Reference no: EM133286965

Question - Alexis de Tocqueville: "Democracy in America"

As "Democracy in America" revealed, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of his era, and he thought that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action. He admired American individualism but warned that a society of individuals can easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when "every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd." He felt that a society of individuals lacked the intermediate social structures such as those provided by traditional hierarchies to mediate relations with the state. The result could be a democratic "tyranny of the majority" in which individual rights were compromised. Tocqueville was impressed by much of what he saw in American life, admiring the stability of its economy and wondering at the popularity of its churches. He also noted the irony of the freedom-loving nation's mistreatment of Native Americans and its embrace of slavery.

Question: What role does the public play in checking the power of their government democracy?