Few great monuments
What Tocqueville can teach us about political language and crisis in a democracy
AQUEDUCT NEAR ROME, AN 1832 PAINTING BY THOMAS COLE.
This essay was originally prepared for a course taken through Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.
One need only watch a few minutes of today’s news media to be thoroughly convinced that every policy issue is a crisis of existential proportions. Anthropogenic climate change, economic inequality, school curriculum changes, and a host of other hot-button issues seem to all be approaching a point of no return, one which will either destroy the planet or the United States’ political order. This language is not, however, a new phenomenon. While it is compounded by modern circumstances and current affairs, there are timeless themes swimming below the sea.
To understand why the language of crisis plays such a crucial role in American democracy, one must investigate democracy’s tendencies more deeply. Most importantly, one needs to analyze how it impacts the disposition and philosophy of those it lords over. Further, it is worth considering how these effects of democracy on a people’s metaphysical outlook directly correlate to the short-sighted nature of democratic peoples.
Aside from democracy alone, one must then look towards American democracy as a phenomenon unto itself. As Alexis de Tocqueville notes in Democracy in America, America constructed republican institutions and a meticulously designed system of governance such that the march of democratic progress could be channeled towards better pastures than it is naturally inclined to steam ahead towards. Tocqueville’s diagnosis of democracy rightly describes an inherent American incapacity to persevere in sustained efforts, which are often required to solve longer-term issues.
Democracy itself is the source of much of the nation’s inability to confront long-term problems, and commit to intergenerational projects. Its impact is not confined to history, but still affects the United States today.
Point of departure
Having sailed to the New World so that they might escape the confines of the Old, Americans from Plymouth in 1620 to Philadelphia in 1776 were driven by a spirit of equality. Equality produced a sense of “liberation” among Americans. This translated to the liberation of democratic peoples from “the yoke of habits,...family maxims,...[and] class opinions.” Alienation from tradition, and from the natural bonds of affection that tie up the human community, certainly has its benefits. But it also results in “each American call[ing] only on the individual effort of his reason,” rather than the authority of tradition, family, or religion to determine philosophical and metaphysical dilemmas. Thus, Americans are naturally “led back toward their own reason as the most visible and closest source of truth.” Religion is only exempt, according to Tocqueville, because it is held as one of the only maxims that a then-Christian people accepted as true. It was also a defining fact of Americans at the time.
Separated from forms and traditions by a 3,000-mile wide ocean and a democratic outlook that prizes personal reason, Americans had a distinct imprint on their souls that would permeate their system of government.
This familial and metaphysical separation of the individual from community, of “I” from “we”, slowly imprinted a distinct but not unfamiliar philosophical disposition on the mind of Americans. While it is best described by Tocqueville as “individualism,” it has a distinct character that harkens back to a thinker from the Old World. Citing René Descartes, a French philosopher who died two centuries before Tocqueville was born, the Frenchman says that Americans are natural followers of his without ever having read his works. Descartes “abolish[ed]the received formulas [of philosophy], destroy[ed] the empire of traditions, and overturn[ed] the authority of the master,” famously declaring “Cogito ergo sum” -- “I think, therefore I am.” Naturally opposed to speculative studies and abstract reasoning, drawn in to themselves and their personal reason, Americans are natural Cartesians.
Possessing a democratic disposition towards action, industry, and the practical arts, Americans’ philosophy is indelibly shaped by their Cartesianism. “Amidst the continual movement that reigns in the heart of a democratic society, the bond that unites generations is relaxed or broken,” allowing Americans to slide towards a Cartesianism adopted without acknowledgement. What does Descartes have to do with the language of crisis? Or an alleged American inability to address long-term issues? Let us investigate how this Cartesianism-by-osmosis affects Americans’ desires.
The desires of Cartesian man
In being naturally separated from tradition, and towards oneself and one’s own reason, Americans are materialistic. Put simply, “[t]he care of satisfying the least needs of the body and of providing the smallest comforts of life preoccupies minds universally.” Rather than embracing religious adoration or even a more conservative approach to commerce like aristocratic societies, this democratic people’s “great current of human passions” is broadly tied to a great love of material wealth and wellbeing. Even those born rich in the United States feel insecure in their status, always grasping for more.
Because individualism and its impetuses, equality and democracy, confuse ranks and destroy privilege, “the longing to acquire well-being presents itself to the imagination of the poor man, and the fear of losing it, to the mind of the rich.” But this preference for the material over the immaterial is the cause of an even greater effect of American Cartesianism: a short-sightedness that inhibits Americans from making long-term, sustainable efforts.
Tocqueville observed that Americans pursued well-being with a “sort of feverish ardor” which impelled them by a fear that their aims -- which are material and fleeting, not immaterial and eternal -- might be escaping them. He notes that this is only a logical progression from materialism: “He who has confined his heart solely to the search for the goods of this world is always in a hurry, for he has only a limited time to find them.”
