I am working through Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. As a twenty-five year old French aristocrat, Tocqueville came to the US in 1831 obstensibly to write about American’s penal system. He did indeed publish a book on this subject, but his two volume set on the politics, religion, press and class structure he found here is still seen today as one of the most insightful books written on the US.

Much of the book feels prophetic. In some cases, we have gone down the paths that lead to what Tocqueville saw as our inevitable course and in others we have left the path laid out by our forefathers and appear now more like the early 19th century Europe he describes.

Here are a few select quotations from Book 1 that I found particularly compelling: Read the rest of this entry »