Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality than of Liberty

Is Equality Greater than Freedom?

by Alexis de Tocqueville



Democracy in America

Book 2. Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of Americans
Chapter I: Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality than of Liberty



Political freedom may compromise in its excesses the tranquillity, the property, the lives of individuals, is obvious to the narrowest and most unthinking minds. But, on the contrary, none but attentive and clear-sighted men perceive the perils with which equality threatens us, and they commonly avoid pointing them out.


The first and most intense passion which is engendered by the equality of conditions is, I need hardly say, the love of that same equality. My readers will therefore not be surprised that I speak of it before all others. Everybody has remarked that in our time, and especially in France, this passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the human heart. It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries are far more ardently and tenaciously attached to equality than to freedom; but as I do not find that the causes of the fact have been sufficiently analyzed, I shall endeavor to point them out.

It is possible to imagine an extreme point at which freedom and equality would meet and be confounded together. Let us suppose that all the members of the community take a part in the government, and that each of them has an equal right to take a part in it. As none is different from his fellows, none can exercise a tyrannical power: men will be perfectly free, because they will all be entirely equal; and they will all be perfectly equal, because they will be entirely free. To this ideal state democratic nations tend. Such is the completest form that equality can assume upon earth; but there are a thousand others which, without being equally perfect, are not less cherished by those nations.

The principle of equality may be established in civil society, without prevailing in the political world. Equal rights may exist of indulging in the same pleasures, of entering the same professions, of frequenting the same places—in a word, of living in the same manner and seeking wealth by the same means, although all men do not take an equal share in the government. A kind of equality may even be established in the political world, though there should be no political freedom there. A man may be the equal of all his countrymen save one, who is the master of all without distinction, and who selects equally from among them all the agents of his power. Several other combinations might be easily imagined, by which very great equality would be united to institutions more or less free, or even to institutions wholly without freedom. Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they be entirely free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the one from the other. The taste which men have for liberty, and that which they feel for equality, are, in fact, two different things; and I am not afraid to add that, amongst democratic nations, they are two unequal things.

Upon close inspection, it will be seen that there is in every age some peculiar and preponderating fact with which all others are connected; this fact almost always gives birth to some pregnant idea or some ruling passion, which attracts to itself, and bears away in its course, all the feelings and opinions of the time: it is like a great stream, towards which each of the surrounding rivulets seems to flow. Freedom has appeared in the world at different times and under various forms; it has not been exclusively bound to any social condition, and it is not confined to democracies. Freedom cannot, therefore, form the distinguishing characteristic of democratic ages. The peculiar and preponderating fact which marks those ages as its own is the equality of conditions; the ruling passion of men in those periods is the love of this equality. Ask not what singular charm the men of democratic ages find in being equal, or what special reasons they may have for clinging so tenaciously to equality rather than to the other advantages which society holds out to them: equality is the distinguishing characteristic of the age they live in; that, of itself, is enough to explain that they prefer it to all the rest. But independently of this reason there are several others, which will at all times habitually lead men to prefer equality to freedom. If a people could ever succeed in destroying, or even in diminishing, the equality which prevails in its own body, this could only be accomplished by long and laborious efforts. Its social condition must be modified, its laws abolished, its opinions superseded, its habits changed, its manners corrupted. But political liberty is more easily lost; to neglect to hold it fast is to allow it to escape. Men therefore not only cling to equality because it is dear to them; they also adhere to it because they think it will last forever.

That political freedom may compromise in its excesses the tranquillity, the property, the lives of individuals, is obvious to the narrowest and most unthinking minds. But, on the contrary, none but attentive and clear-sighted men perceive the perils with which equality threatens us, and they commonly avoid pointing them out.

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Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

The Left continues to deny the importance of matrimony to escaping poverty.

Marriage Matters

by W. Bradford Wilcox


For today’s progressives, marriage doesn’t matter when it comes to fighting poverty in America. Melissa Boteach and Anusha Ravi of the Center for American Progress, for instance, dismissed a recent op-ed by George Will reporting that millennials who put “marriage before the baby carriage” are much less likely to be poor.

In a column entitled “No, Young People Aren’t Poor Because They’re Not Married,” Boteach and Ravi argue that “[two] poor people getting married does not make anyone less poor,” noting that a majority of low-income families are in “families headed by married or unmarried partners.” Their underlying assumption is that, because marriage is not a poverty panacea for all low-income families (true), it must necessarily play no role in reducing poverty (false). Like other leftist commentators on marriage and poverty, Boteach and Ravi blame poverty among today’s young adults on forces entirely outside of their control: a tough job market and bad public policy.

The problem with the progressive approach to poverty is that it denies the importance of culture and character to household prosperity—especially when it comes to marriage. This isn’t to say that a tough job market and bad public policy are irrelevant to explaining why some millennials are in poverty, but life choices substantially affect the odds of ending up poor.

Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies and I recently co-authored a report, The Millennial Success Sequence, which demonstrates and quantifies the extent to which early life choices correlate with personal affluence. Though young people take a variety of paths into adulthood—arranging school, work, and family in a dizzying array of combinations—one path stood out as most likely to be linked to financial success for young adults. Brookings scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill have identified the “success sequence,” through which young adults who follow three steps—getting at least a high school degree, then working full-time, and then marrying before having any children, in that order—are very unlikely to become poor. In fact, 97 percent of millennials who have followed the success sequence are not in poverty by the time they reach the ages of 28 to 34.

Sequence-following millennials are also markedly more likely to flourish financially than their peers taking different paths; 89 percent of 28-to-34 year olds who have followed the sequence stand at the middle or upper end of the income distribution, compared with just 59 percent of Millennials who missed one or two steps in the sequence. The formula even works for young adults who have faced heavier odds, such as millennials who grew up poor, or black millennials; despite questions regarding socioeconomic privilege, our research suggests that the success sequence is associated with better outcomes for everyone. For instance, only 9 percent of black millennials who have followed the three steps of the sequence, or who are on track with the sequence (which means they have at least a high school degree and worked full-time in their twenties, but have not yet married or had children) are poor, compared with a 37 percent rate of poverty for blacks who have skipped one or two steps. Likewise, only 9 percent of young men and women from lower-income families who follow the sequence are poor in their late twenties and early thirties; by comparison, 31 percent of their peers from low-income families who missed one or two steps are now poor.

Even more significantly, it appears that marriage in itself reduces millennials’ chances of being poor. Why? Young men and (especially) women who put “marriage before the baby carriage” get access to the financial benefits of a partnership—income pooling, economies of scale, support from kinship networks—with fewer of the risks of an unmarried partnership, including breakups. By contrast, millennials who have a baby outside of marriage—even in a cohabiting union—are likelier to end up as single parents or paying child support, both of which increase the odds of poverty. 

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Read more: www.city-journal.org

The antidote to hyper-partisanship is a recovery of America’s tradition of civil religion.

Recovering America’s Vital Center: Between Religious Nationalism and Radical Secularism by John D. Wilsey The antidote to hyper-partisanship is a recovery of America’s tradition of civil religion. A new book by Philip Gorski takes up this difficult and subtle project. Sexually Violent Predator Laws and Indefinite Confinement: Insights from C.S. Lewis by Justin Dyer Sexually violent predator laws permit the indefinite confinement of persons who have already served a sentence for their crime. They are a perfect example of what C.S. Lewis called the humanitarian theory of punishment, replacing punishment and desert with treatment and therapy. Understanding the Election: The How and the Why of 2016 by Matthew J. Franck Political scientists James W. Ceaser, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney, Jr., take a hard look at the 2016 election, adding another book to their series of insightful election analyses. Transgender Suicides: What to Do About Them by Chad Felix Greene I have personally experienced gender dysphoria, and I explored transition in my early twenties. I am aware of the emotional struggle, but I am also aware of the empowering realization that I alone control how I perceive the world. Do Involved Parents Subvert the American Dream? by Rachel Lu The happiest, freest, and most prosperous future available to Americans might not be the most egalitarian.

Russia and China are drawing closer together with the goal of challenging Washington’s global dominance.

Weekend Reads July 29, 2017

What North Korea's Most Recent Missile Launch Means for America  by Jacob Heilbrunn and Harry J. Kazianis Video Interview: This test may show that Pyongyang’s re-entry vehicles are more capable than ever.  Read it here. Dunkirk: Everything You Need to Know Before You See the Movie  by Sebastien Roblin Before Dunkirk, British and French troops fought desperate last stands in the channel ports of Calais and Boulogne that bought vital time for the evacuation in the Belgian Port.  Read it here. Russia and China are Sending Their Navies to the Baltic Sea: Is a Formal Alliance Next?  by Dave Majumdar Russia and China are drawing closer together with the goal of challenging Washington’s global dominance.  Read it here. Why America's Air Force Needs a New Bomber  by James Price Today our most modern bomber, the B-2, is 25 years old with no announced retirement date.  Read it here. Will the Kurds Get Their Independence Referendum?  by Seth J. Frantzman The Kurdish region faces a multiplicity of hurdles as it prepares for the "yes to independence" referendum.  Read it here.

The dismantling of Western civilization by culture-war zealots has destroyed the resolve of Western man to defend himself. Western civilization has been gutted from within.

Essays of the Week

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But if we come to see some lives as being more worth living than others (for whatever reason) then we are already well on our way to instantiating an eugenicist mentality in our culture...  [MORE] What If? The Moral Imagination of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast by Bradley J. Birzer The story is the oldest story in the Christian world. It’s the story about love, sacrifice, and redemption. The Beast is a beast because of his poor choices. When he encounters real love and sacrifice, he understands his own folly and, most importantly, learns to sacrifice himself for others. He is, symbolically and literally, reborn. The Redeemer removes his skin and baptizes him in the blood of the Lamb. The enchantress might be a bit pagan, but she’s equally a bit archangel and the Virgin Mary. Belle, beautiful and bookish, is the personification of Grace itself...  [MORE] Henry James and American Painting Reflections of a Conservative Democrat What Is Unique About St. John’s College? 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