Importantly, materialism in an American context prevents the mind from concentrating on singular efforts, or at least for very long. Constantly concerned that they have not maximized efficiency in their pursuits -- for their concern is the material, not the immaterial -- they are spasmodic in their application of dynamism. The American “rushes so precipitately to grasp those that pass within his reach that one would say he fears at each instant he will cease to live before he has enjoyed him.” Filled with great energy and vitality, the American lacks the long-term vision, traditions, forms, and discipline to structure this energy towards sustained efforts.
Tocqueville admits that Americans have built great monuments akin to those of Egypt and the monarchies of Europe, but this observation comes with a caveat. Democracy has led to the creation of a great many small monuments, the kind that can be created by short applications of great strength, but “brings [men] to raise a few very great monuments.” They strive for greatness in action and immediate success, rather than sustained effort and thoughtful reflection. Americans “want to obtain great success right away, but they would like to exempt themselves from great efforts.” Full of great ambitions, they lack the desire to understand the particulars and to commit to long-term projects, often doomed to begin great endeavors but never to finish them.
Tocqueville’s concern with this very dynamic led him to propose that statesmen and leaders in a democracy must constantly labor to “move back the object of human actions.” Aristocratic nations with a rich religious spirit forge a citizenry which looks towards the eternal and immaterial whereas democratic peoples, as noted previously, are restless in their pursuit of the material. Focused on the tasks of life with a certain detachment, aristocratic peoples ultimately keep their mind on higher things. They maintain “fixed designs that they do not grow weary of pursuing.” Imbued with the deep faith roots of his home country, Tocqueville claims that such people have “encountered the great secret of succeeding” in this life. That is, “occupying themselves with the other world.”
Americans, on the other hand, narrow their visions to the things of this world, “and one would say that the object of human actions appears closer to them each day.” A great challenge in democratic societies is therefore to overcome the narrowness of mind to which a democracy gives way. Among the most important tasks of leaders in democratic eras is to “conduct themselves with a view to the future,” ensuring that the fleeting passions of the heart which arise in people’s minds every day are not the lodestar for their actions.
A well-formed person cannot succeed in life by pursuing their instincts day-to-day, but must temper them through discipline and, in turn, virtue. Similarly, a society cannot be governed for long by passions alone, but requires forms and traditions.
Civic discipline
The lack of civic discipline inherent in a democratic society can be seen clearly in the United States, where Tocqueville notes that “the laws have the least duration” in comparison to other nations. Empowered to execute the laws and affairs of the government of the United States, America’s executive is not a monarch who is intrinsically tied to the past and future through hereditary descent -- and who serves no fixed term -- but is a regularly elected servant of the people. In this arrangement alone one can capture a dynamic omnipresent in American government: power is exercised with great energy, in short bursts. The instability of the legislative process, which produces laws at breakneck speed, “exerts the same influence on the execution of the law and on the action of public administration.”
One example Tocqueville unearths from his time exploring the Early Republic was a movement of religious social reformers who sought to reimagine the American prison system, claiming that it was unjust and prioritized punishment over rehabilitation. In response to this interest group, legislators did their duty and responded to their constituents. New prisons were built, but the old prisons were not demolished nor reformed. “Everyone then having turned his eyes from the object that no longer held the regard of the master, oversight had ceased” over the prison system that had existed prior to the construction of the new penitentiaries.
Much like a democratic people’s immediate inclination to govern themselves by their passions -- or rather, not to govern themselves at all -- their government and administration is animated by great movements with little view to the future, or consideration of the past.
Tocqueville today
Driven by a love of material things, unmoored from forms and traditions which would otherwise direct passions through discipline, and formed by Cartesian individualism, Americans are a restless and ruthlessly practical people. They remain so today. Democracy and its particular effects contribute to an inability of democratic societies and the American government in-particular to commit to sustained efforts, and in turn to solve long-term issues. A recent example of this trend can be seen in how the United States responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the outbreak of SARS in 2003 the United States government, then led by President George W. Bush, began crafting a “pandemic playbook” that the United States could follow should a virus spiral out of control and spread across the world. In 2005, President Bush said that if the nation “wait[ed] for a pandemic to appear, it [would] be too late to prepare.” It seemed to many observers that the Obama and Trump Administrations had heeded Bush’s warning, stockpiling medical supplies and training behind-the-scenes for how the nation might respond to a pandemic. Then came COVID-19. The pandemic playbook that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had touted as a guide for how the United States ought to respond was based on a flawed premise: “it was written for a pandemic involving a novel strain of influenza.” Furthermore, much of the “stockpiling” purportedly being done for over a decade fell apart upon examination, with not nearly enough capacity ready to scale up for a major pandemic.
