In a preceding commentary I discussed how my new book, Confiscating the Common Good, offers a lesson about local institutions and social capital, namely that both are democratically essential. In this commentary I want to say more about democracy, especially since it now seems to be teetering in our own country as well as many others.
The global decline in democratic beliefs and practices raises a key question whose answer remains elusive: what is democracy? Based on what I wrote in my book, I dedicate this—my third and final commentary—to addressing such a complex query.
For many, democracy refers to beliefs, practices, and institutions that include basic human rights, representative bodies, free and fair elections, and the constitutional rule of law. Nonetheless, when Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States in 1831 he beheld something well beyond that framework. He defined democracy in light of how most Americans saw each other apart from politics—that is, as social equals. That vision produced a society in which most were self-reliant, which required liberty, and yet also civic-minded, which implied equality. Tocqueville’s idea of democracy, therefore, rested on a symmetry of liberty and equality that local institutions and voluntary organizations often reinforced.
My acceptance of Tocqueville’s analysis is clearly influenced by the parallels I see between us; whereas he was a French scholar seeking to make sense of the U.S., I am an American scholar trying to do the same of France. Making numerous trips between the U.S. and France has helped me decode differences between the two countries, much in the way that Tocqueville once did. Two recent distinctions, accordingly, stand out for me. The first is that France seems less consumed by digital technology. On average, Americans now spend 7 hours and 4 minutes on electronic screens per day, whereas the French span is 5 hours and 34 minutes. The second, more obvious contrast is the incidence of gun violence in both countries. To cite just one comparison, between 1998 and 2019 the United States had 101 mass shootings, but France had only 8.
I often thought about these differences as I worked on my book, and in that context one of Tocqueville’s points struck me as especially resonant. “Since every man is weak,” he wrote in his introduction to Democracy in America, “he feels the same need as his fellows and, knowing that he can gain their support if only he offers them his help, he will quickly discover that his own private interest fuses with that of the whole community.” For me, the most riveting part of this translated quote is the first phrase, since every man is weak. Tocqueville posited that democracy is impossible without one precondition: an admission of our own weakness. If we want to secure democratic liberty and equality, in other words, we must realize that each of us is too feeble to do this on our own.
In contrast to that quote, what I see today more in the United States but less in France is many who think they can go it alone: that democracy is simply a sole pursuit. How and why so many Americans have arrived at this belief is complicated. But is it possible that the guns we carry and smart phones we clutch work to conceal our vulnerability? Indeed, maybe such devices do not assist us with individual weakness as much as they bar us from recognizing it, or at least convince us that technological force can make our frailty obsolete. Perhaps these potent tools offer the illusion that we can go it alone.
Democracy, we are often told, is about empowering people. But Tocqueville deftly saw that it no less was about how fragile we are. To build a better democracy, we must accept our own vulnerability—including our greatest need, to love and be loved, which neither a smart phone nor a gun can remedy. That other great democratic visionary, Martin Luther King, Jr., lucidly grasped our need for love and knew how fundamental it was to our union. “We must learn to live together as brothers,” he announced in 1964, “or perish together as fools.”
As it must be in a democracy, that choice is ours to make.
Ed Woell is a Professor of History at Western Illinois University
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the university or Tri States Public Radio.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.