Hernia Prevention

Edgar Z. Friedenberg once said that social scientists are always giving themselves hernias trying to see something about America that Tocqueville did not see.

Journalists, Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, have undertaken the challenge of redefining America in the spirit of Tocqueville as they understand it. Some remarks in their piece today in the NYTimes, however, suggest that they might have engaged in hernia prevention and achieved greater understanding, not by trekking through America as Tocqueville did, but by reading him. Alas, America is not a nation of readers as Tocqueville himself said, and our journalists prove it a bit to their detriment.

Jennings and Brewster claim that "what Tocqueville found both pleased and, as an aristocrat, disturbed him. He worried that in its obsession with the democratic ideal, America appeared vulnerable to creating a new form of oppression, the tyranny of the majority." Of course, this is Tocqueville's central concern, but saying that his aristocratic status made him worry about the tyranny of the majority perhaps allows us to dismiss his concerns as prejudice. One might say that, since he was an aristocrat, Tocqueville had a special insight into the defects of democracy. But this would force us to consider the possibility of the justice of aristocracy (which Tocqueville did consider and ultimately rejected) so it is not quite how Jennings and Brewster put it.

What kind of aristocrat was Tocqueville who ultimately favored the justice of liberal democracy, despite being acutely sensitive to its defects? Jennings and Brewster do not say.

It hurts to face your weaknesses and defects. So we tend to call those who point out our weaknesses to us names like "aristocrat." This allows us to take them not quite as seriously as we might. As a psychiatrist might put it, this is a "defense mechanism." It is reflexive self-protection; and although it makes us feel better temporarily, it is ultimately detrimental to self-knowledge.

I have actually somewhat misrepresented Jennings and Brewster who genuflect before Tocqueville and treat him with the greatest reverence. But they seem to genuflect before him, again, in order to avoid grappling with his thoughts. Thinking demands neither genuflection nor dismissal and name-calling. Tocqueville should not be approached in the first place as a charming old aristocrat, but as a wise man, perennially relevant, with whom Americans should grapple and from whom Americans may learn much. This, above all, means reading him.

I have probably dwelled too long on this inconsequential article which does not reveal what is important about Tocqueville. I have perhaps blown some things out of proportion. Maybe the book and documentary that Jennings and Brewer have produced will reveal what is important about Tocqueville such as his "new political science," but I wouldn't count on it.