Long-term planning is not democracy’s strong suit but, as Tocqueville noted, short-bursts of action from the seat of power in a democracy can enact positive change. Incumbent President Donald Trump, in a short-burst of executive energy, set forth Operation Warp Speed which organized public- and private-sector resources to create, authorize, and distribute vaccines against COVID-19 at record tempo. It is now considered by some to be “the most remarkable achievement in modern medicine, made possible by following the model of the World War II mobilization effort.” Note the comparison to World War Two, a cataclysmic global war. It is clear that democracy still inhibits the United States from long-term planning, as the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates. It is also abundantly evident that in moments of great need, the United States is able to respond with vigor, and even clairvoyance. Wartime mobilization laid the foundations for peacetime production and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.
It is now understood that democracy tends Americans towards short-bursts of impassioned action that cannot be sustained, and that this malady of democracy still haunts the United States today. But what does this have to with why political leaders today so often speak in terms of crisis? And why does it seem that every issue, minor and major, is on the precipice of cataclysm?
Describing economist Mancur Olson’s theory of democracy, American journalist Jonathan Rauch wrote, “the piling up of entrenched interest groups, each clinging to some favorable deal or subsidy, is an inevitable process as democracies age.” The only avenue for the retrenchment of such interests, and of the professionalization of certain institutions that support the status quo no matter its consequences, is “some cataclysmic event -- war, perhaps, or revolution…” In such instances, these moments of exception “may sweep away an existing government and, with it, the countless cozy arrangements that are protected by interest groups.”
“Demosclerosis”, as Rauch described it, prevents both conservative and progressive reform. No matter the seemingly pessimistic conclusions that can be drawn from such a theory, one must contend with its truth. In a democratic society in which “great” projects can only be accomplished in bursts of energy, one who aspires to accomplish a great project must also aspire to break through the various institutions established to put brakes on democratic spasms. Consider how many politicians today -- and politicians of yesteryear -- talk about “breaking the system” or “draining the swamp.” They understand deep in their bones that only through crisis, or perceived crisis, can certain politically revolutionary changes be set into motion.
Institutions such as the administrative state were established in order to sustain great accomplishments of American democracy, but caught in the paradox of Stalinist Russia, the vanguards of the Revolution turned out to be bureaucrats and processes.
The model for Operation Warp Speed was not the American response to SARS in 2003, but the American government’s military mobilization strategy during World War Two. Similarly, New Deal programs enacted under President Franklin Roosevelt were not the result of careful years of strategic planning accomplished during “normal” times, but the product of immense pressure and the crisis that was the Great Depression. The American Civil War and the American Revolution both gave way to political revolutions in the United States, with the effects of both of those conflicts reverberating up to the present day. It is no wonder that the language of crisis plays such an outsized role in American democracy. And perhaps it is healthy, counteracting a democratic tendency towards mediocrity with bursts of vitality.
Indeed, Tocqueville points towards this truth when he explains that Americans, “who generally treat affairs in a clear and dry language deprived of every ornament, whose extreme simplicity is often vulgar, willingly run to bombast when they want to enter into poetic style.” He attributes this oddity of American life to the narrowness of American democratic individualism, which creates a citizenry which gazes in wonder when it looks up beyond itself to take in the whole world. But there is a more fundamental dynamic at play.
That very same narrowness of mind which produces bewilderment at the sight of anything greater than oneself forms a citizen who cares little about the future or past, in turn devoting themselves to fleeting passions and material goods. Deprived of a longer-term perspective, this democratic citizen concentrates their labor on a wide variety of projects. Driven by their passions, such people are capable of great feats, but haphazard in their execution of grand designs.
While democracies rarely build great monuments, and commit to very few long-term projects, Tocqueville finds a certain virtue in their approach. Aristocracies and more directly authoritarian regimes may be capable of five-, ten-, and fifty-year plans, but “[a] people that left no vestiges of its passage other than some lead pipes in the earth and iron rods on its surface could have been more a master of nature than the Romans.” The Roman Empire’s system of aqueducts was indeed a project that required strategic planning and a view to the future, but American water infrastructure proves itself far more efficient in practice.
Full of energy, restive in their material well-being, and able to mobilize with unparalleled force when pushed to the edge of crisis, Americans are resilient and adaptable. Their internal democratic spirit is contradictory and can lead to great mishaps, such as the United States’ failed response to COVID-19, but perhaps it is preferable to have a great many people enfranchised and rambunctious, rather than a small few empowered to neatly plan the future.
Bibliography
Arthur Herman, “Why Operation Warp Speed Worked,” The Wall Street Journal, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-operation-warp-speed-worked-11612222129.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, edited by Delba Winthrop and Harvey C. Mansfield, The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Jonathan Rauch, “Demosclerosis,” National Journal, 1992, https://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/demosclerosis_the_original_article/.
Matthew Mosk, “George W. Bush in 2005: 'If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare',” ABC News, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story?id=69979013.
Scott Gottlieb M.D., Uncontrolled Spread. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2021.