HOW AMERICANS COMBAT INDIVIDUALISM WITH FREE INSTITUTIONS
DESPOTISM, which is fearful by nature, looks upon the isolation of men as the surest guarantee of its own duration and ordinarily does all it can to ensure that isolation. No vice of the human heart suits it better than egoism: a despot will be quick to forgive the people he governs for not loving him, provided they do not love one another. He does not ask for their help in conducting the state; it is enough that they do not seek to run it themselves. Minds that aspire to combine their efforts to promote the common prosperity he calls disruptive and restless, and, altering the natural meaning of the words, he calls those who keep strictly to themselves “good citizens.”
Thus the vices that despotism fosters are precisely those that equality encourages. The two things complement and assist each other to disastrous effect.
Equality places men side by side without a common bond to hold them together. Despotism raises barriers between them to keep them apart. The former disposes them not to think of their fellow men, and the latter makes a kind of public virtue of indifference.
Despotism, dangerous at all times, is therefore particularly to be feared in democratic centuries.
It is easy to see that at such times men have a particular need of liberty.
When citizens are forced to concern themselves with public affairs, they are inevitably drawn beyond the sphere of their individual interests, and from time to time their attention is diverted from themselves.
As soon as common affairs are dealt with in common, each man sees that he is not as independent of his fellow men as he initially imagined and that, in order to obtain their support, he must often lend them his cooperation.
When the public governs, no one is unaware of the value of the public’s good will, and everyone tries to court it by winning the esteem and affection of the people among whom he is obliged to live.
Several of the passions that chill and divide hearts are then obliged to withdraw into the recesses of the soul and hide there. Pride dissimulates; contempt dares not rear its head. Egoism is afraid of itself.
Under a free government, since most public offices are elective, men whose souls are so lofty or whose desires are so restless that private life feels confining to them are daily made aware of the fact that they cannot do without the people around them.
Thus a man may think about his fellow men for reasons of ambition and may often find it in his own interest to forget himself, as it were. Of course one might object at this point that elections give rise to endless intrigues, that candidates often resort to disgraceful tactics, and that their enemies spread slander about them. Elections are occasions for hatred, and the more frequently they are held, the more often such occasions arise.
These are no doubt great evils, but they are temporary, whereas the goods that attend them remain.
The desire to win an election may induce some men to make war on one another for a time, but in the long run the same desire leads all men to lend each other mutual support. Furthermore, while an election may accidentally divide two friends, the electoral system permanently brings together a multitude of citizens who would otherwise remain strangers. Liberty engenders particular hatreds, but despotism gives rise to general indifference.
The Americans have used liberty to combat the individualism born of equality, and they have defeated it.
America’s lawgivers did not believe that, in order to heal a disease of the body social so natural in democratic times, and so fatal, it was enough to provide the nation as a whole with a general representation. They also thought it appropriate to foster political life in each portion of the territory so as to create endless opportunities for citizens to act together and remind them daily of their dependence on one another.
In this they acted wisely.
A country’s general affairs occupy only its leading citizens. They come together in designated places only at intervals. And since they are often out of touch afterwards, no durable bonds are established among them. When the inhabitants of a district have to deal with that district’s particular affairs, however, the same individuals are in constant touch and are in a sense forced to know and accommodate one another.
It is difficult to draw a man out of himself to interest him in the destiny of the entire state, because he has little understanding of what influence the destiny of the state can exert on his lot. Should it become necessary to construct a small road through his property, however, he will see at a glance how this petty public affair relates to his most important private affairs, and he will discover, without having it pointed out to him, the close connection that exists between the particular interest and the general interest.
Hence if the goal is to foster the interest of citizens in the public good and make them see that they need one another constantly in order to produce it, it is far better to give them responsibility for the administration of minor affairs than to put them in charge of major ones.
With one spectacular stroke one can instantly win the favor of a people, but to earn the love and respect of one’s neighbors takes a long series of small services and obscure favors, habitual and unremitting kindness, and a well-established reputation for impartiality.
Thus local liberties, in consequence of which large numbers of citizens come to value the affection of their neighbors and relatives, regularly bring men together, despite the instincts that divide them, and force them to help one another.
In the United States, the most opulent citizens take great care not to isolate themselves from the people. On the contrary, they reach out to the people constantly, listen to them voluntarily, and speak with them daily. They know that the rich in democracies always have need of the poor and that in democratic times one wins the loyalty of the poor more through manners than through benefactions. Indeed, the very magnitude of benefactions, which highlights the difference of conditions, secretly irritates those who profit from them. But simple manners have almost irresistible charms: their familiarity is attractive, and even their crudeness is not always disagreeable.
The rich do not at first grasp this truth. They generally resist as long as the democratic revolution lasts, and even after the revolution ends they still do not accept it immediately. They readily consent to do good for the benefit of the people but prefer to keep them scrupulously at a distance. They think this is enough; they are mistaken. They could ruin themselves in this way without kindling any warmth in the hearts of the people around them. What is asked of them is not the sacrifice of their money; it is the sacrifice of their pride.
It sometimes seems that all the imagination that Americans possess goes to inventing ways of increasing the wealth and satisfying the needs of the public. The most enlightened people in every district regularly use their enlightenment to discover new secrets likely to enhance the common prosperity, and when they find such secrets, they hasten to make them available to the multitude.
On close examination, the vices and weakness of the men who govern America often stand out, and we are therefore surprised by the growing prosperity of the people — but we are wrong to be surprised. American democracy prospers not because of its elected officials but because its officials are elected.
It would be unjust to assume that the patriotism of Americans, and the zeal that each of them demonstrates for the well-being of his fellow citizens, had no basis in reality. Even though private interest controls most human actions in the United States as elsewhere, it does not decide everything.
I am bound to say that I have often seen Americans make large and genuine sacrifices to the public good, and I have noted on countless occasions that when necessary they almost never fail to lend one another a helping hand.
The free institutions that Americans possess, and the political rights of which they make such extensive use, are, in a thousand ways, constant reminders to each and every citizen that he lives in society. They keep his mind steadily focused on the idea that it is man’s duty as well as his interest to make himself useful to his fellow man. Since he sees no particular reason to hate others, because he is neither their slave nor their master, his heart readily inclines to the side of benevolence. Men concern themselves with the general interest at first out of necessity and later by choice. What was calculation becomes instinct, and by dint of working for the good of one’s fellow citizens, one ultimately acquires the habit of serving them, along with a taste for doing so.
Many people in France regard equality of conditions as the first of all evils and political liberty as the second. If obliged to endure one, they do their utmost to escape the other. But I maintain that to combat the evils that equality may engender, there is only one effective remedy: political liberty.