Does Tocqueville Misunderstand the American Founding?
Today I will limit my remarks to Tocqueville’s misunderstanding of the American Founding and therefore of America. The most striking sign of that misunderstanding is that in a 700-page book on America, Tocqueville never once mentions, let alone analyzes, the political theory of the American Founding as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and in many other founding documents. The logic of Rahe’s own analysis points, I believe, to these defects in Tocqueville. Toward the end of Soft Despotism, Rahe turns to today’s political scene. He describes the origins of today’s despotic state in the ideas of Progressive intellectuals who were active “in and after the 1870s and 1880s.” These men, says Rahe, “aimed at the foundation of a new political regime.” The Progressives dismissed “as outdated the concern with individual, natural rights” that was shared by Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln.[5] Rahe implies that the origin of today’s problems is not, as Tocqueville had argued, the logi
