We’re Losing The Two Things Tocqueville Said Mattered Most About American Democracy

This is the first installment of a new series: a Frenchman reads Democracy in America and investigates how it applies to the contemporary United States.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville doesn’t waste any time letting  you know what impresses him most about America.  To Tocqueville, equality and, to a slightly lesser — but very important — extent, religiosity, are the two foundations of the American experiment. His understanding of them certainly challenges both liberal and conservative sensibilities. But what does it say about America today that these two aspects of the American experience seem to be at all-time lows? And does Tocqueville point to a way forward?

The importance of economic and social equality

Tocqueville praises equality in his very first sentence: “Among the many things which drew my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more than the equality of conditions.” Two paragraphs later: “As I went on studying American society, I saw more and more in the equality of conditions the main fact which seemed to cause every other particular fact, and I kept seeing it before me as a central point to which all my observations led.”

Conservatives might not enjoy Tocqueville’s praise of economic and social equality as key to the success of the American experiment, but with some thought, you realize that Tocqueville is giving us a welcome way out of our incredibly dreary debates on the topic. A lot of conservatives claim that while the Left believes equality means equality of outcome, the Right is for equality of opportunity — but that’s a load of hooey. Everyone agrees with equality of opportunity, and all non-communists agree equality of outcomes is not desirable. The question is whether too much inequality of outcome leads to a greater inequality of opportunity. It’s a stubborn fact that, as a matter of dollars and cents, American society has gotten more unequal over the past 30 years. Does it mean that it has also become unequal in other ways? And if so, should we do anything about it? And what? Does Tocqueville show us a way?

Via: The Federalist

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Does Government Dependency Influence Voting Behavior?

Alexis de Tocqueville once prophesied "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." The Left vehemently denies that their social spending is anything but altruistic. Any correlation between federal spending on individual aid and voting behavior would reveal this altruism to be politically self-serving. The Left's denial (e.g., Klein, Matthews, Altman, Ponnuru) is often based on state-level observations and Moran has claimed that red states receive greater benefit from federal spending than blue states.The Right (e.g., Bauer and Romney) innately believes that federal largesse buys votes, but has provided little empirical data to back up their belief. Rayne has astutely countered claims of red state welfare, but has not addressed the issue of the influence of social spending on voting behavior.

The 2012 election results have been data mined to determine if a measurable correlation exists between social spending and voting behavior and demonstrate why state-level correlations are misleading. Accurate accounting of the influence of socioeconomic factors on voting behavior will be critical for the 2014 midterm and 2016 election strategies, as well as understanding the political dynamics of current issues including:the fight over federal spending; the expanding welfare, food stamp, and/or disability recipients; immigration reform/amnesty; and ObamaCare.

One key element of obtaining meaningful information from statistical analysis is the determination of the proper sample size. Large sample sizes can obscure trends that are obvious in smaller, more homogeneous subsets. Thus, it should not be unexpected that observations drawn from a statewide basis could mask correlations that exist on a much more local precinct basis. As Tip O'Neill once said "all politics is local."

Via: American Thinker
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