6) Tocqueville's Tyranny of the Majority

The American Story: A Narrative History of the United States

"Democracy! Don’t you recognize that these are the waters of the deluge? Can’t you see them advancing ceaselessly with gradual but irresistible force?...Let us attempt, then, to foresee the future with open eyes and steady gaze.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
In 1831, when Alexis de Tocqueville landed in New York, the United States was a country in transition. Caught somewhere in the evolution from an agrarian economy to commercial mercantilism, the young republic was a stage for competing and contradictory social paradigms. This episode explores the Frenchman's observations of early America, where he saw what has come to be known as the “soft despotism” of individuals in a democracy attempting to bend political power to their own benefit.