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Tocqueville on New Prophets and the Tyranny of Public Opinion

October 19, 2020

Abstract: Louis Midgley discusses the rise and fall in popularity of Alexis de Toqueville’s unrivaled volumes entitled Democracy in America and the impressive renaissance of interest they have enjoyed since 1930. They were published at a time when Europe was looking for guiding principles to replace aristocratic governments with democratic regimes. Importantly, however, Toqueville also reflected broadly on the crucial roles of religion and family in sustaining the virtues necessary for stable democracies. Toqueville’s arguments that faith in God and in immortality are essential for maintaining a strong society of a free people are more crucial than ever to Latter-day Saints and all those wishing to preserve democracy in America today.

 
[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.
See Louis Midgley, “Tocqueville on New Prophets and the Tyranny of Public Opinion,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 171–88. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]

[Page 164]In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)1 traveled in the United States for nine months, while only twenty six years old; he was presumably looking into the American prison systems, but he had a different agenda in mind. He came prepared to seek the guiding principles behind what he saw as the inevitable replacement for aristocratic/regal regimes. In 1835 and 1840 he published in French his observations “on democracy in America.” His two large volumes were eventually translated into English and published under the title Democracy in America.2 This more than seven hundred page book was, with its author, at the time of his death, “famous in France, England, the United States, and even Germany.” Then it went into decline from about 1880 to 1930.3 Tocqueville’s book has subsequently steadily increased in popularity, especially drawing the careful attention of intellectual historians and philosophers, resulting in an enormous and steadily growing, often very sophisticated secondary and supporting literature.4 Why?