks for putting this one up here.

Marc

He arrived in America about midway through Jackson's first term for about nine months.

It is sometimes best to consider what he wrote before consenting agreement, even if an unchanging opinion of it.  That quote being in someway contrived from:

"There is indeed a manly and legitimate passion for equality which rouses in 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 instrictive 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."

Great find Kevin! 

It is much like the shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in four generations principle of business.  The founder works and pours every thing in it to produce success, passes it on to his son who witnessed the struggle and built on it to the pinnicle of success, passes it on to his son who knew not what it cost to provide the success and coasted along and enjoyed the fruit of the success to its diminishment, and passes it along to his son who is back to the beginning point without having the benefit of seeing what the founder had produced.

I'm hoping that we here in the US are not approaching the handoff from the third generation to the fourth, but we have been coasting for the last few decades.

Jerry

Quote:

I'm hoping that we here in the US are not approaching the handoff from the third generation to the fourth, but we have been coasting for the last few decades.

Interesting point, Jerry.  Generations of our past had endured the Great War, Depression up to WWII, and a rebuilding.  Our generation perhaps born to nice neighborhoods, schools, cars, and roads to anywhere.  Only hearing about previous family struggles, we got Christmas presents, bicycles, and probably some hand-me-down clothes.  Today many are born into nice neighborhoods, GameBoys, and cell phones with no idea of how past attainment made these things possible.  Hardships of the present time for many have shaken lots of things taken for granted.

Tocqueville wrote of laws of inheritence, and also seemed aware of the inner closed Constitutional debates from the summer of 1787, giving a good, easy-reading outside-looking-in view.



A story of inheritence and how President Washington and grog are related. 

George came from a large family, his father Augustine's first wife passed away so he remarried and George was the first born of the second wife.  His older half-brother, Captain Lawrence Washington fought in the Caribbean under an admiral at Cartegena and then Jamaica.  The admiral wore a grogram cloak, sailors gave him the nickname "grog" and he served a watered-down rum the men called a grog ration. 

Upon his father's death, George inherited his boyhood home Ferry Farm, but Lawrence being the eldest got the most, a plantation at Little Hunting Creek, where he built a mansion and renamed this place after his old commander -- Admiral Edward Vernon, the father of the grog ration.  George's Mount Vernon when Lawrence passed.   :)




All aside though, Tocqueville mentions on the other hand how people were granted huge tracts by kings.  For instance, Lawrence Washington married Ann Fairfax, whose family was granted 1.5 million acres by Charles II.  In other words obtained for little or nothing but founding great families stateside, forming what Tocqueville called a Patrician order.  First to abolish these English ways was Virginia in 1776, the motion for abolition was moved by Thomas Jefferson.

I was just wondering, is there a Congressional White Caucus?

Bob P wrote on Dec 1^st, 2009 at 7:58am:

I was just wondering, is there a Congressional White Caucus?

Of course there is, silly. They just can't call it that.

Quote:

Thinkin' stuff

You seem to always widen the avenue a bit, doncha Bob.     :)

One of my favorites:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Kilowatt3 wrote on Dec 2^nd, 2009 at 3:50pm:

One of my favorites: Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Unfortunately, often those who would pose as beneficent only appear to be well-meaning, and are not without understanding.  They know full well what they are doing and are as wolves in sheep's clothing.

Take the "War on Poverty" put on us years ago.  After spending trillions of dollars poverty is no less, in fact it has developed a dependent class in our country that is generational, and has no incentive to be any different.  This has given a power base to many politicians who milk it for all it is worth every chance they get.

Jerry

Ah, you mean poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Kilowatt3 wrote on Dec 2^nd, 2009 at 3:50pm:

One of my favorites: Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. Justice Louis D. Brandeis

I think that's applicable in the UK with ID cards and datebases and all- they probably do mean well, probably more so than your war on poverty.  (War on abstract nouns never go well)  It matters that when the well-meaning goverrment leaves, a less well-meaning one might come in and have access to all those things we once deemed private.

That first quote quoted is really interesting, I'll be looking him up later.